Fuck, it's awfully rough waters out there ya'll. I have trust this is a rubber-band effect that will spring back, but in the meantime people are struggling to find a sense of safety in their body and support within community. We've gathered lots of tools but many of us find it a challenge to get ourselves to do the self care that ensures we don't blow the residual gunk of those challenging energies onto one another in the wake of street action.
I was out of town last week and missed the call for the counter protest in support of inclusive sex education. Here's the thing. Even if I had seen it, I wouldn't have been there. I know what these protests do to my nervous system: my heart and body do not sustain the repeat traumas well. My first pride parade was in Atlanta, Georgia 2002. I remember the trembling in my body as I stood across the street from protestors screaming and waving hateful signage. I had just gotten off the phone with yet another family member telling me I was no longer welcome in their home. I learned that to have open pride in my sexuality is both a celebration and a protest. I've been collecting tools and toys of support for this embodied balancing ever since.
Thankfully, I've since been steeped in depths of collectivist care support from my cultural lineage in the San Francisco bay area: Black liberation, Disability advocates, Immigrant and Gay rights, and more. I'm intimately aware that activism takes many shapes. Something I learned from these histories is the importance of resiliency and understanding this is a baton marathon, not a solo sprint. A primary resource for sustaining our heart-mind-body connection is aftercare through co-regulation and self care practices. So, I'm excited to have support in creating a space for us to do some of that work. To model a practice I hope might again become a staple of this work : an offering of self care practices done collectively. This event will be hosted in Montréal (bilingual) and if you've been struggling with the impact of what's going on, I hope you'll join. Your presence is participation: engage as much or as little as desired.
Collective Care Post-Protests : Harnessing fear and anger to build resilience and reconnect with purpose.
This event aims at creating a shared and welcoming space for the anger, fear and harms that arose from last Wednesday's protest with the intention to reconnect to our purposes & build resilience. There will be opportunities to check in with your internal climate: practices for meeting the trouble through movement and sound, and activities to reconnect with your compassion and purpose through action rather than words.
It can be deeply upsetting and exhausting to bear witness to what is going on in the world, and still go about our lives. Intense self-criticism, isolation and shame are so often bound up with surviving trauma. Pausing to care for ourselves before carrying on, and checking in on how we speak to ourselves and others after a demonstration (which can both cause and bring up past traumas), is crucial to mending. The resilience of our movements depends on your ability to be gentle with our imperfections while also facing our failings.
Coping strategies can help to give us distance from what harms us and get us through traumatic impacts. These strategies serve us, but resilience is separate from coping. Collective growth is enabled when we address harm and pain, cultivate purposeful repair, and develop practices of resilience that are restorative: to help us re-center on our dedication to our deeper purpose.
This movement needs all of us : the list of what must be done on the ground and behind the scenes is long. This means we need both your presence and energy for quite some time to come. Taking care of yourself helps ensure you're able to continue to show up: whether it's in the work of promotion and organizing, with your heart and body on the street, or the labor of holding and care afterwards.
I'm thankful at this moment to be launching my self-paced Somatic Gendering course: and I want you to know that I would LOVE to see it shared this with your local trans and queer organizations as well as your clients.
Reach out to me for an affiliate code so you can offer your members and clients a discount while also raising some support funds at the same time.
Somatic Gendering is for you if you're:
curious about accessing gender differently
seeking to anchor into your gendering values and joy
looking for an independent, more affordable option to 1:1 work
wanting to expand your resilience to show up in your authenticity with tools to support the challenges we're facing
Of course I love this resource - I made it! So don’t take it from me, take it from them:
👉 "Thank you for sharing so much wisdom you've gathered and finessed through this journey. I resonate with the weird feelings about the ways my personal exploration and liberation have over lapped with loosened misogyny. I have found myself struggling with internalized terf talking points about butch flight and adopting male privilege as a cop out."
👉 "I recommend this course to anyone and everyone who is gendering out in the world. I discovered new embodied practices for holding my complexities and celebrating my authenticity."
👉 "I really appreciated the way you acknowledge that the safe or comfortable choices don't always align with the whole deep desires. And that the choices we make from a restricted place aren't where our authenticity is measured from."
If you have any other questions, feel free to DM me on IG! Otherwise, get immediate access to this course at the button below!
Masculinizing Top Surgery Grief & Pleasure Circle: scar and heart care support
Starting next week, you can still sign up: 3 modules of online content you can go back to at your pace, if you're not quite ready or wanting to engage with the live online group or scar massage.
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