carrie fisher isn’t just princess leia. carrie fisher isn’t just an actress we all admire from a famous series of movies made a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. carrie fisher isn’t just another name on the list of shitty things 2016 has done to people i admire.

carrie fisher is a woman who struggled with addiction and mental illness and never sugar coated it - she spoke honestly, openly, about every ugly truth, and made me so much less ashamed of the things i struggle with in my daily life.

carrie fisher is a woman who fought back against body shaming and misogyny, against agesim, who looked at critics and said “yes, i am a woman who has aged, and had children, and struggled with depression and addiction and my body has changed, so you can just shut the fuck up and deal with it”, and it was absolutely beautiful.

carrie fisher is a woman who was placed in the role of “princess” but didn’t conform to the typical hollywood idea of what a princess should be. she’s loud, brash, crass, and unapologetic for being so.

she’s an idol and an inspiration and she’s a woman who saved my life many times just by being who she was and never shying away from it or feeling the need to say sorry. carrie fisher is so much and more and i cannot begin to stomach the thought of 2016 taking her away from me, from her family, from the rest of the world and those of us who love her so dearly.

i love you, space momma. we all do. keep fighting the good fight.

there’s been a huge outpouring of love for carrie fisher over the past few days that, quite rightly, isn’t only focused on her work and the iconic character that she played, but who she was as a person and the strength she inspired in people. 

it makes me sad that i’ve only seen posts about debbie reynolds that celebrate her for being carrie fisher’s mother, and an actress of hollywood’s golden age. 

while those are totally great and valid reasons to appreciate her, (and understandable — she was of a much different generation and most of us are less familiar with her) i want to talk about how debbie was also an incredible woman in her own right.

debbie reynolds was a survivor of childhood abuse. she was a mental health advocate for most of her life. in 1955 she became a founding member of the thalians — an organization dedicated to mental health causes — which she led for almost 60 years. 

she was a valuable and fierce ally to the lgbt community. she hosted AIDs benefits years before reagan publicly acknowledged the disease. she bearded for gay men to protect them from homophobia and discrimination that would prevent them from getting roles.

she was a strong, compassionate woman who, on top of raising her own two children with no help from their father, raised the three children of her second husband by his late ex-wife, even after he gambled away all of her money and left her flat broke.

so here’s to debbie reynolds. her legacy — like her daughter’s — is more than just who she was on camera. i’m full of gratitude. the world is better place for all that she left behind.