growth and growing

I know you don’t want to hear me cough up all my identities and say something about how I can’t truly understand the marginalized experience. Girl we know! I’ve done it many times (maybe on my about page??), but it still feels rote and more like an insurance policy against criticism than a meaningful informed consent for people with different identities than the therapist.

Instead, let me give you a sense of who you’re working with and what stage of consciousness I’m at.

I grew up in a 97% White community in the PNW. They “didn’t see color” and loved to celebrate how racism ended in the 1960s. We sang “We Shall Overcome” on MLK day and that was it. When I got to college, I was literally confused about what people meant by racism today. I was like, but that’s a Southern thing and it ended in the 60s. 

I also grew up as a theater obsessed teen. (I refuse to use the phrase theater nerd because we were theater heroes in my mind.) This gave me early exposure to a lil sliver of queer culture. Coupled with my own gender fluidity, I have always felt at home in queer spaces, though I don’t claim the term for myself because I am just not there yet with the integration of my gender fluidity. 

I think the original injury to white people happened around the birth of patriarchy and crescendoed in the insane trauma of the middle ages. We lost our connection to the land, viewed women as objects or threats to be literally burned at the stake, criminalized queer identities, and stripped men of their humanity. We lost singing, dancing, grieving, and self trust. My ancestors then exported this disembodied trauma and “spirituality” all across the globe. And look how that turned out. 

On our consult call, I welcome you to ask me questions about my politics and identity. One time, a potential client did this and I said the equivalent of: “I have a black best friend.” So that was embarrassing and might happen again but I’m also glad that this person got an honest sense of my lack of identity politics in that moment. They declined to schedule.

I have had no choice in my life but to follow the strange little glowing knowing inside me. The glowing knowing has taken me back to the plants, to my well and wise ancestors, to singing, to grief, to self trust. (Still working on my middle-ages dancing wound, thank you Pulse PDX!) In my practice, I try to help other people connect to their glowing knowing so they can shake off the big dark thing that we call white supremacy patriarchy. 

So that is how I work with dominant systems that insidiously rob us of our ability to feel beloved and free. I want us all to reclaim it. I think it’s possible.