00:03:17.160was that people, yeah, have just kind of completely decontextualized and removed themselves from
00:03:27.700a responsibility to one another. And that was so depressing to me and still is so depressing to me
00:03:38.500as a reality. And it's something that I'm constantly navigating myself.
00:03:45.520but like within myself and also within the wellness community because I also am participating
00:03:53.240you know I I I go to retreats I do yoga I'm learning meditation and all of these
00:04:00.860skills that I am learning I'm learning not primarily from white people or people that are
00:04:09.940not, you know, from these spaces, but I think in a Western context, there is so much that
00:04:17.520we're, that there's so much loss that we're grieving and we haven't faced that.
00:04:23.440And that I feel that in the process of just living and being in the material and looking
00:04:31.200at the research and looking at our lived reality, all of it sort of really came together.
00:04:37.940And I was writing it also primarily during the pandemic. So those realities were so palpable. So I learned a lot while researching this book and it was, yeah, it was profound and also debilitating at the same time.
00:04:57.520mm-hmm yeah profound and debilitating is a really good way to describe
00:05:05.260how i feel a lot of the time when i'm kind of awakening to a lot of the realities and
00:05:13.440i'm thinking a bit more of things you'd said about when you're writing who is wellness for
00:05:22.000And in your Substack article on protecting women, you wrote, researching who is wellness
00:05:28.980for made me realize how often illness is a sign back to ourselves.
00:05:34.360Illness is a conversation your body is trying to have with you, and it is up to you to decode
00:05:39.480it, but all the evidence is there, end quote.
00:05:44.620Yes, I'd love to decipher this quote a bit more with you.
00:05:48.980And I really see that culturally we are in a time of mass death, whether that be due to climate change or broken systems of care or outright systems of violence and war.
00:06:06.300And so I'm wondering how you see our bodies reacting to this and how can our bodies teach us about the need for collective wellness?
00:06:14.960i think our bodies are revolting and like they are in revolt and i think about that often um
00:06:26.780just existing under the perils of capitalism and the sort of unnatural
00:06:31.920ness of how we exist with one another and um how we're how we're all yeah again participating in
00:06:42.560And it's a struggle to sort of detach and decode yourself, you know, in a new way.
00:06:48.300But I think that what our bodies are telling us and what our bodies are showing us through illness primarily and through, I think, you know, everything from grief to depression are lighthouses back to ourselves.
00:07:10.900their lighthouses back to our internal feelings and the way that we are inside of not just our
00:07:19.040brain but you know our emotions and our our our body and our body is is such a
00:07:26.340it's such a vessel and a vehicle for us to
00:07:31.640heal and better understand one another because I think there's a reason that we are
00:07:40.780embodied in this lifetime, in this form during, during the Anthropocene, you know, during such
00:07:48.440tectonic times and such, you know, just awe-inspiring times because so much is happening
00:07:56.340at once. And of course, you know, we're, we're responding to that. We're responding to
00:08:02.780the deafening sadness of of existing right now and what sort of faces us with large-scale
00:08:12.540ecological collapse you know where I think many of us are yeah feeling that on multiple levels
00:08:21.740Um, and what I've learned from my body and from this, this, you know, technology that I'm trying
00:08:34.720to understand within myself, human technology or human skill. I I'm, I'm allowing my body to kind
00:08:42.400of lead me each day. Um, because I have a, I have a chronic, chronic illness, a chronic issue I've
00:08:51.560had since I was 14. And it's, it, it's emotional because it's learning how to humanize this
00:09:00.700experience that I was having. That was so dehumanizing taught me so much about how I have
00:09:08.980to take myself more seriously and therefore my pain more seriously and what that pain was saying
00:09:16.420to me more seriously and I think that's a larger conversation that's me on a micro level but on a
00:09:23.200macro level the same thing is happening our land is suffering we are suffering we are more
00:09:30.700disconnected from one another than we ever have been before millions of people have died in this
00:09:38.340country since 2020, you know, a couple of years ago. And it's a shocking reality, um, to live in.
00:09:47.820And, uh, I think that that's why sickness, illness, disease, um, are all, are all sort of
00:09:56.940around us abundantly. And I think that most people I know are struggling with something.
00:10:04.800so you know you can look at it and you can say this is frightening this is you know this is
00:10:15.080unlivable and all of those things are true and I think what's been personally profound is that
00:10:23.400when I've trusted my body when I've gone back to the body's own intuition the body's knowledge
00:10:30.800allowing the body to speak to me directly so I can understand all of these other
00:10:37.360fragmentations in my life. The more that I've done that, it's just allowed me to
00:10:43.000see that there's new pathways of potential and ability that I've never understood because I'd
00:10:52.540always lived and had a relationship with myself that was quite ableist and quite removed and
00:11:00.080dissociative and I didn't like that I was always sick and I always had an issue with with something
00:11:07.940I had asthma or I had eczema or you know it was one thing after another and you know I just
00:11:14.620completely always felt that my body was in revolt and I didn't understand why and yeah the moment
00:11:22.760i just started to pay attention so much cracked open but so many things were explained and
00:11:31.240that's where we're at right now with with the world and with this earth where we're being forced
00:11:39.820to face new horizons new parameters but we don't understand how much stretching
00:11:47.120and possibility is going to come out of that i think that that was one of the actually most
00:11:54.420profound things i took away from writing this book yeah i want to get into the nitty-gritty a
00:12:05.460bit more with you on trying to understand illness as a sign back to ourselves and i
00:12:13.260I don't know if you would want to share something personal, like an example that you've seen in
00:12:19.980yourself or that you've seen in others, but if you could just walk us through something
00:12:25.440kind of tangible that we could see ourselves in. Because I definitely am starting to
00:12:33.460kind of track myself and think, oh, when have I seen this in my own journey with my own healing,
00:12:41.520or even right now dealing with my own, uh, I don't know what the word is exactly. And I want
00:12:47.760to be careful of what I say in that way, but yeah, I'd love if you could just kind of take
00:12:53.380us through a relatable example of this so that we could kind of feel it with you. Yeah. Um,
00:13:01.260okay so in my own life I am going to go back to the beginning and I think that this is a
00:13:15.900a really important through line that I figured out in my in my late 20s which is when I really
00:13:22.140had sort of a breakthrough with my body and so much of it was because it was the first time
00:13:28.860in my life where I had acknowledged to myself that I had been sexually abused as a child.
00:13:35.600And it was only one moment and experience that I was aware of at the time, but I was
00:13:44.100finally allowing myself to have language around what had happened to me and also what the impact
00:13:53.080had been and that's the most important part actually because my body had been in revolt
00:13:59.360for a very long time and I assumed it was because it had failed me I assumed because
00:14:13.340it was extremely humbling and and it is such a current process so it's not something that i've
00:14:25.680moved through completely or i'm at the other end i think that these kinds of experiences
00:14:31.560are lifelong and they're uh they're given to you as totems for knowledge and safety and keepsake
00:14:42.760And, you know, I believe that child sexual abuse survivors have some of the most powerful abilities in the world because we have to transmute so much in order to exist.
00:15:02.140and so once i started to see like how i was
00:15:09.580fragment to fragment including the illness and what the illness had been telling me all these
00:15:17.000years which which it was i believe um the message that it was sending me was that it's okay it's
00:15:25.600okay to be here stop rejecting yourself you're not wrong there's nothing wrong with you
00:15:32.880you don't have to disassociate to be lovable or to exist even
00:15:38.640um and my own illness was a way like on all of the ways that i think that
00:15:48.660my own rejection was was what was um what my body was responding to you know eczema asthma
00:15:57.340like in ayurveda or even tcm in traditional chinese medicine these are such um powerful
00:16:06.640indicators right like you know your meridians and and uh how you eat what your doshas are
00:16:12.180all of that is is gives them so much knowledge about um these practitioners so much knowledge
00:16:18.880about how your internal ecosystem is and that can also be understood and like explained and
00:16:28.460expanded through a bigger and better knowledge of knowing what happened to you as a child
00:16:35.280who your parents are what kind of lineages you come from all of that is explained
00:16:41.300in our bodies we are that living sacred form of our ancestors you know we continue
00:16:49.940in both a spiritual and a physical sense i think all of these uh layers of sometimes harm and
00:16:58.960sometimes beauty but it's sort of for us to kind of undertake and face in these lifetimes at least
00:17:06.080that's what I have come to understand in my own healing journey. And so through that, I've seen
00:17:11.800that the body is really the strongest template for us to understand who we are because the mind
00:17:19.080has been such a sort of Western obsession. You know, the mind is the be-er or the do-er of all
00:17:26.840things, but you can't do anything. Well, you know, you can't do much if you can't be in your body or
00:17:33.600if your body isn't working. And even then it's okay. We have to understand what that body is
00:17:38.680telling us. And, you know, to accept all bodies, even in, even in their brokenness or even in their
00:17:46.700decay, even in their trauma, even in their, in their harrowing sadness, all of those things,
00:17:55.360all of those states are allowed when we understand the kind of things that have impacted us. And so
00:18:03.000we are able to have compassion for the ways in which our bodies work and sometimes uh how they
00:18:09.980work against us um and all of that messaging is there and i do think that that is again like such
00:18:19.460a a wild way for us to start understanding the rest of the world when we can actually start
00:19:42.720And gosh, there's so much there, but I really wanted to hone in on something that came up for me, which is about I've definitely been in that place in the last few months.
00:19:58.780just having to work my way out of those feelings of this may never end. And it's so scary,
00:20:09.140that feeling, like when you're suffering and you're in pain, emotional pain, physical pain,
00:20:15.840and you think that there's no way out. And of course, now that brings me back to wanting to
00:20:21.460talk a bit more about faith. And your interview with Gossamer, you say, quote,
00:20:27.660to me, we've lost that nuance of faith and we've lost the room for the languidness that comes with
00:20:33.600faith. People should be able to have complicated relationships with what it means to be a person
00:20:38.840of faith, end quote. Yeah. So, yeah, I want you to talk to me about how can we bring in
00:20:47.600more complex understandings of what it means to be a person of faith.
00:20:51.160hmm yeah i think that we're in like pretty godless times and i think capitalism has taken over
00:21:03.780our relationship with god and uh what that means the divine and i know that god is different things
00:21:12.800to different people and i don't want it to be sort of even tied to religion i think my own
00:21:18.780own relationship to god has really transformed in the last couple of years as well having been
00:21:25.100raised muslim and having you know all of that sort of as a foundational understanding but then
00:21:32.320doing a lot of spiritual work and and you know having relationships to plants and having
00:21:39.440relationships to different kinds of medicine and i've expanded and i think that that is
00:21:47.080also very muslim and that is actually a very divine relationship to expand with everything
00:21:55.460especially on the earth and i've learned a lot about just you know so many of our faiths so many
00:22:04.700of our indigenous technologies and spiritual cosmologies were created or came from uh the
00:22:16.120elements and that's what you were saying you know wind water fire earth you know we have divorced
00:22:24.480ourselves from the earth believing that we're better than her believing that that's what
00:22:30.480intellectual capacity means it means you know a human man's evolution means disconnecting from
00:22:39.260nature. When in fact, nature is the entire blueprint for how we exist. And so that to me
00:22:51.000is about faith. And I think we're in a crisis of faith because we live under capitalism and we live
00:23:00.320in the shards of colonization. And Anthropocene, I think, is directly, you know, it's been proven
00:23:08.280to be linked to colonization and sort of the destruction of the world for the for the bellies
00:23:18.980of a few and that kind of violence I think removed a lot of people from the compass this from their
00:23:27.880own spiritual compass and so in order to decolonize it is a matter of coming back to not just earth
00:23:37.360but to God and whatever God is for you I think faith is so complicated for so many different
00:23:44.080people because there's so much harm that people have faced you know and I think that that's
00:23:52.420something that is a part of the healing naming the harm that's been done whether it's you know
00:23:58.380the catholic church or any person who has experienced harm under a religious or you know
00:24:05.740someone who deems himself religious person,
00:24:09.200the ways in which many of us have been castigated from places of,
00:31:29.020And I think that that's been my own lighthouse back to myself, understanding that queerness
00:31:33.900it's not a modern thing it's not something that just came out of you know westernization which
00:31:39.880was something that I was definitely told when I was a kid you know that these things are not for
00:31:46.780us and I beg to differ obviously through my own life experience but also I know that again coming
00:31:56.960back to sort of pushing beyond uh beyond something to come come to something new to to come to the
00:32:07.480next horizon like that was always my relationship to islam growing up i had a very elastic
00:32:14.480relationship with god and i think that that's something that i see in a lot of these early
00:32:20.300works in literature that come out of you know persia that come out of um spain that come out
00:32:29.660of all of these places where muslim thought and thinkers were were comprehending beyond just0.97
00:32:37.860what they knew because so much of that was the muslim way to kind of question and challenge0.93
00:32:46.240not God, to question and challenge ideas, thoughts, things, and to come to your own0.98
00:32:52.660interpretation about them. That's the people I come from. And that's my lineage. And so that's
00:33:00.400what I'm harking back to. I'm harking back to a time where people were in conversation with one
00:33:06.120another, that they were in dialogue with one another, even if they disagreed. And there was
00:33:11.300space to talk to debate um and you know people people did disagree but it was a part of society
00:33:20.460and there was a lot of thinkers and different types of thinkers you know there were more
00:33:25.560you know now we would call them fundamentalist thinkers but there were also a lot of you know
00:33:31.140very very what we might call woo or spiritualists you know astrologers in these muslim courts you
00:33:38.020You know, Islam is very rooted to the solar system and God is in the heavens and beyond just, you know, the heavens, actually, though it's beyond.
00:33:49.980And in Islam, there's like a very comprehensive understanding of this cosmology that exists.
00:33:56.240And I think that that's something that I was lucky enough through my dad.0.98
00:34:02.480he didn't give me all of this material, but he's a professor and a very, very interrogative and
00:34:11.800divine student. And he wants to know things and he wants to also learn things and comprehend
00:34:20.720things and talk about things. And I think I became his friend in that way, you know,
00:34:26.760us surviving a pretty terrible home life situation together as well as with my sister
00:34:33.580my relationship with my dad was talking about faith and talking about you know
00:34:40.240bigger things deeper things and that's still my relationship with my dad and so I'm lucky that he
00:34:47.220kind of taught me a lot of these things early so i could go and have have a have a place to start
00:34:57.300from but then also go off and do my own research and and find my own things but yeah these days
00:35:04.680it doesn't feel odd at all to be queer or queer and muslim like the queer or muslim we've we've
00:35:12.300come to, I think, a different understanding of both of those identities in the last couple of
00:35:18.340years. But there's so much more work to be done. And I consider myself humbly a person that is
00:35:26.920trying to do the work to show that, to show the connections as well as the beauty that exists
00:35:35.580and just us being who we are and accepting and loving each other regardless of how different we
00:35:43.060are and yeah I try and live my life like that
00:36:35.580and you know we are a society that hates women I just want to say that1.00
00:36:47.460in itself because I don't think that we like comprehend that enough0.98
00:36:53.740yeah we're a society that hates women and in every shape or form
00:37:05.260all of us have been taught to hate women and to different degrees obviously I had a very abusive
00:37:12.320mother who hated women so I was taught by her specifically and also she harmed me
00:37:20.840in many different ways and including sexually so it kind of makes sense to me as I get older that
00:37:27.680she had so much disdain for women um and I think that that is explained in her actions but I see
00:37:39.520it everywhere not just in my mother who I also understand um I understand why she felt that way
00:37:46.760because that was her experience but i i feel like we don't think about the grave impacts
00:38:01.380that we're all facing and i see this a lot in wellness spaces as well because
00:38:08.760we're not coming back to the core of everything i've been in
00:38:16.520you know schools with ayahuasca teachers who are very connected to the land and the indigeneity of0.94
00:38:25.560the plant and are extremely learned and wise but are still harmful because of i think misplaced0.98
00:38:34.960uh relation mis misplaced feelings misplaced relational aspects towards women
00:38:43.720and that's perpetuated again and again and again and again and you know this was something that I
00:38:52.220was working on just before the pandemic as a as a docu-series that I wanted to to direct but now
00:38:59.920I'm sort of pivoting and making it potentially into a podcast, but it's just about this idea
00:39:06.680of jealousy. And, uh, I faced that a lot in my own work, um, but in, in my own life as well.
00:39:16.560And it's a feeling that I, I'm currently facing in myself towards, you know, people and people
00:39:24.580that I even love. And so it's just something that I'm constantly thinking about. I'm thinking about
00:39:31.400how I'm implicated all of the time. And that's where I always start because I think it's much
00:39:37.440more interesting when you start with yourself and there's a lot more material. And I think
00:39:45.060dissecting my own behavior and then also sort of dissecting a lot of the things that have happened
00:39:50.600to me as a you know a person in in the world but also as a public person in the world you know
00:39:57.540writing publicly for many years now it's been over a decade and and existing online being a woman1.00
00:40:04.640online and the ways in which people interact with me I know that we hate women um I know that when0.99
00:40:12.380my friends tell me what people say to them online you know and you don't have to be you know well1.00
00:40:19.820known. It happens so rampantly that if you just exist, you are a target. And so I'm really curious
00:40:29.800about how we start not only facing, but moving through, digesting. Really, I think
00:40:45.760using this disconnection this and it does at times feel like a travesty because you know we
00:40:56.920can go into sort of silvia federici's work and talk about you know the caliban of the witches
00:41:04.200and and the ways in which i think and and she does too and i think many scholars around the world
00:41:10.640would agree that the witch hunts and the destruction and the murder of women and witches
00:41:18.960around the world was, I mean, I write about this in Who Was One Was Four, it was the fourth
00:41:24.500epistemicide. And epistemicide is the word for the destruction of knowledge. And the murder of
00:41:31.800witches across the world was the fourth epistemicide. You know, the piece that you're
00:41:37.920referencing. I was trying to metabolize, you know, yet another serial killer
00:41:44.520murdering, you know, multiple women across decades and not being caught.
00:41:53.980It just really disturbed me how common it is that the murder of women is just
00:42:01.900known and accepted across the world like this is not a an american problem this is a global
00:42:11.940phenomenon that we have all accepted and you know uh i come from a land that uh experienced a
00:42:22.920genocide not too long ago in 1971, and 400,000 women were reportedly genocidally raped by the
00:42:32.900Pakistani army. That kind of legacy of hating women, and that is the largest documentation
00:42:40.240of rape, of mass rape ever in the history of mankind. That is my legacy. That is where I come
00:42:49.720from. So how do we accept that? And how do we begin to face that? I think it goes back also
00:42:58.720to what you were saying about illness. How can we believe that we are not ill or that there is no
00:43:04.560reasons for us to be in these bodies when we come from these lineages? And all of us are coming
00:43:12.240from some kind of lineage and harm and pain and struggle. And yeah, it's just, there's a lot at
00:43:22.820the foundations of all of this that I'm trying to untether from and see clearly. So as we move
00:43:30.540forward, as we begin to reimagine, as we begin to rebuild our futures collectively with one another,
00:43:38.320We can start to see how we are perpetuating harm and we can end it. And I think that that is the key. And we can speak all we want about love and healing and wellness and whatever, self-care, great, good for you.
00:43:59.460how are you showing up for your community and that that comes back to how are you showing up
00:44:06.040for yourself outside of capitalism outside of what you're buying yourself outside of
00:44:11.000therapy outside of all of these things that sadly we all need to a certain degree and
00:44:16.660and many of us cannot afford outside of all of that how are you with yourself how do you speak
00:44:22.420to yourself do you validate your own emotions do you validate your own feelings are you jealous
00:44:28.180why are you jealous what is that jealousy trying to tell you what is it trying to speak to you
00:44:33.760all of these things I believe are showing us something deeper about who we are and how we are
00:44:42.440and how we can be and how we can move forward with one another and I think all of that kind
00:44:49.680it does come back to how we feel about women i think i'm going to paraphrase you wrong right now
00:45:00.720because i'm forgetting the exact word but i think you said is it this culture hates women or we are
00:45:07.700a society that hates women yeah yeah that really uh like i felt you say that in my body and of
00:45:18.060course, I want to find ways that that's not true or I don't want to believe that. And it also then
00:45:26.160reminded me of a friend who had given birth in the last few years. And she said basically that
00:45:32.400same exact thing during her birthing process, how much this culture hates women. And I was really,
00:45:42.320I don't know the word, but pained by that. And it's been interesting hearing you talk about
00:45:50.480some of the historical references, both modern and in the past of examples of that. But I guess
00:46:00.340what I was thinking when you were speaking, one of the questions that had come up for me was
00:46:04.420why why where where did this start is it control is it um yeah i'm just trying to understand where
00:46:16.280this comes from because i think that can help us shift it like shift our mindsets and our
00:46:23.420indoctrination of that i think it came from capitalism i think it came from the idea because
00:46:31.520it's it's it is ancient in many ways like absolutely like hating women has existed in1.00
00:46:38.480different cultures throughout time but i think it also hasn't and there's been a lot of matriarchal0.92
00:46:44.920cultures there's been a lot of um you know divine worship of women and even in western
00:46:53.400civilization you know up until the introduction of capitalism and sort of this understanding that
00:46:59.520women could be owned that sensibility I think really shifted at least the western trajectory
00:47:08.640and that that's that's the most important I think part of understanding like how we can break free
00:47:16.400from it because I think a lot of us just need better examples I think it's actually like as
00:47:22.820simple as what does it mean to live and embody loving women and how can we become that for
00:47:30.880ourselves and for each other i don't think pop culture social media anything that we exist in
00:47:40.080or have a relationship to has positive or devotional relationships to women it's very niche
00:47:51.540still, I mean, think about it. I feel like I have a very diverse group of friends in many
00:48:03.080different ways. And so many of us still find ourselves implicated in the mistreatment of
00:48:12.400women. And I think that that's like when you see it in your own circle, you see it with your own
00:48:17.480friends. But yeah, I think a lot of it is about being accountable to one another. It just comes
00:48:24.120back to accountability. Even this idea of, you know, sacred reciprocity and what does that mean?
00:48:33.160That I think comes back to like, how do you treat someone? And if you're being self-aware
00:48:41.120about how you treat people and you're being accountable to them, then I think that those
00:49:16.980and time is not a constant not a line like we pretend we make up seven days a week
00:49:27.080to explain how it began oh but time is more like fabric how it wrinkles and it bends
00:49:34.720like the cover on my bed when you slept over
00:49:38.620so let's just take a minute as we say our goodbyes i want to take my time here with you
00:49:50.220want to look you in the eyes never was a word that could easily describe
00:49:57.460what the silence here between us is as we walk into the night
00:50:02.560yeah yeah and i think this definitely relates to the celebrity cancel culture social media stuff
00:50:18.940you were referring to earlier as well how our hate and lack of accountability to each other
00:50:26.700has been amplified through these software applications, basically, that are then bought
00:50:33.920and sold. And of course, the more we hate each other and the more fear we have and the more we
00:50:38.520reject each other, the more money that's being made off of us. And then of course, we're being
00:50:45.360sold that and indoctrinated more. It's this horrible self-fulfilling loop that only disconnects
00:50:52.580And then I think it's like we turn against even ourselves at that point. And I think a lot of the self-hatred then gets fed by that too. And so I guess that kind of brings me to this other thought about survival.
00:51:10.960and you have an article called celibacy a survival and you write quote so over the last few years
00:51:18.800i've chosen celibacy as a way to slow down and understand myself the mind forgets what the body
00:51:25.140keeps the score of but sooner or later you have to face it all my body stopped wanting to have sex
00:51:31.320as a way to remind myself take yourself seriously take your body's pain seriously and that's just
00:51:38.680it, isn't it? So many of us are so far from ourselves, distant from who we are, because for
00:51:45.180so long we've been running. Celibacy as an action has meant that I have to look at that void. I have
00:51:52.000to face it. I've had to stop running, but I've also had to come back to myself and honor everything
00:51:57.440that is here within me, alive. End quote. Yeah, I think when we prioritize and center the
00:52:10.340importance of survival, I think we often open ourselves up to the reality that our relationship
00:52:16.400with oneself might change and our body may surprise us with what it needs. So how do you
00:52:26.000make the space to listen to what you need in order to prioritize survival well I think it
00:52:34.560just comes back to the body like the body is the template and the body is the
00:52:41.000is the guide um you know it's interesting like even about motherhood I've had to as I've
00:52:50.260you know I always wanted to be a mother ever since I was a child and I think a lot of it had
00:52:56.520to do with the fact that I had a really bad childhood with my mother and so I wanted to
00:53:02.960rectify that I I wanted to give love I am somebody who has always just wanted to give my love to
00:53:12.100people and it's got me into a lot of trouble. Um, but in the last couple of years, especially as
00:53:20.620I've, you know, really come back to the body and forgiven the body and forgiven my body can come,
00:53:28.320you know, to some kind of embrace or, um, just softness with myself, a tenderness that's arrived,
00:53:38.300um through acceptance surrender um in that experience i've just
00:53:46.020i don't know it's it's very strange but this feeling of motherhood no longer feels
00:53:56.060possible in this lifetime or in this body anymore and that has been my listening to myself
00:54:06.460and it's something that I had initially a lot of grief over because I didn't want to lose this
00:54:14.960thing and this like tangible connection to my own femininity or you know a possible way that I could
00:54:23.640actually heal my lineage and you know through having a child and loving that child I understood
00:54:33.660how powerful that could be but when the abuse returned back to my body when I was 29 years old
00:54:39.180something completely shut off and I write about that and uh celibacy a survival the piece I wrote
00:54:45.520for the cut last year because it was so disturbing to suddenly feel like my entire relationship with
00:54:56.240my wound with my uterus was no longer mine anymore and that there was a deep severing that happened
00:55:03.100because in order to understand the totality of my sexual abuse as a child, I had to
00:55:09.300understand my own transgression. And in that, it was just the only thing I knew to do was to
00:55:17.820disconnect and disassociate from myself sexually. And it did happen very naturally, but it didn't
00:55:24.460happen even with me thinking about it um and that awareness that like sort of that feeling
00:55:35.860that sensation and trusting it listening to it devoting my ear to it devoting my time and my
00:55:42.780attention to it all of that takes so much courage and it takes so much humility to just be like
00:55:52.740okay okay maybe motherhood is not for me because I don't know if I could ever if I can ever sort of
00:56:01.760move past this feeling and obviously the biological clock is against us it's part of
00:56:09.020part of the reason that I think so many of us have this anxiety around motherhood
00:56:13.940And I don't know, I think that in a world where there's so much harm that's been done by mothers silently, I want to support the mothers that are in my life and support the children that are in my life however much I can.
00:56:38.900and accept sort of my own pathway to healing
00:56:44.560and potentially just reparenting myself,
00:56:51.000that I've wanted so badly to put into somebody else.
00:56:56.100What if I use that energy and put it back into myself?
00:57:00.260And I think that's really where I've been.
00:57:03.580Who Was Wellness For felt like a birthing
00:57:06.480of something violent and necessary. And, you know, like a bird, my novel that I wrote
00:57:14.760in 2020, it came out in 2020. I had been writing that book for 18 years and it also felt like a
00:57:21.720birth. And obviously I don't want to, I don't know what it's like to actually give birth and
00:57:27.700and carry and or carry into full term you know i i i have a deep respect for mothers and what they
00:57:37.540do um but i think i've just come to yeah come to my own agreement with myself and uh it feels good
00:57:48.860i feel like that's what what it means to just listen and trust just to know that your path
00:57:54.720will look however it needs to and if you are trusting and listening to yourself and to
00:58:03.500the divine to whatever messages that are trying to communicate with you because everyone is I
00:58:13.040think I think we're all trying to be communicated to by somebody and whatever our destinies are
00:58:22.260I think it's important to, to listen to, to that. I think we always know deep inside what is meant
00:58:28.920for us and what is not meant for us. And that's the, the human story that is human evolution
00:58:37.480coming to that self-knowledge and knowing that there are
00:58:43.260are always other chances and other options and other lives and other trajectories.
00:58:55.020And I think that's why I'm, you know, queerness and, and, and being queer in every way that I am,
00:59:05.060you know, thinking queerly is about expanding in that way too. It's like expanding to become
00:59:12.760much more than what I ever felt was determined for me before but actually just like trusting
00:59:20.420what is coming and what is being shown to me that has been the gateway to my own survival
00:59:30.120and to my own honestly thriving I don't feel like I'm just surviving anymore and I think
00:59:38.220it has so much to do with attaining trust and spirit and love and knowing that growth is good
00:59:49.600and seeing the signs of the earth and seeing the signs in myself as signs to just follow.
01:00:00.440and if i do that that i'll be okay and that has really proven right for me and yeah it feels good
01:00:12.600thank you for sharing that with us and i think so much of the healing journey
01:00:23.040for many of us, but everyone I know is about reparenting themselves in some way or healing.
01:00:32.900And as we conclude, I want to thank you so much for your vulnerability and openness in this
01:00:41.960conversation. And just want to give you a chance to share any final reflections on maybe the power
01:00:47.660of vulnerability or anything else that's on your mind? I think vulnerability saves us. I think
01:00:55.600that I'll give a personal thing in the spirit of vulnerability. I see this even in relationship
01:01:05.320with my partner where we will disagree on things and I will feel so angry and so rageful about
01:01:12.960something and so right. And it is something that I've been experiencing a lot in this relationship
01:01:23.280because I think when you are in relationship, I wasn't in one for a very long time. I was celibate
01:01:29.260and I was really not wanting to date anyone. And then I found someone I really wanted to date.
01:01:36.940And within that, I realized that there was a lot of life lessons that I hadn't learned.
01:01:44.740And I think when you disagree with someone and when you, especially when you feel righteous and when you feel like, you know, you have the right theory or the right concept or whatever, you're holding on to something.
01:02:06.980I think that it's so helpful and easeful to use vulnerability in that moment and it's funny like
01:02:16.440I've been saying that a lot to my partner recently just use vulnerability because when you speak to
01:02:21.040me vulnerably my heart you're speaking to my heart and then I can speak to yours and that makes me
01:02:29.180think of something that my therapist has talked to me often about how all adults really when they
01:02:35.920they're disagreeing or when they're fighting with somebody or when they're struggling with
01:02:40.920somebody, a lot of the time, a child self is actually there, not the adult self. So the child,
01:02:47.540the fractured child, the triggered child, the sad child, that child has overtaken the adult
01:02:52.480and they're moving from that space. And I think that
01:02:58.140we are still uncovering and unlearning and learning, relearning so much about ourselves
01:03:11.380and the planet and how we exist in relation to the earth and others. And we're, I think humans
01:03:22.580right now are being tasked to do in order to face the future. We're being asked to face
01:03:31.540our ancestors' sins, the sins of colonization, the sins of the planet, the sins of murder,
01:03:40.980partition genocide the sins uh of occupation the sins of just violence we're being asked to face
01:03:53.020those things in our lineages and who we are in our families and if we can do that then we can
01:03:59.960get to the other side but that takes vulnerability it takes the ability to put forward your heart
01:04:06.940even though you've been hurt, even though you're scared, even though you're sad, because you know
01:04:12.200that your vulnerability is actually not for the other person. It's actually for yourself.
01:04:16.880And that, when I understood that, it changed everything for me. I'm not being vulnerable
01:04:21.280for you or for an audience. I'm being vulnerable for myself. I owe it to myself to come truthfully
01:04:28.100to this. And I owe it to myself to speak myself to you. And that responsibility is everything to
01:04:38.800me. Again, I don't succeed. I have very human flaws and I struggle with all of this all of
01:04:45.880the time. But vulnerability has been some of, if not my biggest strength, it's been one of the
01:04:51.440things that has really elevated me as a human being in all of the work that I do because
01:04:58.240I refuse to be constrained by fear and I refuse to be constrained by capitalism. I refuse to be
01:05:07.760constrained by any kind of structure that won't serve me or the people around me or people in0.60
01:05:15.120general i want to i want to live beyond the the the ideas of white colonizers i want to
01:05:26.100live a life that is not just free for myself but for all i want to live a liberated life and i
01:05:33.560think all of that requires vulnerability i think about every revolutionary movement that i know of
01:05:39.380in the last 100 years, so many of those revolutionary movements were led by men
01:05:44.320who had egos. And we don't think about that very often. Why men get bought, why this keeps
01:05:53.820happening, how power keeps shuffling into the wrong hands. It's because of the lack of0.55
01:05:59.380vulnerability of a lack of wanting to to not just do good but do right for the heart um not just
01:06:11.080what is right for the self or for an individual um or even for one movement you know how do we
01:06:21.000coexist with one another how do we come back to that um or how do we learn for the first time
01:06:27.280In the history of this planet's imagination, how do we learn to live together equally, fairly?