Amy Yost wearing one of her amazing purses. Amy has short blonde hair, wearing a green shirt. The large blue purse hangs across her body. It has colorful word bubbles with words like pow and zap. She is standing in front of a powers machine.
My name is Amy Yost. I’m 43 and have 2 children. I have struggled all my life with chronic pain, anxiety, mathematics anxiety, and big crowds anxiety. So I grew up learning to mind control my pain.
I haven’t been able to hold a regular job due to my chronic leg pain and anxiety. In 2000 my mom taught me how to sew by hand. I was never allowed to touch her sewing machine though ❤️. However when she passed away in 2005, I inherited all her crafting supplies.
In 2016, I bought my first sewing machine. I wanted to make a purse to fit my cellphone. I couldn’t find what I was looking for. So why not make one?
So I YouTubed the brand of my machine and watched a video on how to use all the features. Then I watched a video on how to make a purse. Well… I was not great at math at all, and the instructions to put it together were confusing to me. So I looked around my house for something square to trace around as a pattern. Ah ha.. cereal box!
So that’s how it began . I had all my mom’s supplies and she had a rubber stamp collection. One of the stamps fell out of a box with some fabric . That stamp is now use in all my purses.
The best journeys are not always in straight lines.
Ain’t that the truth. So when you look inside one of my RAmys LoveMyPurses, it’s stamped and signed by me .
So I ended up making that purse, then in 2016 I had my son. So I took a break on crafting. I started painting on canvas. That was different because of having to stand to paint and because it was messy. In 2019 I needed a new purse and got out my machine and made myself one and posted it on Facebook. I had lots of people wanting one so I made more purses.
These purses feature multiple colors, and each contains multiple pockets.
it’s a struggle muffin when you have Chronic leg pain, with all the sitting and pushing the peddle foot to run the machine. But I push through it because I want to make purses.
From 2019 to present I have gotten so many good compliments on my purses. They are organized with awesome pockets. I try to make a pocket to fit your cellphone and a place to hang your keys. I make them crossbody/shoulder. Some are big enough to fit a book, a small tablet and other items. My purses usually have 6 to 9 pockets.
I uses snaps and Velcro to make them unique. I don’t really make any two alike. However much fabric I have, I will eyeball the size and cut it out free hand as I go.
I don’t sew straight, but that’s part of the journey I’m on. My purses are cute and really a statement piece to your everyday. I use holiday fabrics or really any kind of cotton fabric to make them.
I also have done a few custom purses. I cut a lady’s dress up and made her a purse. I tie-dye muslin fabric.
I am currently getting help with Vocational rehabilitation, I also sell purses and Tie dye T shirts at the common market on 8th Street in Muncie, IN.
My boyfriend came up with my business name. RAmys is for my 2 children, who have R names, and the Amy is my name. The phrase “love my purses” comes from my daughter when she had a handful of purses I made and said, “love my purses, mommy. “ So we call them RAmy (Ray-mes) Love My Purses.
I found a sewing machine that sews itself. I just push a button and guide it. My legs still hurt and fall asleep. I haven’t set up anyplace like flea market because I have anxiety with money and covid. So that has slowed by business down. I usually sale my purses through word of mouth. I have used Facebook marketplace . I have shipped to Michigan, Tennessee, Arizona, and in Indiana.
If you would like to purchase one of these amazing purses, go to’RAmysLoveMyPurses on Instagram or find Amy Yost on Facebook.
Website: ramyslovemypurses.com (still under construction) Email: Amy@ramyslovemypurses.com
Disability Justice and Violence Prevention Spotlight: Nicole Kass Colvin
Indiana Disability Justice periodically highlights collaborators and partners across the country who are centering people with disabilities and disability justice in the work to end violence. We hope that you will read all about Nicole Cass Colvin who is practicing at the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. In this interview Nicole walks us through what disability justice means in her practice and where the field could use improvement and redirection.
Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence
The Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence serves as Ohio’s rape crisis coalition. State sexual assault coalitions serve as the main training and technical assistance provider for rape crisis centers on best practices in programming and administration, and they advocate on behalf of rape crisis centers and the survivors they serve in public policy advocacy efforts at the state and federal levels.
Where you practice primary prevention & disability Justice? I work with the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence where our mission is “As Ohio’s statewide coalition, OAESV uses an anti-oppression lens to advocate for comprehensive responses and rape crisis services for survivors and to empower communities to prevent sexual violence.” As the Coordinator of Community Responses at OAESV, I primarily work with Sexual Assault Response Teams (SART) and Coordinated Community Response Teams (CCRT) across Ohio’s 88 counties, which may be seen as intervention, but I believe can be vital in primary prevention. SARTs and CCRTs are spaces where we can explore making our communities as safe and cared for as possible, and have people at the table to make change happen. Often this looks like focusing around the community level, but communities can get creative with it and really make impacts that span across levels.
What do you like to do for fun? Hobbies?
Read a lot of fantasy novels, listen to a lot of podcasts, get outdoors, explore the arts, and spend time with my chihuahua pug, Rizzo.
I am a white cis-female, nearly 30, with medium length wavy hair and big burgundy cat-eye style glasses. In this picture, I am smiling, have on red lipstick, a beige and gray sweater, and have my arm on my hip.
About Nicole
After studying psychology, I started in the anti-violence field in 2015 as a legal advocate in rural Alaska. Since then, I’ve gotten to work with some disability-serving agencies, and with building up a new sexual assault program in Indiana. Currently, I work as the Coordinator of Community Responses at the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. I live in Ohio, but in my town, one side of the street is Indiana and the other side of the street is Ohio, so I feel very passionate about addressing sexual violence and oppression in both Indiana and Ohio. Email: colvin@oaesv.org
What does disability justice mean to you as you practice primary prevention?
Primary prevention is about creating a world where sexual violence doesn’t exist or is unconscionable. We know that sexual violence can happen to anyone, and we know that sexual violence is a tool of power and control that thrives in the midst of inequity, lack of accessibility, and oppression. As a society and as an anti-violence movement, we don’t adequately care for people with disabilities. Due to the ways that our systems are structured, people with disabilities are disparately impacted by inadequate income, housing, education, food stability, or care, and even more so throughout the pandemic.
Primary prevention is also about centering, empowering, and uplifting people with disabilities. Speaking to my own mistakes in this field, how often do we put outreach to disability-serving organizations on the to-do list and never get to it? How often do we do prevention programming, with curriculum made for, by, and presented to neurotypical people without disabilities? How often do we as organizations have requirements for staff and volunteers that may exclude or drive out people with disabilities? With the help of my incredible colleagues at OAESV (shout-out to Olivia Montgomery, Sarah Ferrato, and Caitlin Burke!), I’ve learned that if we really want to practice primary prevention, we have to let go of the idea that we need to “reach specific communities” (which tends to mean our services are designed around a specific population – likely a population that we are most comfortable with), and rather be intentional in each and every thing that we do to ensure that we are really being proactive about ending violence to those most impacted by it. For me, this has been a reframing. Instead of “maybe consider having disability-serving agencies on your SART” or “here are some tips on a specific subject, and by the way, here’s how to make it accessible”, we might reframe it as “let’s explore how sexual violence most impacts your community, hear directly from survivors most impacted, and build our systems and resources off of that information.”
Notable quotable from my colleague Sarah who assisted me with primary prevention aspects of this post: “Primary prevention cannot happen if we don’t ensure that marginalized folks are included in the brainstorming, decision-making, and implementation processes of education and outreach. Shifting social norms includes shifting community attitudes about who deserves safety, dignity, and respect. If the answer isn’t a resounding ALL PEOPLE, we cannot begin to address the ‘how.’”
Primary prevention also means taking a hard look at our communities and our services and both talking about and engaging in actionable steps to make them more equitable, accessible, and accepting. This can be as big as changing systems, and as small as having conversations with folks in our communities about how different actions and words impact our neighbors with disabilities. It can even mean asking for someone’s Venmo, CashApp, or PayPal to give some extra cash to help them meet a need or compensate them for emotional/intellectual labor.
Does anything about primary prevention need to change to bring disability justice to the world?
Yes – I don’t think there are enough conversations about disability justice within primary prevention. Again, I think we often design things based on a specific population and then as an afterthought add in “others.” For primary prevention to be truly effective, especially around disability justice, we need to be thinking of intersectionality. This also means we need to be creating environments where people with disabilities are included in giving and receiving primary prevention, including exploring the barriers that our organizations have that may impact people with disabilities in employment, volunteering, or consulting. It also means being intentional about recruiting volunteers, employees, leadership, and consultants. Some examples include exploring education (or even heavy lifting!) requirements in job postings, providing employees with plenty of Paid Time Off and other benefits, and paying people for their emotional and intellectual labor.
Additionally, I know I often thought of primary prevention as doing school programming, teaching consent, building developmental assets, etc. These are all great things (find out more about needed changes to these aspects of primary prevention here). However, it’s not the full picture of primary prevention, which also means actively building equity and bridges over barriers, both in our communities and in our systems. We also need to be more open about ableism, eugenics, and social Darwinism in our current state. People with disabilities are not disposable and if we really want to live out our missions within the anti-violence field, we need to be active in centering our care.
Do you have a favorite prevention activity or strategy you use to achieve disability justice?
I participated in a training a few years back where a ground rule was “Step Up/Step Back” (please note that this language is unintentionally ableist and Make Space/Take Space is an alternative with more inclusive language), meaning if you are someone who is normally really quiet, to challenge yourself to speak up in the training, and if you’re normally more talkative to let others speak. I think of this often in terms of primary prevention, anti-oppression work, and disability justice. I like to incorporate intentionality and pause and think, “Do I have something to add here that people need to hear, or is it a time for me to pause and make space?” Often in terms of disability justice, this is a balance of speaking up in spaces where my voice may be received because of my power, privilege, or relationships, and de-centering myself where my presence may be more disempowering to people with disabilities. My advocacy work and collaboration with IDJ have shown me how important it is to center people with disabilities – “nothing about us without us.” In my advocacy, this often looks like hearing what survivors with disabilities are saying and when they feel safe to be centered, it can be a conversation of, “Hey, would you want to get involved with IDJ?”
What are some resources that you have created or that you just love that you want to share (articles, toolkits, etc.)?
There are so many resources that I love but a few favorite or recent resources relevant to disability justice include:
I don’t do private consulting at this time, but do provide training and technical assistance across Ohio. I highly recommend working with and paying consultants, especially people with disabilities; Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; and survivors.
Some of my favorite consultants/places to connect with consultants at this time include:
I work at the Courtyard By Marriott in downtown Muncie, and I’m a Volunteer Firefighter
I want to share my tattoos with everyone and tell you what they mean to me.
The first tattoo is a firefighter tattoo. The tattoo is a fire shield with an American flag. It’s outlined with a thin red line.
The next tattoo is another firefighter tattoo. This tattoo is what I call my 9/11 tattoo because every year I go to a firefighter conference in Indy, and i take part in a 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb at Lucas Oil Stadium. I climb 110 stories/2,200 step, which is the same number of steps and stories that the firefighters had climbed on that day. The tattoo displays a firefighter praying on one knee with an axe and a helmet. The American flag is behind him. The number 343, which is on the helmet, is how many firefighters died in the trade center on 9/11.
My next tattoo is my cerebral palsy tattoo, which is a green ribbon with wings and the word hope underneath the ribbon. I have cerebral palsy. I’m unable to use my right hand, and i wear an AFO on my right leg. I decided to get the word hope because hopefully someday there will be a cure for cerebral palsy.
My next 3 tattoos are on my left arm:
The first one is of a roman numeral, which represents my sister’s birthday- 09-07-92. This was my very first tattoo. My sister and I are close so we decided to get our birthdays tattooed on each other. She got my birthday (10-28-95) tattooed on her arm as well.
The second one is a heart with headphones around it with a heartbeat rhythm in the middle, I got this one because I listen to music wherever i go. It keeps me calm when I feel like I’m getting frustrated about things.
The third one is my semicolon tattoo. I got this one because i deal with depression and suicidal thoughts. I decided to get this one to remind myself that everything is going be okay. The text i got with it is “when we suffer we find the will to live.”
The next tattoo is a diamond shape tattoo with is one half is in the day time and the other half is in the night time. I got this one because sometimes I’m up all night, and sometimes I’m up all day. .
The next tattoo is my Johnny Cash tattoo. I got this one because I’m a Johnny cash fan. The tattoo is his face, and in the middle is him with his guitar walking down the road.
The next tatto is also musical. This one has the play, paused, stop and replay Buttons like on an Ipod or Mp3 player. Play the moments. Paused the memories. Stop the pain. Replay the happiness.
The last tattoo is another music tattoo. The tattoo says “Words fail, Music speaks.”. I got this one because sometimes we listen to songs that just know how we feel.
That’s all of my tattoos. Thank you for letting me share with you the meaning of my tattoos.
This is a picture of Alex. He’s wearing a tan and yellow firefighter suit with black gloves. He has short dark hair and a confident expression on his face. Alex is standing next to a fire truck.
