Trans Talks: Minding My Business – Self Care, Mental and Emotional Wellness for the Trans Community [Video]

Self-care is self-love. Join us on May 18 at 3 pm ET for Mental Health Awareness Month as we bring together community and mental professionals.

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

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good afternoon good morning hello to each and every one of you and thank you so much for being here today
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my name is tori cooper i’m the director of community engagement for the transgender justice initiative at the
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human rights campaign and so honored and excited that you all are here with us today
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uh we’re going to take just a couple of minutes i’m going to be joined by valerie spencer and also by tayo drake
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we’re going to welcome you all into the room and then we’re going to get started with some healing
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thank you again for joining today’s trans talks called minding my business and that’s all about self-care mental
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and emotional wellness for the trans and non-binary community and really some tips that every person who’s watching
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can take away from today so thank you so much for being here i already am seeing
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wonderful feedback hello to you brian holla holland back hello to you matt hi
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tail hi valerie
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hi hi can we hear your tail absolutely now you can all right great well we’re going
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to get started in about five minutes i’m going to do a little short intro to both of you um but this is really just an
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opportunity for us to let some more folks get into the room all right how’s your day going so far
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really well great how’s miss lulu your clues really well
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wonderful and the fur baby sale well i’m currently looking at you and
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then looking down because my my white zoom bomber of a cat is about ready to jump in my lap and if i’m not paying attention he’ll get my like
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i was like looking here look at me oh no you said white zoom bomber they tell me
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yeah i’m sorry that’s a little and if i don’t pay attention he like grabs my feet i gotcha you have to watch
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that with this kind of thing
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the dogs are in the room so he’s like freedom oh i understand hello misha from uh
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colorado hello jill uh pleasure to meet you and again uh matt from france bonjour bonsoir
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and hi max thank you for joining us uh we thank you for being here today
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self-care is so very very important and you’ve got some experts here who are going to provide some really
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interesting expert lived experience uh
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professional experience all those other kind of things some things that each of us will be able to take away and you’ll
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notice they have very very different approaches but are equally effective the bottom line is you just got to do it all
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right so thank you so much hello chris from jacksonville um hi lisa from boston
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uh yes it is a perfect evil genius cat eve i totally agree
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and hello jasmine from south carolina hi jill so you all it’s about three about
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five minutes past the hour so i’m gonna do some quick introductions and then i’m just gonna move out of the way and let
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you all take it away all right so again my name is troy cooper my pronouns are she heard hers i’m the director of
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community engagement for the trans justice initiative at the human rights campaign um i am a black trans woman absolutely
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inspired by both of you and um the brilliance that you’re going to share
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with each of us over the next hour and at first in the order that you’re going to speak today i’ve reverend about
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valerie spencer msw uh we’ve known each other for a couple of for a few years
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not a couple of few years and i actually followed you um and was a fan of yours before we
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became friends i’m very honored to say that um i am always inspired by the words that you bring and by the life
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that you live and the way that you live it um i know that you’re going to encourage folks and also push them
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and challenge them in ways um that are going to promote growth um i want you to
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start off when it’s um after i also give a little brief intro on tail also want you to to to
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just tell a little bit about your background and then taiyo it’s gonna kind of uh
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valerie’s gonna do 20 minutes then taylo’s gonna do 20 minutes until i’m a fan of yours as well i’m that’s that ass
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it’s too big to get on the floor and do yoga but the principles that you talk about are
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absolutely brilliant and the mindfulness that you not only
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instruct people on but also model for people i think is really really important and for folks who
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just want to see resilience um i encourage them to google you because
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all three of us are googleable and both of you are definitely googleable so google you and find out more and at the
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end we’re going to take some questions from the audience um and we’re also going to make sure that people have ways
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to contact you because both of you also are contractors and consultants so you do this work
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not just live this life all right so with that being said we i’m gonna pass the mic and i’m
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actually gonna disappear when you all see me that means you have two minutes left so valerie my sister would you please
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share your brilliance with the world well first of all ah
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well first of all good afternoon good day to wherever you may be in the
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world i know since feel and affirm that your life is
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flowing miraculously despite the physical appearance of it i want to give honor to a couple of things i want to
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give honor to first of all the land that i’m actually living upon the land that
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i’m actually moving upon this is indigenous land we know this land today
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is los angeles but we also know that a great deal of effort was made to turn it into
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that but i want to honor the indigenous spirit of the land that i move on that i live on and that i have my being on and
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within i also want to honor the energy that we know as trans it’s been
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called many things all over the world we are for afina we are mahu
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we are shaman we are many many things but we help
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not introduce but we help promote the idea of healing and we always have
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throughout all of the cultures and we have served purposefully in that way so
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i just want to honor the healing energy that my people trans non-binary people
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genderqueer people and all the other names that may evolve
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from this dynamic energy that we share i just want to honor the healers that we
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are and because we are healers we have asked oh let me become my phone
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off child they’re trying to get at me because we are healers we have access
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to what i call some confidential information we have access to some internal
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resources that many of us don’t tap into why
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we get as unjustifiably so we are highly stimulated
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by the environment that we live and move in we’re highly stimulated by our trauma
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stories and our trauma narratives and sometimes we are so
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uh stimulated triggered activated by our trauma narratives that we don’t develop
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a healing narrative to counter some of that trauma narrative leading to what i call
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intentional release also let me just introduce myself completely my sister tori cooper and i
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have been fellow lionesses uh on top of many heels for many years
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so i honor my sister and i am reverend valerie spencer so i am a behavioral
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health therapist i’m a holistic life coach i’m an interfaith minister and most importantly i’m the founder and
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director of sacred vision for an organization called holistic empowerment
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institute and you can visit us and find out all about what we do and are doing at
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theholistic.org and that’s going to be coming up on your screen i suppose
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at some point and at holistic apartment institute our goal there we go our goal is to merge
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evidence-based practices with what i call the sacred i want to help you and
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support you making your spiritual practice very common very approachable and very
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doable and the good thing about a spiritual practice specifically a spiritual practice that is designed to
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support positive mental health which is what i’m i’m suggesting i’m suggesting that a spiritual practice can support
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you in your anxiety a spiritual practice can support you in your depression
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symptomology and the beautiful thing about a spiritual practice is you get to
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design or fall into a already existing trellis
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for yourself meaning if you want god in your spiritual practice wonderful put
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all the god in it that you like but if you don’t want god in your spiritual practice you don’t have to have god in
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your spiritual practice you can have prayer in it or not have prayer in it and i’ve designed a way at holistic
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apartment institute to really walk you through the process of designing your own spiritual practice to support your
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positive mental health outcomes i created my own special lane here’s the
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name of the lane it’s a long it’s a huge mouthful but get ready lgbtq
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spiritually integrative community mental health and healing that’s what i’m all
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about supporting community mental health and healing for queer people just like
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me so now why is all of this important to me i have had my experience with
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depression like many of you who are trans several of the social norms came up for
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me i’ll give you some of my social norms i was really depressed for many years because i wanted to find a mate
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and more importantly i got really challenged by seeing
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certain access to love and relationships that i as a trans woman did not have and
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that really really really bothered me it bothered me on a soul level and it led to my depression it even led to my
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suicidal ideation i did not want to be here anymore i did not feel loved appreciated
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or validated by the culture and sometimes we still don’t right can i have a cocktail break for a second
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please sometimes we still don’t feel
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validated and celebrated by the culture and so i got to the point where i knew i
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didn’t want to really kill myself but i also knew that i really didn’t believe in god no more i felt like you
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you kind of jacked me up god this is too much for me to bear and through prayer meditation
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we worked our relationship out slowly and i must tell you as someone who does
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believe in a higher power i humanize my higher power my relationship with my
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higher power we get into fights stats arguments
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we don’t speak to each other for days we kiss and make up that’s the relationship
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that i have with my god and that relationship supports me having positive
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mental health outcomes because i’m able to be honest i’m able to tell the truth right
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often trans people when we’ve come before social service persons or even persons in the mental health industry or
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in the medical industry we do what i call wellness drag
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wellness drag i’m good i’m okay everything is fine being trans is great
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i get a little down from time to time but on the whole you know i’m straight i’m cool and because we don’t want to be
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we don’t want to appear as crazy another crazy trans person before these people
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because we don’t want to promote the idea that being trans is to be mentally ill we play like
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everything is fine and we rarely go through an authentic and i suppose taylor’s going to talk more about this
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later an authentic therapeutic experience where we get to explore and
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we deserve that we need that we have to express the pain we have to express the
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challenge of being trans even while knowing that we are healed whole and
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complete even though that i don’t know what’s wrong my little respiratory stuff i’m going through but y’all work with me and
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so i have some things that i do pretty much every day that support my mental health and i want
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you to sort of go throughout your life and sort of look at
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what can i do every day nothing too deep now some of us love a really deep
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spiritual practice we love a spiritual practice that has punishment in it and reminders but some of us like
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to chill right i like to drive to malibu and just hang out with god right that’s my idea
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of an ideal spiritual practice so go throughout the threads of your life and ask yourself where might a spiritual
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practice be and and and look at some creative approaches the point of it is
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not to worship something out of yourself but to send center yourself
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to have some moments some experiences of what i call intentional joy and
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celebration right of what i call some intentional reflection
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turning to what i call the sacred core everybody take your hand beautiful instrument take your hand
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grab the palm of your hand right fast and connect that hand to what i call the
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sacred core it’s a little bit lower than i’m coring today i like my core to be down here but
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i decided to be touch in with your core become familiar with your heartbeat
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without judging without critiquing and just honor the vessel that you
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operate in often as trans people we want to change and manipulate it but just for a moment
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let’s just honor without critique let’s just honor the vessel that we operate in
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and dare i say give thanks and gratitude
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i’m really grateful for my body i’m really grateful for how my body is
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holding me throughout the stresses of my life i’m really grateful for how my body
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is supporting me in all the ways that it is bigger or smaller i really honor this vessel
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and give thanks for it right if you can do that practice just that now here’s
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the thing we’ve checked in with ourselves now let’s put some signposts along the way let’s put some little
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nuggets along the journey of the day that as we find these little easter eggs
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of living we go oh it’s all right i’m going to check in with my core and what do i want to put i want to put
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grace in my day i want to honor my day by putting peace of mind
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and clarity in my day i want to put joy in my day today i speak joy
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and beauty in my day for me personally i speak guidance
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and direction into my day and for me also
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and for you i speak happiness into our day thrilled about life into our day
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and so it is and so now we put little nuggets little easter eggs along the journey
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instead of putting complication and difficulty my life is awful it’s so hard to be trans look at how they treat us
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all of those things are true but you have more power than perhaps you
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are utilizing at present turn into the self the out there may can’t fix it for you
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they don’t understand us completely but the internal the internal understands
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right the divine connection understands and because we are naturally
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that’s been our purpose on the earth to serve as an intermediary between the
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divine and humankind because we naturally occupy that space
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of healing and even when we’re not trying we do these things naturally i invite you to give the sacred core and
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some of those things a try i don’t know about you but some of my other tools
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i’d have to get up because they’re right over there but i love to pour libation for myself which is something from the
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ifa tradition something from the swahili and the african tradition i love to do those things and pour into my day i also
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love to smudge my space with sage i do that for me i smudge my mom
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because your environment your space is a very huge part of your positive mental
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health and just as you’ve spoken into yourself and spoken into your experience
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of your day you can also speak to the environment that you occupy speak peace into that
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environment speak peace into that environment and don’t let people in that would throw you
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shade don’t let people in that would shake and disrupt your peace only let those people
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in whoever now that’s a muscle my family that’s a muscle that we often have to
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develop and tend to the muscle of not letting negativity even though it may be
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a familiar face a familiar sacred system not letting negativity into our space in
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fact speaking to any negativity and saying i will not have any of that here so i don’t allow people
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into my space they throw jabs at me i don’t not even kind jabs
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because even though it reads on the surface it’s funny it has an internal effect we know it does
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we know it does we take those things with us so my the overall point of my share
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is that you have agency you have
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power and you can use it of course therapy is a part
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of your mental health of course therapeutic groups social support groups peer support groups all of those things
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are a vital part of your mental health but you also have another avenue which
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is the holistic and the spiritual integrative side of those things so i want to give you a bit of homework
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before i go tory pop on because i’m gonna give you the homework too
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come on okay so here’s my last little piece of homework i invite each of you to scan your life
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and find one song that you know that at the listening of that song your whole
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energy changes i’ve got mine mine is from the field of gospel music mississippi mass choir i’m not tired yet
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i’m sure you will have yours it can be from any genre one piece of music that
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pulls you into a right state of yourself that’s me for now tori
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whoa wow yes wow
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wow wow we’re gonna hear a little bit more we’re gonna actually take some questions
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uh towards the end the three of well more so the two of you i’m just gonna kind of be the the lump of coal um in
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this fireplace uh of these two fires that are burning but i actually wrote
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down and and sometime after kyo speaks i’m gonna tell you share with you my one
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of the songs thank you for that thank you sister thank you thank you so with that being said we’re
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gonna transition um over to teo um who is going to give
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us about 20 minutes of inspiration
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no pressure um first of all i’m so grateful to be here and tori then i’ll
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always say yes to whatever you ask of me because of um deep love and respect and valerie i’m grateful to share space with
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you and i’m particularly grateful actually for my own well-being to hear you um
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my name is teo drake and um i do a lot of things in the world and
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one of the things that i’ve been doing most of late is doing work with around trauma
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and healing but particularly the ways in which um we can actually work with with our own
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trauma and in community with folks outside of the medical system like the giving practices
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and an understanding of trauma that any of us can do with ourselves at home and also with one
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another as a way of demystifying trauma and demystifying kind of the healing because
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we all have actually what we need to at least be able to be present enough to access other care that we might need
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right so a big part of this is actually to understand my story a little bit is that
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um i am i’m a trans man i’ve been living with hiv for
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nearly half my life 27 years and you know
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it in order for me to be here you know much like valerie was saying in order for me to be here i needed to actually
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figure out how to live in the body i have to live with
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the reality of what my life is like and and how to do that from a place that
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wasn’t always sort of armored up right and a big part of trauma is that level
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of guardedness right because you know there’s a good reason why most of us don’t feel safe in the world
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and why we don’t even feel safe often in connection with folks right we have all the reasons in the world for that
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so a big part of understanding trauma is really understanding where it comes from right like the very basics of it
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is to understand that we we’re evolutionary beings right and we have a mechanism to respond to threat
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right and folks have often heard the sort of fight flight freeze which means that you know
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something happens like and the ways you think about it if you think about it from evolution’s point of view a danger comes up right and
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you know a tiger faces something that is a threat to the tiger right the tiger being kind of at the top of the
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food chain the tiger’s response is basically gonna fight tigers rarely flee they often fight
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right and so the tigers response is the tiger feels a threat and the tiger comes forward and is ready
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to fight and and what happens is either in that fight the tiger doesn’t survive
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and so there’s no long-lasting harm right from sort of an animal evolutionary
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perspective or the tiger wins the fight and all of that energy that had been
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pulled up to meet the danger is gone so no trauma right
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and then you have a gazelle whose primary response to fear and threat is to run right so now
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tiger starts looking for lunch sees the gazelle the gazelle feels fear right
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and all of those same hormones all the same energy comes up into the gazelle’s body that came up for the tiger and the
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gazelle runs and either the gazelle doesn’t outrun the tiger
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right and the gazelle doesn’t survive and so there’s no lingering harm right
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as that is that is for the gazelle right or the gazelle actually escapes and in
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the escape burns through all of the energy that gets pulled up
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right but there’s a weird thing there’s things animals like possums right who when they
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feel threat they go punk and they fall over and they look dead they act
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actually just literally ascent that makes them like it’s just genius right but what people were
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wondering was that freeze right every single time an animal that natural defense is to freeze
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that animal when that in when the threat passes and again either the animal is attacked and doesn’t
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survive or it works the the mask of kind of the smell looking dead
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you know tiger’s like not good lunch and leaves right all of those animals whose natural
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defenses were to freeze come out of that and they shake and
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in the shaking is where the release of that energy goes and so what we understand trauma to be
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is something happens right and it can be an event a car accident it can be something that
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has happened to us over a lifetime like some violence from childhood right
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violence that little most trans folks i know have experienced when meeting the outside world right
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it’s a reoccurring chronic exposure to violence into threat
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or it can be often also historical right we can we can actually inherit
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some of that passed down and we might not even understand why the legacy um
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of certain things carries a level of trauma with it because we’re detached from the original cause right
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but those ways of being in the world when the event comes up and you have an
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experience if there’s a way to move through that where you don’t feel trapped right like you meet the danger
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it passes and you can return to a place of safety and there has been no like
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stuckness right then trauma doesn’t happen trauma happens when we are met with a sense of danger and
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there’s nowhere to go and for a lot of us those of us who are children those of us experiencing like
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my cat is currently indifferent to my needs um but those of us who are experiencing a
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system that doesn’t give a about us right like there’s a lot of ways that we get stuck
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and what happens is when we chronically get stuck those hormones have nowhere to go right we get trapped
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and that will change our brain chemistry it actually changes the wiring of our brain in a way that
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takes us away from what our birthright is right our birth our body will take care of itself it would know how to deal with threat if
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we were left alone and no one heard us and the world was welcoming our bodies would know what to
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do and so some of the work that that i’ve been doing and doing research with is is looking at
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how do we go back to in valerie’s language right how do we go back to our divine birthright right how
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do we help our bodies find our way back to what we are born to do right to clear that and
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there’s a lot of ways to do that and one of the things that um the ways that we can change our brain is
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actually through practice there’s ways of settling our nervous systems that can actually take our brains
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and the harm that’s been done in the ways that trauma has changed us we have the ability to change that we
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and we can’t go back to the ways we were but we can actually and it’s it’s often when you tear fabric right
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when fabric gets torn the ways that it gets mended is often stronger than the original
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fabric right and that’s exactly what happens with trauma and healing is that when we attend to the places we’ve been
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wounded and i mean really attend to them and when we do that as individuals and we do that collectively together
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what gets changed is stronger than what existed before because it’s been tested
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right and that’s a big part of of feeling i think in value we’re talking about feeling positive about the
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ways in which we we take care of ourselves and one another is that the being tested
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and moving through that is actually part of what builds resilience and lord knows that we’re called to be more
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resilient than we ever should be but it is actually a part of that sort of building strength
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and so the practices of being able to settle the nervous system is about sort of being able to
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breathe and be in our bodies and so a lot of times folks don’t actually have i can speak for myself actually my my
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natural inclination is to freeze that is my sort of default and i know a lot of folks whose natural inclination is
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actually to be incredibly anxious and sort of vibrate and they’re they’re the exact same reasons but they look different in
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the world right and so for me having the ability to to sort of breathe
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and get into my body any way that i can send my body messages that it’s okay right now like i’ve got
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this it’s okay right now is hugely healing okay and for folks who vibrate and who’s whose sort of
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embodiment of trauma is is up here at a very anxious level being able to take that anxiety and not
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not come all the way down but be able to match it to a place that’s a little bit settling is also huge and so for someone like me
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like a breath practice with rocking is is enough movement to get me out of
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freeze but not too much movement to shock my system right so if any of you just you want to just
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rub your hands together and just put your hand on your heart and your
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hand on your belly right and i’m gonna teach you to breathe for those of us who have struggled with that right
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which is as you breathe in your belly fills up
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right all the way up and it falls
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just gently you can do an inhale
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and exhale and
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again a lot of times this stuff feels naive but what we know is that the the
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the way to send a telegram to our brains that everything is okay with breath is is about 10 seconds so learning to
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actually breathe that is sort of inhale one two three
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four five exhale two three
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four five six right like this sort of level of the ways that it does this
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is a great way to actually be able to calm right and for folks who have an activated
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system who are up here one of the ways to do that actually is through dance and music right that the
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ability to meet the nervous system where it is is a way of being able to bring it down
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and so songs that are about 90 beats per minute um are songs that actually to dance and jump around to actually drum
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at that way and often i will actually link to a video of a bunch of songs but you can google
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those um but the part of this to understand is that we are social creatures and this is really important
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none of us are meant to struggle on our own we are actually meant to be with one
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another and so when we address our own trauma that’s part of the puzzle but it’s about being really invested in
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doing our work and also being really invested in the healing of those around us
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because part of what doing work on our own trauma does it lets us benefit from social connection
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the two biggest pieces of healing that happen for trauma
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is actually attend and befriend the ability tending is the ability for us to offer care to others
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and befriending is the ability for us to be vulnerable enough to accept care from others right those two things have to
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show up at the same time not necessarily you know but they have to show up in relationship to one another we can’t
34:16
always be givers and we can’t always be people who receive we have to have the experience of both
34:22
and so part of this is none of us are meant to struggle alone
34:27
and we are meant to help one another survive and we have what we need
34:32
despite what the system tells us we absolutely have what we need and if folks are interested in sort of these
34:37
practices um i would love to hear from you and we do a lot of trauma trainings
34:43
um in community and in community spaces so this is just a sort of a taste of this
34:50
but we would love to kind of help you have access to more of that but mostly we can do this
34:57
and we can do this not alone and it’s one of the reasons why i’m really grateful to be in the company
35:03
of folks who are here um to be able to do this work and
35:09
tori would you like to come back hey there
35:17
wow wow thank you thank you thank you teo um that was
35:25
amazing as we all knew it would be um and let’s have valerie join us
35:31
thank you so my brother and my sister so we have i there were a couple of things a few
35:38
things i really like to point out about what you all just share with the world
35:43
thank you for doing that um that one of the things that came up both of you
35:49
talked about healthy touching yourself or placing your hands um and there’s healing and
35:57
being able to affirm this vessel that you’re in and i thought
36:03
that was incredibly powerful because you framed it in different ways
36:09
um valerie talked about putting your hand on your core
36:14
and tail mentioned the heart and the abdomen um and in some ways they’re one and the
36:22
same i thought that was just so powerful um so we both want you all to share a
36:28
little bit about that but even as we go to that um i have two words that i want
36:34
you all i’m gonna give you a word valerie and i want you to share because i’ve heard both of you talk about these
36:40
things i want you to tell us a little bit about trauma and then teo i want you to talk a little
36:46
bit about healing well okay i sure what i’d just like to
36:52
announce to the world that teo has been recruited to serve in some capacity within h e i within holistic apartment
36:59
institute even with huge and i’m so grateful to have another healer
37:06
so let’s talk about trauma we all talked about you know i name things the way i
37:11
name things because i’m a spiritual freak and i call it the sacred core right and tail does the heart and the
37:19
abdomen it really is the same principle i like to do a lot of things from an evidence-based practice called healing
37:26
touch in fact our volunteers are being recruited right now and those volunteers
37:31
are a little bit different than most organizations they’re called healers in action and a part of the healers in
37:37
action orientation is about non-aggressive support uh healing touch
37:44
healthy touch some of those things and i think they are very helpful particularly because of trauma
37:51
many of us don’t know our bodies many of us who are trans don’t necessarily have a relationship
37:57
with our bodies as are bodies we have a relationship with our bodies
38:04
as these problematic vessels that need to be attended to that need to be addressed if we could just get something
38:10
removed if we could just get something if we could tighten the screws here we’ll explain why is that we’ll explain
38:16
why you want that over there we have this relationship with our body but what we don’t have a relationship with our
38:23
body it’s ours it’s not a library book that we can turn in it’s actually ours
38:30
no matter how we manipulate this beautiful flesh we will have it for this particular intonation
38:38
of the human experience we will and this flesh this body
38:43
has been through its share of trauma both physical trauma right some of us have been attacked i’ve
38:50
been hit right all through high school we should call high school for me the ass whipping years okay i was whipped
38:57
all through high school but some of us have faced verbal traumas right
39:03
verbal traumas taunts assault that actually get into the meat of the flesh
39:08
and penetrate the heart of the flesh and become real to us they become real to us some of the
39:14
things that they say and some of those traumas are experiential traumas things that we have been through things
39:20
that we have witnessed things that we have been exposed to stuff that we shouldn’t have saw that we should have
39:26
saw right that way that we should not have saw but we did see some you know children witnessing sexual
39:34
things at premature ages you know our bodies have experienced some things
39:40
and so i like to remind this old girl that she’s been good to me right i like
39:46
to remind this old girl because often i’m from an older generation i’m 55
39:51
right i love being in my 50s but i’m from a generation of trans women where this body was purposeful for only one
39:58
reason well a couple for one you had to be as fishy and as puss
40:04
as you possibly could be or die or to just die if you were not simply
40:10
unclockable just wither right and the other use of this space was that we
40:16
would be attracted to sex partners and love intimates because we both needed the affirmation we needed the coins and
40:22
we were lonely right we needed someone to tell us that we were beautiful so this flesh had purpose but what the
40:28
flesh did not have a purpose of being is mine
40:33
i this is mine this is my so i have to remind it that even though i took you to
40:41
you know the surgeon because i want something bigger on you or smaller something mover this whole girl been
40:47
good to me thank you for taking me to the you know i’ve eaten this body up
40:54
i’ve deprived this body and got it skinny and i’m somewhere in the middle right now but this old girl has taken me
41:00
through 55 years of taking from people that i did not want to take this
41:05
body has facilitated my patience that’s the other thing we have to give honor to
41:10
your resilience your patience your fortitude your ability to be quiet in
41:16
the midst of wanting to speak your ability to be still in the midst of needing or wanting to act this body kept
41:23
me out of prison because i didn’t slap some out of somebody and in this country a slap is no longer
41:30
a slap a slap can have me dead right my slap is i can die so we really want to
41:36
honor ourselves not just as trans people but as human people having a human
41:41
experience we want to honor it we really do want to honor ourselves thank
41:47
thank you thank you thank you so many powerful words there and we love it all um and we see some of the comments not
41:55
at all but some of the comments and we’re gonna address a few of those so tell tell us a little bit about healing
42:01
we heard some crossover because it’s almost impossible to talk about trauma
42:06
um especially in the roles that you both perform
42:11
um and the lives that you live it’s impossible to talk about healing without also giving something on tr uh
42:18
it’s impossible to talk about trauma without giving something on healing so tell us a little bit about healing
42:28
yeah i mean that’s why i love these spaces right because the truth is come here you the truth is that um
42:36
um is that the outside world actually only wants to talk about our trauma they only want to talk about the ways that we’re broken right and and the ways that
42:44
that we’re always going to be broken and i think it’s really imperative that that we do acknowledge
42:50
that the the hurt that we hold you know individually and also communally right that we hold
42:56
but that we acknowledge it in a way that isn’t always going to be that story right even even if the next thing might
43:02
come that that story doesn’t have to stay right like we can say like yeah right i
43:08
carry a lot of hurt and right and i think to really talk about the fact that we
43:13
can actually work on ourselves and love one another in ways that actually
43:19
foster healing in a community right like the ways that we actually heal the spaces that we’re
43:24
in begin to create a different a different narrative and i don’t mean the story that our ears here i mean the
43:31
story that our body feels right the story that our and you talked about the heart space right a lot of folks don’t know that your heart actually has brain
43:38
cells your part your heart actually can send messages to your brain in a way
43:43
that your brain understands like so that what we feel in our heart actually can act our brain
43:50
they’re not different places in many ways so that way of sort of getting here
43:56
first is one of the ways to actually change how we think the ways that we are in our bodies can
44:02
change the ways that we think and i think it’s a big part of that narrative is that that we have what we
44:07
need like we’re not forever broken you know we’ve been harmed but we are not forever broken and we don’t need the
44:15
system to fix us we need the systems for tools but the system doesn’t have the answers
44:20
for us we just need to tell the system what we want and what we need but we can do this for ourselves and with one
44:26
another oh i love that that we need to tell the systems what we want to need that’s
44:32
powerful that’s very very powerful and it’s true it’s very very true my t-shirt
44:38
says protect trans kids the system doesn’t protect trans kids so we need to tell the system
44:44
what we need and that’s to protect trans kids thank you both for that i’m not addressing every comment
44:52
please please and we need when we tell the system what we need we need for the
44:58
clinicians who are in place we need for them to be vocal and say no
45:03
that’s not what they need i may not be trans i am trans but that’s not what they need and we need to speak to the
45:09
need in full context meaning we got to talk about racism right we have to include racism in on that trauma body
45:17
particularly for people of color right now that’s good that’s good and you can get
45:22
that shirt on hrc’s website too if any of you would like to purchase there are a whole bunch of other shirts i think
45:28
this would be an amazing thing for you to to ally along with us on um some of
45:34
the comments again not all of them i love what quintesha says quintesha says
45:40
um i’m not transgender but you have my support i love your energy
45:45
be well and everyone take care thank you we love to hear that from everybody but
45:52
it’s especially important to hear that from folks who are not transgender because the folks that we’re fighting
45:58
against are not transgender the folks who are trying to erase our existence are not transgender so thank
46:05
you very much for that or they are and they don’t know it yet they are and they don’t acknowledge it yet quiz you don’t
46:12
you don’t don’t tip out the house just yet baby you may be you may be keep looking in the heart you
46:19
may i will welcome you today we will welcome you to we welcome everybody
46:25
um i love that heidi said thank you for that i love that heidi said how can i
46:30
support my trans son who’s 13 years old to love his body in this way i love
46:35
everything that you’re saying so tayo i would love for you to talk a little
46:42
bit about this if you would very briefly yeah you know what honestly um that’s a
46:48
tall order i don’t know that i would ask a 13 year old to love their body i think what i would do is figure out what a
46:53
truce looks like for now right like and i’m speaking my own personal experience like i had to find a way to
46:58
come home to myself but i but to ask me to actually really love myself
47:05
when i didn’t even know how to be in my body in a way that felt at all at ease was almost impossible right like and and
47:11
it almost shamed me because i’m like like you want me to do what like and then i would feel bad about that right as opposed to
47:18
what does neutral look like like what does what is sort of i know that you may not be happy with it
47:24
but it’s here and and what do we need to do in order to have you feel some level of comfort until you can access whatever
47:30
care you need to access right and that and that there’s ways to do that and some of that for some of us is medical
47:36
intervention some of that is actually addressing sort of that level of um i would talk about as one to claw out of
47:43
my own skin like i would just get to this place where it was just all of that energy would build up
47:49
and we have to find releases because if we don’t find a release for that it’s going to turn on ourselves right or it’s
47:54
going to turn out in the world and we’re going to like somehow get into trouble right like one of those two it’s going to turn in or
47:59
out but if we can find healthy ways to sort of discharge that because the truth is it’s natural to feel uncomfortable
48:05
it’s natural to feel unsettled like how would you not feel that in a world that doesn’t affirm who you are
48:11
and i think if you can at least come home to some level of ease and comfort that makes that makes asking the
48:17
questions about what interventions do i need for me easier to ask than what interventions do
48:23
i need because the world outside tells me i have to have that right and that’s the only way to do that is to at least become friendly with your body
48:31
again amazing i i can’t think of a 13 year old that i know who’s totally comfortable with their
48:38
body who’s cis or trans um and i love that one of the best things that you can
48:44
first familiarize yourself with your body and what your parts are and
48:49
and figure out how they can work for you i want to add to that briefly in loving
48:56
and supporting your trans son you know as parents our job is to groom
49:02
uh not necessarily who they become but how they govern themselves in the world
49:07
and this may be a controversial statement but i’m asking that you would love your son by not just supporting his
49:13
body but also supporting his growing masculinity and support that growing masculinity by
49:20
giving some suggestion to it so that it does not grow in because if we allow
49:25
your son simply to operate on what he sees particularly in the american experience as masculinity it will be
49:32
toxic so we’ve got to groom that masculinity so it can be healthy individual but not toxic
49:40
that’s great thank you thank you um i see jessica jessica we love you
49:47
jessica says i’m having trouble with thoughts of self-harm and i don’t know how to handle it
49:53
i can afford grs and counseling has no i can’t afford grs
49:59
and counseling hasn’t helped can we offer something to jessica
50:07
well first of all shout out to you being a sister of the
50:12
struggle right we all have had experiences where
50:18
uh our vessel just does not serve us in the way that we think we should
50:23
so i really want to honor the challenge that you’re going through as you’re having this experience with these experiences i want to invite you to
50:30
press in though i’m going to press in just a little taste right invite you to press in
50:36
i want to invite you to begin another relationship with your body i want to suggest to you that a major element of
50:44
that current relationship that you’re having is an inherited relationship right the medical the mental health
50:51
community have strongly suggested in fact the social norm as a whole in
50:57
terms of what is masculine one is feminine has told you that your body is not right that something’s odd with it
51:04
that something’s physically out of place with it i want you to take that narrative and begin to call it
51:10
and begin to love your body
51:16
as it is it will take work it is a discipline but you have agency i want to
51:21
honor the vessel that you occupy i want to invite you to touch your body and give it love and i’m going to hold you
51:27
in grace as well thank you
51:33
welcome mess bc uh let’s see okay so we have a comment
51:40
from eve eve says i’m an older transgender person and it’s been extremely difficult to find acceptance
51:48
in the rainbow community like i’m not seems like everyone wants to perform
51:53
female so here’s an interesting thing eve that i will offer to you and i certainly welcome space for our uh
52:00
superstar guest today there are times as trans people because i know both of these folks
52:07
that we are not trans enough for other people oh god no i’m not even trying
52:14
i’m retired that we’re not trans people i don’t want
52:19
to minimize your experience at all but when we allow other people to
52:25
dictate how queer we are how trans we are how
52:30
black we are how white we are then suddenly we give them far more power than they deserve
52:37
yeah you know and i think the other thing is it’s important to understand that that even though we may have similar
52:43
experiences we are all getting to know one another right and the languages change and
52:48
and so sometimes it’s it we actually have to have enough humility to say like can you tell me what your experience is
52:54
like and i’ll tell you that um i’m a i’m a pretty masculine queer trans
52:59
man right like flannel i’m a woodworker covered in sawdust most of the time work boots truck the whole nine yards right
53:05
i’m a very gentle sort of soul but but you know on the binary spectrum i’m pretty much all the way over there and i
53:11
am partnered with a flamboyant genderqueer makeup wearing glitter spreading
53:18
boy right who you know and who embodies translucents in a very different way and will say that that he is neither here
53:25
nor there peter pan sort of boy right and when we he’s much younger than i am and when we first met we both had this
53:31
sort of thing where i’m like like you get to be this thing right you get to be in the middle like and i had this it was
53:38
in my body because of how i was forced to live that i had this not about him but it was this sort of
53:43
resentment right that that his life was easier and he had this this resentment of people like me who are like you keep
53:49
telling me that i have to choose right your folks tell me that i don’t exist and intergenerationally we sat down and
53:55
talked to one another and and it was like he could hear sort of the pain i had and the trauma i carried because of
54:02
coming from an older generation that he was like oh i get i get why it’s hard to see me because it is hard right and i
54:08
could be like i fought for you to live that life how dare i be resentful of it like i fought for you not to have my experience right but
54:15
sometimes we just have to get to know one another and and to remember that that i don’t lose
54:20
anything right in in allowing someone else to have all the glitter in the world they want right i don’t lose
54:26
anything the bigger the world becomes but i think we have to do that for one another because certainly cis has folks
54:33
are not going to do that for us um but we have to pause to think about it tail i almost jumped out of my seat
54:39
when you said that you said repeat it again i don’t lose anything
54:45
yeah i don’t i mean i don’t lose anything the bigger the world becomes particularly the bigger the trans world becomes the bigger the queer world
54:51
becomes right i don’t lose anything nothing diminishes me there’s just more space to roam right
54:58
and you know also i would tell that person go ahead and occupy your pioneer space
55:04
um uh yes trans women have been all the rage and people are really over
55:10
understanding us right now they know too much but many people don’t know about the pan
55:16
sexual experience or the pan gender experience so that’s your opportunity to really craft
55:22
that narrative of what that will look like for the culture so occupy your part although the queer community may not
55:29
accept you you still have some agency to say so what this is what you’re accepting you
55:36
know occupy your own sense of individuality i remember when i’m not telling my business that might
55:42
skip that we love you for it so um
55:49
heidi thank you thank you thank you thank you because it it you know there’s a certain type of i
55:55
don’t use the word brave to describe people simply living their lives because you know we are just all living
56:02
our lives hopefully the best way that we can but thank you it takes a little bit of bravery to ask a question to support
56:11
somebody else that’s brave and we appreciate that we love all of our allies there were quite
56:18
a few comments from allies and we really appreciate that as we do at each and every person that was here all right so
56:25
with that being said um we’re actually just it’s it’s time to go
56:30
actually so let’s get if we could in this tail then
56:37
valerie i want each of you to leave one closing word
56:42
for the folks then we’re gonna say goodbye and then the three of us are gonna hang on the call for about another
56:49
three minutes just kind of to debrief all right and and breathe because this is amazing all right thank you octavia
56:56
for being here love you sister mateo i think embodiment is the word that i
57:02
hold right it’s how to come home how to come home
57:08
wherever home is yes
57:13
val who if i had to do one word i’m going to be self-serving right now i’m going to
57:19
say service service is a dynamic way to treat yourself well to re-narrative yourself
57:26
as powerful and i have a great way for you to do some service log on to our website at beholitic.org
57:34
and become one of our healers in action become one of our volunteers you’ll be oriented you’ll be loved on
57:41
uh so just go to our website and at one of the subscriber places just say i want
57:47
to be a healer in action and we’ll love you for it is that how they contact you also val
57:53
yeah they can get at me through the i’m still learning the website even though i built it but yes they can contact me
58:00
through the website thank you and how do folks contact you taiyo there’s actually and same thing with our
58:06
website there’s actually a contact form and that goes directly to my partner alex who does a much better job of
58:12
managing email that i do would you share your website one more time for the folks
58:18
yeah don’t say it because everybody can’t read trade sorry there you go transformingheartscollective.org
58:24
thank you we want to make sure that we appeal the folks who who learn differently not one part but two there
58:31
you go yes so thank you all again um i am empowered
58:38
and embodying this fluffiness today um i want to each thank
58:43
you both from the human rights campaign and also from the transgender justice initiative we appreciate you and we love
58:51
you and we thank you and thank each and every one of you who joined in today this was a really really quick hour
58:57
thank you for joining us for another session of trans talks we’re still experimenting if we’re going to do them
59:03
on facebook live if we’re gonna do them on instagram we have another that’s coming up our next one is scheduled for
59:09
i believe the third week in june so stay tuned for more details i appreciate you
59:15
and i hope that today and as part of uh may is mental what is
59:20
it mental health awareness month that’s one of the reasons why we thought it was incredibly important to bring this
59:27
conversation today so we encourage each and every one of you to prioritize your
59:32
own mental physical and emotional wellness thank you so much for being here today
59:38
thank you thank you
1:00:02
you

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