Be / here

Loneliness isn’t always obvious.

It can look like being surrounded by people and still feeling unseen. It can look like having a busy diary, but nowhere you can fully exhale. It can look like being the “strong one”, the funny one, the organiser, the person everyone assumes is fine.

For LGBTQIA+ people, loneliness can be made worse by rejection, masking, loss of family connection, unsafe services, or not knowing where we belong.

Connection does not have to be loud to count. Sometimes it starts with one honest conversation, one safe space, or one person saying: you don’t have to do this alone.

***rMentalHealth

For anyone searching “Am I trans?” this Pride Month:

You do not have to have all the answers today.

There is no single way to be trans. No deadline. No checklist that makes you valid enough. No requirement to explain your identity perfectly before you are allowed to explore it.

Questioning can feel tender, confusing, freeing, frightening or strangely calm. All of that can belong.

We wrote this blog as a softer starting point:
https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/post/am-i-trans-exploring-gender-identity-with-care-and-curiosity

***rMentalHealth

Am I Trans? Exploring Gender Identity with Care and Curiosity If you have found yourself searching “Am I trans?”, I want you to know something before we go any further:You do not have to have all the answers today.Questioning your gender can feel tender, confusing, exciting, frightening, freeing, overwhelming, or all of those things at once. Sometimes it a...

Sparkle Weekend tickets are now live! Join the UK’s longest running celebration of trans lives from Friday 26th - Sunday 28th June, in Sackville Gardens.

There are some changes and Sparkle needs your support🩷

Sparkle Charity have made the decision to introduce paid tickets this year.

They have struggled with the rising costs of delivering accessible and safe events. Their team has tried very hard to secure sponsorship to keep the Sparkle Weekend free, but this has been difficult. This is partly due to a change in climate in the financial & corporate market, and the difficulty of being a grassroots trans charity.

The cost of tickets are as follows:
£1 trans hardship ticket (very limited number available)
£5 youth ticket
£7.50 standard ticket (18+)
£7.50 accessible ticket
£12.50 allyship ticket
£25 pay it forward ticket

These affordable tickets enable their Charity to continue running the Sparkle Weekend and keep supporting the gender diverse community.

You can purchase yours at spkl.uk/tickets

If you are part of a business or organisation and want to support the Sparkle Weekend, please email [email protected]

Today we remember the lives taken at Pulse on 12 June 2016.

For many LGBTQIA+ people, this date still sits heavily. It reminds us that q***r spaces are not just nightlife, celebration or visibility — they are places of safety, belonging, survival and community.

Remembering Pulse also means refusing to minimise the impact of anti-LGBTQIA+ violence on mental health. Grief, fear, hypervigilance and anger are not overreactions. They are human responses to harm.

With care for everyone carrying this today.

***rMentalHealth

There’s something quietly powerful about everyday affirmations when they are made with our community in mind.

Not the toxic positivity kind. Not “just think happy thoughts”.

The kind that says:

You deserve softness.
You are allowed to take up space.
You do not have to explain yourself to be real.
Rest is not failure.

That’s the heart behind our community shop. Small things, made with care, that can sit in someone’s bag, on a desk, in a wellbeing pack, or in a moment when they need a little reminder.

Browse the shop:
https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/shop

***rJoy ***rMentalHealth

Grounding does not fix discrimination, grief, unsafe systems or the very real pressure that many LGBTQIA+ people are carrying.

And still, grounding can be useful.

It can help your nervous system find a little more room. A breath. A pause. A way back to the present moment when everything feels too loud.

At Be/Here, we talk about coping tools without pretending people should just “self-care” their way through harm. Both things can be true: we need safer systems, and we also deserve tools for today.

Read our grounding blog:
https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/post/grounding-techniques-lgbtq-mental-health

***rMentalHealth

Grounding Techniques for Anxiety and Overwhelm Grounding techniques are simple, powerful tools that help calm the nervous system and bring you back into the present moment—especially on days when anxiety, overwhelm or dissociation feel heavy. In this blog, we explore practical grounding exercises that are gentle, sensory-based and fully q***r-...

Carers Week matters to q***r mental health.

So many people in our community are caring quietly — for partners, parents, chosen family, disabled loved ones, friends in crisis, or people who don’t always recognise how much support they are receiving.

Care can be loving and meaningful. It can also be exhausting, invisible and emotionally heavy.

For LGBTQIA+ carers, carer-friendly communities have to include spaces where people do not have to explain their identity, their family structure, or why chosen family counts.

To every q***r carer: your care matters, and your needs matter too.

***rMentalHealth

Rainbow lanyards are not a mental health strategy.

They can be a useful signal, absolutely. But LGBTQIA+ staff and communities need more than symbols during Pride Month.

They need safer reporting routes. Informed managers. Services that understand minority stress. Teams that know what to do when someone is misgendered, excluded, targeted or quietly burning out.

This is why our training work matters. It takes inclusion out of policy language and into everyday practice.

If your organisation wants to move beyond “we support Pride” into something more practical, we’d love to talk.

https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/workwithus

Our community shop is launching this month 💛

This is about more than products. It’s about small, everyday reminders that q***r people deserve care, comfort, humour, softness, identity and support — not only when things feel heavy.

Every purchase helps us keep building Be/Here as a q***r-owned, q***r-built mental health service rooted in therapy, education and community.

Have a look here:
https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/shop

***rJoy ***rMentalHealth

Pride Month is a good time to talk about something that often sits underneath LGBTQIA+ mental health: minority stress.

It isn’t “being too sensitive”. It’s the impact of living in systems, families, workplaces or services where you may have had to shrink, explain yourself, brace for rejection or scan for safety.

That can show up as anxiety, exhaustion, people-pleasing, anger, shutdown, isolation or burnout.

At Be/Here, we believe q***r mental health support has to understand the bigger picture — identity, safety, trauma, belonging and community.

Revisit our blog on minority stress:
https://www.beheremcr.co.uk/post/what-is-minority-stress-lgbtqia-mental-health-support-be-here

***rMentalHealth