We recently connected with Crymson Pleasure and have shared our conversation below.

Crymson, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

2013 I got tired of the lack of representation of female/femme presenting people. I grabbed some ladies on Facebook and we created a Facebook page. Real Women of Gaming. At first we were just a bunch of women who were combating the negative female gamer ‘gamer girl’ stereotype. It was a start in the right direction but after 11 years and a ton of good and bad decisions, I’ve never been prouder or been a part of more rewarding experience. Five women on Facebook turned to nearly 30 volunteers, countless charity events to raise about 15k for various charities, meeting some of the most amazing people in the world, having the greatest found family that I could have asked for and support that is a chefs kiss. LOL If I sound like I’m boasting, I am. I am incredibly lucky to work with some of the most wonderful, caring people in the world. We come together for each other and our community. We consist of multiple races, genders, religions, sexualities and backgrounds. These people are my superheroes. Hands down.

Now we are a website, Twitch stream, YouTube channel, a discord and so much more. We aim to help, be it raising money for charity, talking about tough topics, meme dumping, having fun or letting people know they aren’t alone in what they are going through.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I always hate talking about me to other people. I’m 43, a stay at home Mom where I do cyber-school with my almost 10 year old daughter. Time FLEW so fast on her. I have been unbelievably happily married for 13 years to one of the most amazing people in the world. I run RWoG (Real Women of Gaming for short), I stream and play games, I love gaming.

I also have C-PTSD and ADHD. I’ve been in therapy for 6 ish years and am also happily medicated. That is important because it’s a core part of who I am. Thanks to TikTok I keep finding that most of my personality is a trauma response… and I can’t forget that dark humor. I’m lucky that I made it to this side of things. My daughter, husband, friends and RWoG are my other side of things. The blessings I get for continuing to move forward and skipping to the end of my story early.

I got into this all because the year my daughter was born was when I started learning I have CPTSD. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Complex just means prolonged trauma. I spent a lot of time watching YouTube and I watched people like Markiplier and Jackspeticeye play video games and, in those moments, the stress and craziness just felt less heavy. My daughter even used to do their outros word for word at the end of their videos.

I wanted to be that for other people. I wanted people to watch a video or a stream and just leave their crap at the door if they wanted to. Have sometime outside of all their problems to just smile or laugh. Then I began my long healing journey of therapy and mental wellness and realized that we don’t know jack about mental illness and there is so much stigma. So I started to use our platform to lift our voices and tell people, it’s okay to not be okay.

I love gaming and I want to help people, all of us do. So I do that in any of the ways I can. Streaming, talking, raising money, having events, talking about my experiences.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like my life is full of pivots. My first big pivot was when I met my husband. He saw something amazing in me that he loved and he created a safe space for me to grow and figure out who I really was as a person. I’d spent so much of my life trying to be what other people wanted that I didn’t know who I was.

Then we had our daughter. That was nothing but pivots. We lost our first pregnancy at 3 months, which is very common but the next year we had our baby girl. Learning to take care of a child is humbling and helps you heal. I wanted to be for her what I needed and tho I’m no where near the perfect Mom (there is no such thing) that I want to be for her, I’m breaking a very long and very hard cycle of abuse and trauma. If that’s all I’m remembered for then I’ve done well.

Real Women of Gaming was several pivots also but this last one is the most meaningful to me. It’s easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing, people going viral and I wasn’t sure what I wanted for a long time. We sat down, made some changes and decided that helping was the key to what we wanted. Gaming, Together. That means everyone gets a set at the table. Unless you’re a bully, sorry, no room here. We want people to have safe spaces to explore their nerdness, themselves and the support of other people.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s not about me. If my friends are frustrated at something, that doesn’t mean it’s about me. A friend is excited about a new hair cut that I don’t like but they love, my opinion isn’t the one that matters. I tripped in front of a stranger, they have better things to do than remember the person who tripped. The world doesn’t revolve around me. That is a hard lesson to learn but it’s an important one. It helps me with things like… say my husband has an agitated expression. I can ask him what’s wrong and communicate with him instead of automatically assuming I am the problem. If I think I’m the problem I get defensive for no reason and then we can get into a fight that didn’t need to happen. It’s so worth it. Oh and I will add that communication is key in working on this one.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://realwomenofgaming.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crymsonpleasure
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourVampireGoddess/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrymsonPleasure
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@realwomenofgaming
• Other: https://thebodhanagroup.org