Thank you to all those who took part in our online Open Minds meeting on the 15th of April 2020. It was our eleventh Open Minds meeting and we were joined by people from Birmingham, London and the south of the UK.
The Open Minds project is a way for Punjabi LGBTQ+ people to share their experiences and support each other. It is run on behalf of Sarbat and Taraki and is facilitated by Kuljit Bhogal.
Lockdown has affected us in different ways. For some it has had the positive effect of forcing their families to more openly acknowledge long-term partners.
For people living with their families, lockdown has been more challenging as they have had to deny aspects of their personality or sexuality to avoid causing tension or hostility in the family home. When thinking about ways to stay resilient, we talked about the importance of remembering what our authentic self looks like and nurturing this, even if this is privately. Work out a list of things that remind you what is important to you and try and do something from this list daily to nourish yourself.
Lockdown has affected physical intimacy and dating, and this increased isolation has increased loneliness. This is a tricky problem and will be being experienced across the world. It’s likely that new ways of socialising will develop as societies look for solutions to this problem.
We will continue to run Open Minds online for the duration of the Lockdown. At the moment we will only be offering the meeting to people who have attended a previous face to face meeting. This is to maintain the safety of the group. We’ll be thinking about safe ways to open up the group to new members and if you have any ideas let us know.
Meetings will be limited to 8 people, but if they are oversubscribed, we will try to set up another date during that month.
Future Meeting Dates
Online:
- Wednesday 29th of April 2020 18:00 – 19:15
- Wednesday 27th of May 2020 18:00 – 19:15
If you have been to a face to face meeting in the past and would like to attend one of the above meetings, email us at khulamana@gmail.com and you’ll be sent details of how to join the meeting.
Apologies if you receive this summary more than once.
Thanks
Kuljit
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