I’m excited to be on the blog tour for this wonderfully colourful, queer book today: Queer Up by Alexis Caught. The cover calls it an “uplifting guide to LGBTQ+ love, life and mental health,” and it’s everything teenage me needed.
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Queer Up is an insightful and empowering guide which takes young people by the hand, and offers uplifting advice and activities to help readers through life’s challenges and instil them with confidence and pride. The book provides an inclusive account of what it means to grow up queer, with chapters on questioning, coming out, friends and family, love and relationships, sex, shame, pride, being transgender and/or non-binary and allyship, with a key focus on positive mental health strategies.
The book also features personal stories from notable LGBTQ+ figures and allies, including award-winning transgender activist Charlie Craggs, author and journalist Kuchenga, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, writer and producer Russell T Davies, and writer and activist Scarlett Curtis.
Looking After You: The Joy Diamond
For my stop on the blog tour, I’d like to share a simple but great activity with you called the Joy Diamond. The purpose of the exercise it to pick one thing from each segment of the diamond and do that thing every day, which will hopefully lead to a happier you! The aim is to choose simple activities that will stimulate us in various ways:
- Make serotonin, which stabilises our mood
- Release oxytocin, making us feel loved
- Create dopamine, helping us to think more clearly
- Release endorphins, helping us to feel happy and positive.
Here’s what the book says about the joy diamond:
The reality is that there will be down days – we’re only human. And that’s OK – sadness, moments of anxiety and depression are inevitable parts of life. Everyone experiences them at some point, regardless of their sexuality. We can’t remove them from our lives, but we can give ourselves the best chances of facing them and managing them, and we can do that by setting ourselves up in the best way possible.
A “life hack” that I like is to create a tick list for myself – it’s simple, I promise! All you have to do is try to tick off a bunch of things each day from what I call the “joy diamond”. To help you build up your chances of having a great day, try to tick off one of the things from each box. You can use this example I created for myself, or try creating one of your own.
Don’t worry if you struggle with this activity. Sometimes when we feel low, we need to give ourselves a little reboot. It helps to go back to our basic needs and focus on making sure those are well met, allowing us to get going again. If you’re having a bad day or feeling down, check in with yourself: have you had enough sleep? Have you been out into daylight and fresh air? Have you taken care of your body, washed, and put on clean clothes? Have you eaten good, nutritious food?
Doing these simple things can make a big difference in our everyday lives. From here, we can then restart and slowly try again.
– An extract from the chapter ‘Happy and Gay”, from Queer Up by Alexis Caught
Download the Joy Diamond
Click the button below to download a PDF of the joy diamond example shown in the image above, or why not use it as inspiration and have a go at creating your own joy diamond!
Queer Up contains various other exercises and ideas to help us feel more in control, happier, healthier, and ready to go out into the world with more joy. Filled with excellent and accessible advice, it really is just like having a great friend to guide you through the tough times – especially those times when you might struggle with your sexuality and identity.
But even if you are more open and comfortable with your identity, it’s still a fun read with some wonderful insights from people across the whole LGBTQ+ spectrum (plus it’s just a beautiful book to have on your shelf)!
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About the Author
Alexis Caught is the creator and co-host of the British Podcast Award-winning LGBTQ+ podcast Qmmunity, exploring queer culture, history and identity. He is also a mental health advocate, qualified psychotherapist, writer, speaker, model and rugby player. His writing has been featured in Attitude magazine and The Mirror along with the best-selling anthology It’s Not Okay to Feel Blue. His areas of passion and expertise are mental health, wellness and the queer community. On talking about the book, Alexis said this is the book that he “so desperately needed when [he] was 14.”
Follow the Tour!
To find out more about this book, check out the rest of the stops on this blog tour – they’ll be sharing some more exercises and extracts from the book.
Queer Up by Alexis Caught – Blog Tour
- Monday 24th January: Questioning – teenlibrarian.co.uk
- Tuesday 25th January: Looking After You: The Joy Diamond – wonderfullybookish.co.uk
- Wednesday 26th January: The Worry Tree – queenofteenfiction.co.uk
- Thursday 27th January: What Does an Ally Do? – kirstyes.co.uk
- Friday 28th January: Pride in People Power – gloriousreads.com + @yalc_uk giveaway!
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Walker Books will donate 20p to the mental health text support service Shout 85258 for each copy of Queer Up sold.
Shout 85258 – for which Alexis Caught is an ambassador and trained mental health volunteer – is a free, confidential, 24/7 text messaging support service for anyone who is struggling to cope. Since launching in 2019, their volunteers have had over 900,000 conversations with people who are anxious, stressed, depressed, suicidal or overwhelmed and who need immediate support. 45% of young people who text Shout 85258 identify as LGBTQ+. As a digital service, Shout 85258 has become increasingly critical since Covid-19, being one of the few mental health support services able to operate as normal at this time.
