Jet Moon

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Date of interview: 23rd March 2024

Content notes: sexual violence, mental health systems, alcoholism, addiction, disability, economic discrimination, PTSD, pandemic, homelessness, fascism, Hepatitis C, suicide, transphobia, whorephobia, institutional violence, immigration detention, homophobia

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First of all, I wonder how survivor writer applies to yourself. Can you speak to how you arrived at calling yourself a survivor writer? 

So one of the reasons that I put this in there as a question was that when I had finally managed to get money for the first survivor writing platform, which was Playing With Fire, with Spread The Word; a much smaller set of workshops and time for myself to write. What I realised was that, I remember saying to my access Assistant, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t even know if I qualify as a survivor writer.’  And this instant, impostor syndrome, that descended on me, you know – how dare I? How dare I, do anything, – you know, but I remember her just laughing, because, they’ve know me for a number of years, and they were like, ‘Jet, you’re definitely a survivor.’

And I think that there’s also something that I tried really hard with in the calls, (for participation) was to name some different kinds of survivorship, but also leave it kind of open, and encourage people to bring their own definitions of survivorship into that. Because I’m really aware of what is and isn’t visible; or how we as a community  or in a social sense – that there are things that aren’t visible, that might   come to light and that can get cut off by these definitions. 

So yeah. And I think of myself as a survivor, you know, because in the simple sense of being a survivor of sexual violence, or a survivor of mental health and mental health systems, a survivor of alcoholism and addiction. I’m queer, I’m genderqueer, and, um, yeah, I’m also neurodivergent. 

I mean, there is probably like a very long list of things that could, come to mind, but then, at one time it would never have occurred to me; that those things applied to me, or that I, you know, was sufficiently qualified in those areas. I think that for me, there’s always been a level of minimization of my own experience, and I think that’s also often been an aspect of not having that voice. 

How would I arrive at calling myself a survivor writer? 

I think that it was a ‘catch all’ that came up. You know, and I think that at the time when I was thinking of trying to get funding, thinking of how to devise a project, you know, to essentially give myself time to write, but also to have a survivor space. 

I was really focused in this thing of being someone who has complex PTSD, I’d been really, really searching for any kind of Survivor led space to talk about (my) experiences for quite a long time – and not really being able to find what I needed. So I think that I was really just focused on this pretty literally, on this term survivor. And it was also a good catch all in terms of being able to extend that out, and as a word that maybe other people could understand. And that I could broaden that word and say, ‘Look, this is what this is, who I’m trying to embrace.’ You know, because I went very (wide) in terms of saying to people ‘Look, you know, like, racism, transphobia, people who are experiencing the brunt of a government enacting austerity on them.’ I mean, I’m also disabled, I’m a long term chronically ill person. 

Sometimes it’s hard to remember all the pieces, And so I yeah, and I think I maybe had a thought about this term (survivor) before then. But that’s where that story collected its own more definable energy.

Question. 

I’m curious and how it seems there are different aspects of Survivor writing, whether it’s identifying both as a writer and a survivor, or the act of creating intentionally from a place of survivorship. What do you take from the term? How does it change? 

So I think that question… I was writing for a long time before this point, and I wasn’t saying, ‘I’m a survivor writer’, or ‘This is survivor writing’. I have made work for a long time, you know, since like, I think 1987 would be a real point when I started to think, ‘I’m trying to make work as an artist, I’m trying to define myself as an artist.’ And always using different mediums, you know, being involved in an arts community where we had a collective practice; sometimes working together and you know, using different mediums so yeah, I don’t think I was ever thinking ‘Oh I’m a writer’ either. 

Writing is a place that I arrived at, you know, much, much later and I think it was also about like, ‘What do I have the resources to be making?’ You know, because if I started out making images, but I think I was certainly concerned with who would and who wouldn’t be seen or whose image would and wouldn’t be recorded. Yeah, you know, and so I think that’s always been there. 

I think what may be the very first piece in terms of writing maybe was like, 1993, I made a collaborative project with a friend Karen Blacklock. And I was photographing and we were both devising interviews at that time. And it was part of Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand, where we both were living in a small town- Dunedin- at that time. And I think that the project was called ‘We Others’. And we were thinking, ‘Okay, who is and who isn’t going to be recorded in this centenary? 

And I can recall, you know, at the time, we both (had) been part of drug culture, punk subculture, a very strong DIY culture, a culture where most, I think everybody would have been living on some kind of unemployment benefit at that time. And a way of living that was quite demonised, ….But to really give us space, for people to talk about their experiences on their own terms.

…Art was very much part of how I was able to survive and stay on the planet. And it was something that was very much part of my coming out of active addiction….. And that having something creative to put into that very self-destructive space – my addiction, you know, it wasn’t like a light sport. It was something that had almost managed to kill me. That as I tried to find my way out of that, art and making and that creative impulse was very much, and continued to be, part of my survival. It was a really, really important thing. 

But I also think that entry into like a very small art scene was, on the one hand, in terms of being surrounded by other artists was really great; And on the other hand, I was so shocked by the ‘Art World’. Because I didn’t know anything about that as like a place of privilege, commerce, how people have their social hierarchies, who is the person who has access to this…, it was – I found it, very disillusioning – because I thought that creating; it was a way of communicating with other people. 

I’m interested in writing as a method of survival, proving our own existence transforming experience finding hope. So I’m quoting myself, and the question is, could you speak to that? 

I would, first of all, I think maybe talk about like writing something that wasn’t a piece of creative writing: in the mid to late 90s. Again, in New Zealand, where, you know, lots of us had been surviving on the dole, which was not a lot of money, and there also wasn’t really work. It wasn’t like, you could just go and get another job. Just remembering the hilarious thing of like a friend going to the job centre, and them just saying, ‘There are no jobs’. 

But at that time, there was a National (party) government in New Zealand and they were always insisting on this rhetoric – you know, of rather than looking at their own budget blowouts or American cronies or any kind of backhand deals that they were doing – you know, politicians skimming the system. That (instead) it would be about (the prime minister) Piggy Muldoon as he was known at the time, Robert Muldoon, you know, trying to make sure that women didn’t have a right to abortion. That, you know, solo mothers, this Dependent Parent Benefit would be seen as you know, like, people like living the highlife. People just having children so that they can live off the state. And, of course, anyone having this minimal existence on the dole being seen as you know, like a fucking career criminal of some kind. 

And at that time, I met with another artist, a woman called Kim Pieters. And we started to talk about the idea of an Artist’s Wage and broadening this quite quickly to the idea of Cultural Workers Wage because, you know, not everyone’s fitting whatever the meaning of the artist is. I mean, Kim, dropped out of that quite quickly. And I spent you know, some time researching this with Work and Income New Zealand. (WINZ note: the same as the DWP) 

I had a hilarious connection with a guy there, I mean, he was just one of these kind of interface bods at the time, and I don’t think that he even took this idea seriously at first, but over time, I think I really talked this guy around. That this was, you know, I had done some research in terms of what happens to people who are receiving benefits, you know, ‘Where does that money go?’: It goes straight back into the economy, ‘What value does art and cultural work produce apart from any immediate and extremely rare financial profit? What’s the usual time that an artist or cultural worker might be doing their craft before they earn anything?’ and looking also at the notion of unpaid work and contributions to an overall economy. 

Anyway, at some point, you know, also involving Rob Garrett at the Otago School of Art, then finding myself in like really weird meetings of, you know, the Minister for work and employment. I mean, I felt a little bit like I was in a petting zoo, because I really was this person coming from the dole, you know, researching and coming up with all these ideas, writing like, a proposal. Like, a thick wad of paper: about how this (artists wage) thing could actually work; with case studies and interviews about what people were doing and what it was like for them to live on the dole, and what they were actually contributing in terms of their communities. 

I left New Zealand at, you know, in 1999. But there was an artists and cultural workers wage for a long time through that era, and it was the thing that people said, ‘It can’t be done.’ And (in the present day) there’s a lot of talk about this, now, you know, people talking about Universal Basic Income. ‘Oh, Ireland has this writers wage’ –  and it’s like, well, you know, it happened there (in NZ) (it was called PACE – Pathways to Arts and Cultural Employment)

So I think that that was really a piece of writing, that was very much a method of survival. That very much was about proving our existence. And it really was also about transforming people’s experience, because people could claim – I think it was only like $20 a week more than the dole – but they were not under pressure to find any other work. They could earn money on top of that. And yeah, that is certainly a way of finding hope. 

What inspired me to create a platform for Survivor writers? and to look at the common threads between Playing With Fire and You Are Here?

In terms of creating a platform for Survivor writers, I think at the time, I mean, I had been trying to write this book, Peachy, this novella – Peachy, which I actually have written. And it was a piece of work that I just thought I would never be able to write, because it was about (drawing on my experience of ) my teenage years. And it was a story that was more about everything I could remember – you know, – it was just flashbacks, and stuff that I thought I couldn’t talk about, or that (I felt) wasn’t even a story or wasn’t important.

It’s through writing, that was how I could place myself in my story. 

I was in this really jangling space, where I could hardly think. You know, couldn’t form coherent thoughts or sentences; I was often recycling images in this kind of like flashback space once again. And that often when I’ve been in these really, really awful spaces, and there’s been a lot of times, when I’ve thought, ‘Oh, you know, is this the end?’ Or ‘I’m completely fucked? What can I do from this space?’, that what I’ll do is, I’ll be like, I will try and force myself to make something. You know, because at the end of the day – then at least you have made something – you get left with something. Rather than sitting in this space of nothing, where it’s just a kind of self.. you’re eating yourself, your trauma’s eating you. 

So yeah, I started to write this novella. I mean, it was a bizarre thing, you know, sitting down, and I had these scraps of paper, and I decided to just write a heading on each scrap of paper for each memory that I could, you know, could think of. And, you know, (my memory) probably was running at one time – would have, like, you know, – maybe two or three or four or five of these (memories) cycling around. And at the end of like, sitting down at this table for, you know, maybe, maybe it was a day or a couple of days. And I had 40 pieces of paper on the table. And it was the first time then I’d seen a sort of timeline or noting of events through those few years. 

I had never been able to see it all at once before because traumatic memory doesn’t work in that way. So it was a revelation. For me, it was a way of making the experience real. It was a way of holding recognition. For some time; I don’t think that those things were ever stable. You know, I was you know, I think it’s taken me a couple of years to have any kind of distance from the book(Peachy)  or even think that I might be able to read it and look at it and think, ‘Oh, that’s a piece of work’. Because for me every single time I went in there and tried to write that book, I was stepping into a trauma space. And it would take quite a decision because it was okay once I was inside it…but prior to being inside, it would be like, ‘Well, I don’t really want to go back in there anymore.’ Because it’s this form of time travelling and, and it was also a very unstable space. 

What I did was I, you know, used each of those 40 bits of paper as like a sort of chapter heading and started to, like, produce a book from that; and to start to find the language for my experience and also look at it as writing. 

….to try and come back to this thing of unstable memory. Because I was doing something between recall and making story; that when I was making story, then it was very hard to understand where story and memory stopped and started. 

There was also memories that I didn’t know how I knew the story. I didn’t know if I’d been there? I didn’t know if someone had told me it? So there was like a weird thing, where once I started writing, I could kind of build the scene, but I didn’t know if it was real or not. And I think that in lots of ways, the act of writing was like a clearing house, because it gave me a way to go further than just recycling the snippets (of memory) – the bits of you know, those flashbacks. That gave me a way to just build the courage to talk about it.

And I think that there was something that happened for me in that act of writing that didn’t happen in years of therapy. That is a level of being able to.. Yeah, I mean, it sounds such a fucking cliche to say ‘Control my own narrative’; but if you’re writing and editing and refining, and making and transforming something… you really are controlling the narrative because you are constructing it as well. 

So yeah, it’s complex, because it can add another layer of doubt, when you already have a memory system that’s in flux and fragmented. But I also came to this place,  there’s a little tagline at the beginning of that book, (Peachy) where it’s like, ‘I’m not even sure I care what the truth is anymore, what matters to me is having a story I can live with.’ And, yeah, that’s what I need. 

So I wanted with this platform for Survivor writers, – the first part of that was called Playing With Fire –  I was like, Okay: I want a way to finish my book, to have some mentorship, and I want to do some workshops, a workshop with survivor writers.  

I’ve been thinking for a long time about how to do that, (how to give that workshop) and how to do that without everybody triggering the fuck out of each other. You know, and that was the thing that stopped me doing that for a long time, because I was like, Well, how do we share a space? How does it work? How will it be a productive space; rather than something where people yearn to come together, and then they just go away with more harm than they came with? And, you know, I mean, that was really a long, long years of thinking about how to do that. 

And these workshops, (I) really thought about how can I make a container that other people who are survivor writers can come to? And how can it feel safe? And I really tried to think about all of the different things I struggled with when I was coming to writing and coming to valuing my story, and also, what it feels like to be in that tremoring place, when you’re not sure if your story is… if you have a story; you’re not sure how to tell it or who to tell it to. 

There was like, a big response in terms of people, you know, like having 46 people apply. 

For me, it was this amazing thing – because I think we were like part of the way into this first workshop – where I realised, you know, that not only was I holding the space, but here I was; I was a survivor in the space. And that what happened for me was that I heard people say things that I thought,…

What I found was in this peer group –  it really affirmed my own experience – and that I could see that people came from really different experiences, but people said really similar things; about their feelings, about how they were being in their life, about how their functioning was affected, about how they were, or were not managing to get it down on paper – You know, what was preventing them.

And it was like, … ‘So this is the experience of traumatised people trying to find their voice.’ And for me, that was a massive thing, because, I could then recognise myself in that – and that was a survivor group that I had really been searching for. It just gave me something way, way, way beyond the writing. I was like ‘Ah fuck, my experience is real.’ As I have reflected back ‘my experience is real’ – and I think the same, you know, for other people.

What’s always a bit of a catch 22 for me is that yeah, it’s great to do these things; I really want to be in community with other people, but it completely fucks me in terms of my health. And you know, I was homeless during this period as well.

This whole thing during these fucking lockdowns, or in the midst of the pandemic, where, you know, the council would just be like, ‘Well, if you are really homeless, then turn up outside the homeless hostel, turn up outside the night shelter,’ you know, and I’m shielding. There’s this government shielding list, and then it gets narrower and narrower, you know, like – who is afforded the protection of the state? And who is exposed to another level of debilitating illness or death, or, you know, who wants to play that lottery? You know, so I am doing battle with that. Holy fuck, what a roller-coaster, that’s, yeah, that was a wild ride. 

And, um, you know, I was really turning to writing in these hotel rooms and then later when I was in the hostel. You know, like getting these pages up on the wall, and just writing, after I had, like, slept for a week continually. Just like writing and writing, because I needed a place to go –  that was something more than things where, you know, like, council workers would just call up and in the most abusive terms, interrogate you about.. ‘Who the hell do you think you are to be asking for any help?’ 

Another question. ‘…to appreciate this weird double edge reality: traumatic experiences have influenced and shaped who I am; yet being driven to create to survive, gives me something powerful that would not exist otherwise..’ 

I’ve got like, this big mass of work that was Queer Beograd Collective, this transnational collective based in Belgrade, Serbia, 2004 to 2011. Running these underground festivals, (there’s) a huge backstory on all of this, you know… how it happened, etc. 

But for me, I was writing and devising these cabarets – that would happen and would be part of this underground festival that we would run –  and would be the big draw. That was when we got our biggest crowds. I mean, even the fascists came to our shows, because they wanted to see what we were doing. 

And that (writing process) would be about sitting down with people. You know, having these conversations over coffee, writing these scripts from people’s stories. Trying to, like, weave together this whole thing of like, you know – a country that’s post war, transitioning from communism to capitalism, their whole ex-Yugoslavia story. You know, and I’m working with a group of people who’ve been teenagers during the war, and that we’re in a country where being gay was like the worst thing, and that it’s also not possible to hold a pride, there’s a massive fucking violence. Serbia is still in a sanctioned kind of space and the EU is going on about how liberated (the EU) it is; so there’s this whole kind of like the issue of like borders and who can cross borders and everything. So all of these scripts are being written with people and I am directing people to perform, performing myself,   

(and also) bringing in performers from outside.

And then, this Resilient and Resisting project. So like 2017, I started making this series of stories called Sick Fucks. And this was at a point when Hep C treatment was being really rationed on the NHS, these new RNA antiviral treatments, which hadn’t existed before. And I was really ill, and I had not been able to do anything for a long time,  I was just thinking, ‘Oh, what’s the point in living like this, you know, I could kill myself, that would be one way … or I could make something’ you know. 

And my main social contact was through social media, Facebook at that time and seeing that I knew that there were other people who were isolated, like me, you know. And that I would try and collect some of these stories across this thing of, like, um, my constellation of marginalisation, as I saw it at that point, which was: I was a sex worker, I was kinky, I was queer, I was disabled and I was a survivor, you know, whatever the fuck that means. 

And so, you know, at that time I recorded or had like the 16 stories. It was this miraculous thing – Thank you Nic Connaught at the Arcola theatre – who helped me, getting this Heritage Lottery funding. 

This thing of interviewing people was incredible, because it was, again, hearing people’s stories – I could get so easily isolated, because I was isolated, sitting inside my room. 

For example, Hackney museum for this ‘16 days of activism, against violence against women and girls’, and they’re like, Oh, well.. I’m like, ‘Well, I would like to propose something on this topic. But I really want to  involve, you know, I want there to be the voices of women who are sex workers. I want there to be voices heard, people, you know, trans, non binary, gender non conforming people within this because our voices are not included.’ And you know, Hackney Museum does work in a way in which they include community voices, and use it as a way to sort of soft lobby because they’re part of the council. So everything had to go through the council. 

And it was a kind of way where they’re like, ‘Well, if we include this,..’ (it would be a precedent) and we (Resilient and Resisting project) would brand every single thing that we made with the symbol of the red umbrella – so the sex workers symbol – and this trans symbol would go on every poster, every zine that we produced. So that was very clear to people who were trans and who were sex workers that this was a safe space for them, but also to other people, that, ‘No, we’re holding this space.’ ….

And we have, like, a conversation about why these, these shitty things (council and policy decisions) shouldn’t happen and why it’s important to include these voices, you know, I mean, like, slowly, slowly, bits of work. 

Anyway, so I mean, that’s like a huge piece of work. But it also, for me, it was really, at a certain point, life or death. 

And I made that choice, and to be able to hear other people made me be able to value my own experience and understand that, you know, I mean, can say that ‘the personal is political’ – you know, how many times can you say it quickly over and over again? – but to really make sense of it; for me requires having the voices of peers and other people who have those experiences around me. In order to understand the political context and to really concretely know it is not just me. It is not my individual experience, my failing is something about being within a system; that actively seeks to destroy your rights, destroy your means to have a living. 

I had, like a tagline on that project which was  about how ‘Surviving stigma produces social change’, which is, you know, a neat little sentence but I think it’s a real thing. You know, that purely through the act of persisting and surviving and finding ways, that people did and do, produce social change.

Question 

‘From the outside of people see the word survivor, they assume a lot of things, a kind of sad victim picture. But many people are or will at some point in their lives become survivors, whether from Some serious illness disability or being part of some survivor group.’  And the question is, could you say something about the broader idea of survivorship? Why could it be important to acknowledge this as a form of social care and change? 

This narrative: of a main body of people who are well, who are not having mental distress, who are not having illness, who are not neurodivergent, who are not experiencing structural oppression, who are not experiencing racism, who are not experiencing transphobia, who are not,… – you know, this idea of… ‘Who is this monolith?’ The fiction of it, you know – and to try and pull that apart, but also not to go into the singular vein…. I want to build something that’s a broader raft, that gives people a way in to the stories, where it’s like, ‘Ah, maybe not all of it’s my experience, but some of it’s my experience; and therefore, I can identify with you better.’  

You know, this thing about social care and change, the way I construct things, I’m massively influenced by my 30 years in 12 step programmes… This thing that people self-organise – there are these peer led groups – that it has a horizontal organising structure, that all voices build towards knowledge. That there’s kind of principles in the way that people organise, and how then the group can hold together around their purpose. 

Again, moving away from like, this single point and time or this definition of Survivor as being a singular thing, and being like you know, this is something much more disparate, shifting and shared. I mean, we’re all surviving environmental collapse; possibly, Yeah? Well, some of us are not fucking surviving it. But those of us who are here, need a way to be communicating with each other about our experience and in a valuable way. And I massively believe in; How can we hold space for each other? When there is no space visible? When there is no services? 

………

I keep hearing different people talking about their small groups or small actions, the bubbling up from the grassroots. 

Question. What are you looking at in your own writing at the moment? 

This book ‘Artists Are Demons.’ I’m so grateful to have had Olumide Popoola as a mentor, you know, a real shared journey in this kind of very left autonomist organising. But also when I was really wrestling.. in this white guilt of like, oh ‘How will I talk about racism?’ ‘How can I talk about being part of a mostly white, left organising in this early 2000s.’ You know, then being on unceded Aboriginal land. A lot of our struggles, you know, this whole battle with the Australian government at that time – this Australia’s; the ‘Pacific Solution’, you know, these detention camps, and then the offshore processing on Manus Island and Nauru and Christmas Island. And this thing of, you know, this fight; an effort for visibility around this question of refugees, and the demonization by the government. You know, often with (of) people that we never saw, or never spoke to, you know – who were in the camps – you know, or had very little ability to, you know, we have actual (communication)…. (sighs) you know been divided in that way.

I think that she (Olumide Popoola) really helped me just get through to talk about that experience (of what really happened) and find the voice to talk, you know, also about this whole collapse of this idealism,…..

And also the mourning that’s within the novel you know about that world, that process my own loss of someone – you know, really, really close to me – (their death) through alcoholism. This yearning for home, this sense of displacement and you know, wishing for belonging; and in trying to bring this around to how that reflects my political beliefs and how that wraps up some of my experiences also as a sex worker. 

Asking questions, or also just trying to make like, a place to talk about some things that I don’t see (in writing) you know, it’s about that a big part of my life – this collectivism and friendship, and that whole feeling of, you know, the early 2000s and this Big Gay City, 

…..(and then) all of the state violence and grief and loss. Wanting to have a conversation with a reader about being here on this planet, now. And how, you know, or 25 years on or whatever,… where are we at? What’s lost? What’s the same?

So has writing of other survivors, people that you’d identify as such been important to you could you say, who helped and why? 

New Zealand writers like Patricia Grace, this early book of hers, ‘Electric City’, this fucking beautiful language and characterization and this particular Māori experience and something about preserving; you know, some pieces that could otherwise disappear. And then Janet Frame, all of her books, but this particular ‘Living In The Maniototo’ You know, and I knew of this book, and I remember you know, just that she’s talking about these really horrific mental institutions, I think in her time in maybe like the 1950s, maybe the 60s and the brutality –  beautiful, beautiful language –  but also again, documenting.  

and that you know, like, when I had been in an institution, you know, these day-hospital sessions…sitting with these other people (listening) you know, it’s still happening …. 

Janet Frame; like knowing that someone talked about the experience, knowing that it was there in black and white, and could be known. 

…..(Important people) Friends and people that I have known, and Josephine Krieg, Jason Barker, Christine Bylund, you know, three writers and they would be many more – but people who just wrote really fucking great performance pieces, or you know, critical articles – the three of them are just like, you know, real powerhouses, and their intellectual discourse and their wit, vulnerability. And, yeah, just really making beautiful work that I’ve, you know, been glad to see or be part of, or be able to read. And, you know, and that’s really helped me to keep going. 

And I think that also, who’s been important is like, all the people that I’ve fucking hated on message boards, or the internet, or people who’ve said, really, really stupid, bigoted bullshit in real life; because they gave me that fire in my belly to fight back against. You know, those people, when people say, really, really fucking stupid things, it’s like – having a reactive personality can be really, really useful –  because then you go away, and just like, you know, I wrote a show called ‘Politically correct sexual positions for the revolution’. Wrote it, you know, in an afternoon, sitting, you know in Croatia, at someone’s house in Croatia – after someone had really fucking annoyed me – And I was like, Okay, well, that’s what I do. What I’m going to do with that; make something. 

Could I say something to survivors who wish to write words of encouragement? Why writing private or public is important? 

I would say, find your cheerleaders, find the people who are going to support you in having a voice. You know, there is this thing about (writing) in private or in public. So you never know what your writing’s building towards, you don’t know what your writing’s giving you. Because in the present moment, there’s not necessarily that perspective, there’s just the drive to get something out. So I think that privateness has its value; but I think that to write alone is really difficult. And, for me, it has been massively important to have these little groups where I can feel a sense of fellowship. This (survivor’s) Writers Group: just such an amazing thing to be celebrated by other people. 

And I think that is incredibly important to find those spaces where your most tremulous voice can have its beginnings. Because I think that to do it alone is one thing; to do it with other people – giving you that swell of listening approval, is something else. So yeah, find your cheerleaders, find your find your little group of people that you can be together with.