Living in this Queer Body
By Asher Pandjiris
Living in this Queer BodySep 16, 2020
From the River to the Sea: Hannah Moushabeck
Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers in Western Massachusetts and England. Born in Brooklyn into Interlink Publishing, a family-run independent publishing house, she learned the power of literature at a young age. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books, March 2023). She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations.
Hannah's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannahmoushabeck/
Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (BUY NOW)
What’s been going on with Asher?
Asher's heart and soul passion project:
https://www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com/embodied-private-practice-cohort
Asher's Private Practice Focus (Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy): https://www.asherpandjiris.com/workwithme
Bitten by the Wolf: Asher's update
To support Kintsugi Therapist Collective: https://www.patreon.com/kintsugitherapistcollective
To read this episode, subscribe to my free newsletter: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/contact
Duet #3: Zena Sharman and Hannah McGregor
All things Kintsugi Therapist Collective: https://www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com/offerings
In this conversation we hear Hannah and Zena talk about caring ferociously, macho homemaking, living life as a committed spinster, work as a trauma response and domestic embodiment.
Hannah McGregor is an academic, podcaster, and author living on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She co-hosts the podcast Witch, Please, a critical rereading of the Harry Potter series, and she is the author of A Sentimental Education (WLUP 2022).
Hannah's website: https://www.hannahmcgregor.com/
Hannah's favourite duet: The Confrontation (Les Misérables), by Colm Wilkinson and Philip Quast
Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist, and LGBTQ+ health advocate. She’s the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) and the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016).
Zena's website: https://zenasharman.com/
Zena's favourite duet: Stay by Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko
Duet #2: Fanny Priest and Erin Fairchild
All the links/info about Erin and Fanny: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/episodes/fanny-priest-erin-fairchild
All things Asher
Mending with Gold: Weekend Intensive
Samantha Irby and Marlee Grace: Duet #1
Samantha Irby writes a newsletter called Bitches Gotta Eat. Her favorite duet is Patti Labelle and Michael Mcdonald's “On My Own.”
Marlee Grace is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Their practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses, and hosting artists. Grace’s Instagram dance project Personal Practice has been featured in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and more.
They have a newsletter that comes out every Monday called Monday Monday. Sometimes it comes out on different days but usually it comes out on Monday. It’s always free. If you love it and want to also read the monthly advice column YES YES you become a paid subscriber.
Marlee’s most recent book is Getting to Center: Pathways to Finding Yourself Within the Great Unknown. They also wrote the book How to Not Always Be Working. Their favorite duet is “Dilemma” with Nelly and Kelly Rowland.
Weekend Intensive: Mending With Gold
December 9-11, 2022
Join KTC’s co-directors for a virtual weekend intensive with a concentrated and highly personalized curriculum designed to support care workers*. We hope to challenge the unrealistic expectations of the care work industrial complex, nurture pathways for reconnecting with pleasure and develop enlivening professional practices/strategies.
Enrolling Spring 2023:
The Embodied Private Practice Cohort is a year-long mentorship offering for clinicians who are beginning or revisioning private practice with a focus on embodiment and sustainability. Combining reality-based, capacity-conscious clinical and business consultation, mentorship will focus on the ways that therapists can be nurtured by clinical practice, avoid burnout, and commit to sustainability, self care and healing.
The Melancholy of Joseph M. Pierce
More about Joseph here
STOP MEN (to the point): clip from full length interview with Xara Thustra
STOP MEN.. I've been probably writing it and it's been a part of my work for about 15 years. During that Gay Shame time and during a lot of my protesting and, and engaging with the Mission Anti- Displacement Coalition for, you know, a couple of years and the Coalition on Homelessness and working for all these or organizations and advocating for different types of people and everything.
Everything I did lost, you know, everything. Like every single fucking thing I participated in failed. Everything, everything. I like, if I breathed the thought, it would come back negative, like it was just like, wow, like nothing's coming. You know, nothing I'm doing is working in any kind of way or helping anything.
I was like, what is this all about? You know? And I just basically like, I don't wanna protest laws that are unjust to people and jails unjust to people and, and health as a right or not, you know, like I don't wanna protest a hundred things or question a million things. I just wanna go right to the source and who the fuck is running all this shit.
And men are making all these decisions, creating this whole framework and are unchecked, you know, the most violent men, unfortunately, in the country are shaping our reality. And so I just really quickly was just like, oh, well stop men. that's obvious, you know, I'm just like stop men is where I'm at with that.
That's what I wanna say, which is stop men. All men need to check themselves. And so from there, and I'm completely comfortable with that with myself. Like, I've been checking myself and trying to learn how to be a good, healthy person for luckily, most of my life, you know, not all of my life, but luckily, most of it.
And the heavier way . . sometimes I have a little spit that I say, you know, which I maybe can't get through it perfectly, but a lot of times I answer like this, which is, uh, stop men is the avocation of silence of all men in regards to decision making and leadership over any and all other living things.
And men are totally chill to do whatever over their person, you know, make any decisions you want over your person and whatever the fuck you wanna do, but in terms of making decisions or participating in decisions over other living things, it's, we're at a full stop right now. The planet is coming to an end and everything on this planet has been shaped by male violence.
We're off that page and we're flipping that page, starting something new. And it starts with men being silent and dealing with listening and not making any decisions of power over leadership of anyone. And this is just like an immediate stop.
And from there, I'm not really suggesting who is to take power or whatever I'm out of that, but I'm saying that that needs to happen and that if men are making decisions over other people, if they are forcing their opinion into a conversation, they are identified as non revolution. These are non revolutionary men that need to be stopped.
-Xara Thustra on LITQB
Una Aya Osato: Human Barometer
Una Aya Osato (they/she/flower) is a performer, writer, sex educator, community CareBear, stripper, and clown from NYC. They are an award-winning actor and playwright who tours her original work nationally and internationally. Una is also a co-founding member of brASS: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque, a BIPOC femme burlesque collective. Una has been featured in the New York Times, Teen Vogue, NPR’s CodeSwitch, NowThis, and many other publications and platforms.
For more Una happenings find flower on IG @ThisIsUna & on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ThisIsUna/membership
We love you Una. Please consider supporting Una and their comrades via a one time or ongoing donation via patreon. It is so important. We also love all the bodies at the margins. We are listening.
Mentioned in the interview:
Una’s long covid comrade patreon: BED COLLECTIVE
http://www.patreon.com/bedcollective
Sini Anderson Living in this Queer Body Episode:
Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/C/Care-Work
KINTSUGI THERAPIST COLLECTIVE
To apply for the Fall Embodied Private Practice Cohort: kintsugitherapistcollective.com
If you are not a care worker, consider purchasing some Kintsugi Therapist Collective merchandise. When you buy a t-shirt, hoodie, or tote bag, you support the sustainability of this developing business that needs a bit of a nest egg so that we can offer scholarships, send our collective members to conferences and retreats and sustain and make actionable, the radical vision of this collective.
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#21): “What happens when we are reached for, and we are the alternative system, and we are completely tapped out?”
Thank you Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Bridget Bertrand and Dr. Jennie Wang-Hall who attempted to address the question: What does it mean to be a care worker in the third year of this global pandemic?
Thank you for the additional question.....“What happens when we are reached for, and we are the alternative system, and we are completely tapped out?” (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
and
thoughts on rushing towards denial, heartbreak, disability justice, "i can't go to your party," "no vietnam war memorial for the covid dead," deep grief, being in crisis and at capacity, stuck in trauma loops, building alternative systems care, hope in abolition, connecting in rage and grief and creating and joining collectives.
CARE WORK: Dreaming Disability Justice By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Jenna Wortham on Finding Peace Beneath the Skin
This Volatile Body: Mugabi Byenkya
Mugabi Byenkya is an award- winning writer who was born to Ugandan parents in Nigeria and is currently based in Kampala. Mugabi lives outside the gender binary and has a seizure disorder, chronic fatigue and experiences the world in a way that some would describe as “neurodivergent.” In 2018, Mugabi was named one of 56 writers who has contributed to his native Uganda’s literary heritage in the 56 years since independence by Writivism (East Africa’s largest literary festival). Mugabi wants to be Jaden Smith when he grows up.
In this interview we cover so many topics including the distraction of reading comics while bed-bound, falling in love with writing, identifying access needs as someone with a seizure disorder, chronic fatigue and other health conditions, living in a volatile body, toxic masculinity, why Cambodia has infrastructure that makes it a good place to have a physical disability, why haircuts can be painful for folks with sensory sensitivities, keeping a secret blog, racism in the American healthcare system and learning how to mask disability.
https://www.mugabibyenkya.com/
@mugabs on IG and
@mugabsb on twitter
Kintsugi Therapist Collective
Kintsugi Therapist Collective’s Embodied Private Practice Cohort (EPPC), a year-long mentorship for clinicians who are beginning or revisioning private practice with a focus on embodiment and sustainability is now enrolling our September Cohort. We will continue reading applications on a rolling basis until all available spots are filled. Due to the waiting list generated last time around, we encourage anyone interested to apply as soon as possible, as openings are limited. Our hope is that by providing a space to support therapists that welcomes, rather than disregards, the parts of self that therapists too often feel afraid or ashamed to invite ‘into the room,’ we will assist in activating liberatory possibilities for space holders and their clients. To apply, go to kintsugitherapistcollective.com
KTC MERCH: https://www.bonfire.com/store/kintsugi-therapist-collective/
Buy something, tag your cute self in our merch (@kintsugitherapistcollective) and we will be so pleased!
Always Coming Home: A disordered eating support group
registration: https://forms.gle/j5x9uhfHQUPrietB8
Always Becoming with Joey Soloway
Today I am thrilled to celebrate the 3 year anniversary of the podcast! We’ve had over 250,000 downloads and released 51 full length episodes along with some really powerful pandemic dispatches. Living in this Queer Body has become a platform that has connected queers through instagram, workshops and group intensives. This community has allowed me to get to know so many beautiful, inspiring and generative people and I am humbled at all that has come into being over these past 3 years. I look forward to many more. Our guest on today's episode showed up with such openness and willingness to ask and answer complex questions, someone who is inhabiting the X and offering us all some hard won tips about how to radically accept and honor our care needs.
What began as a series of conversations about Olivia Laing’s fascinating book “Everybody” during the second year of the pandemic became a full length interview in which Joey Soloway and I talk about their trans family, the 6 genders in the Torah, the feeling of cross dressing as a cis woman, the importance of having a coven or care team as a trans human, moving away from "admin as a love language," naming what often goes unnamed, epigenetics and much more.
Joey Soloway is an artist, activist and filmmaker. They created the Emmy– and Golden Globe–winning series Transparent, cult feminist series I Love Dick, as well as Afternoon Delight, which received the Sundance Directing Award. They are currently working on The South Commons Experiment, a documentary about race, architecture and memory. They are the co-founder of 5050 by 2020, launched East Side Jews, and are on the board of Nefesh Temple. They are amidst development on podcast, television and film projects that fulfill the Topple Production’s mission of elevating marginalized artists and their stories.
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Register here for Always Coming Home: A support group open to all people who are actively working on disordered eating recovery or navigating trauma experienced in institutional eating disorder settings. @livinginthisqueerbody
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Kintsugi Therapist Collective’s Embodied Private Practice Cohort (EPPC) is a year-long mentorship offering for clinicians who are beginning or revisioning private practice with a focus on embodiment and sustainability. Combining reality-based, capacity-conscious clinical and business consultation, mentorship will focus on the ways that therapists can be nurtured by clinical practice, avoid burnout, and commit to sustainability, self care and healing. Application link here. @kintsugitherapistcollective
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Living in this Queer Body Podcasts are edited by the lovely Barry Orvin
Music by Ethan Philbrick and Helen M-P
Hosted by Asher Pandjiris
I Felt at Home in It: Alli Simon
I approached Alli for this interview as a fan and really loved meditating with her during the pandemic. During this interview we talked about what it is like for Alli to be a queer, larger bodied, POC in the wellness industry, endometriosis, her relationship with a queer femme identity as someone who grew up as a tomboy and how a meditation practice helped her navigate significant traumatic loss and much more.
Alli Simon (she/her) is a certified yoga and meditation facilitator from Los Angeles. She commits her energy to working with nonprofits dedicated to systems change and community wellness. What began as a personal journey to heal from loss and trauma, led to sharing her practice with loved ones and eventually throughout her community. She believes in increasing access to self-care practices and community-based initiatives by using tools like meditation and yoga, to help foster a more connected and loving world.
Alli is the Wellbeing and Healing Justice Manager for Social Justice Partners LA. She currently facilitates meditation on Ope_n, a mindfulness platform and with local LA community spaces like The Underground Museum and Compound. Her story was featured for Athleta ‘Home Again’, and shared a 4-part wellness module for the recently launched adidas Community Platform.
Find out more at AlliSimon.com or @omgirlallison
Abundant Living Conference for Therapists with Chronic Illness and Health Challenges (use KINTSUGI25 for a discount)
Kintsugi Therapist Collective Embodied Private Practice Cohort / @kintsugitherapistcollective
Living in this Queer Body Podcasts are edited by the lovely Barry Orvin
Music by Ethan Philbrick and Helen M-P
Hosted by Asher Pandjiris
Radical Healership: laura mae northrup
laura mae northrup is an author, educator, somatic & psychedelic psychotherapist, and podcaster. Her book Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-Driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World is an anti-capitalist, spiritually-led guide book for healing practitioners. She is the host and creator of the podcast Inside Eyes, an audio series about people using entheogens & psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma. Her work focuses on defining sexual violence through a spiritual and politicized lens and mentoring healing practitioners in creating a meaningful path.
In this interview we talk about the impact that growing up poor has had on laura’s embodied experience, utilizing psychedelics as a practice in being with suffering more skillfully, polyamory, the capitalist american dream machine, the importance of uncovering the unmet needs that healing practitioners bring to their work and so much more. Laura’s book is wonderful and you can purchase it anywhere. Here is a link to get a big discount and free shipping on Laura’s recently released book. Just use the code, all caps, LITQB
Kintsugi Therapist Collective: https://www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com/offerings
Purchase Radical Healership: https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/radical-healership/
(Use promo code LITQB)
https://www.lauramaenorthrup.com/
@lauramaenorthrup
For Life Till Death: Anastasia (Onyx) Fujii, LCSW
Anastasia (Onyx) Fujii is a queer, non-binary, chronically ill, mixed-race clinical social worker; living and practicing trauma-informed psychotherapy in Philadelphia, PA (on Lenni-Lenape land). They are a cultural humility consultant and group facilitator, as well as a lifelong East Coaster, a Cancer, a writer, and a parent. Onyx's professional practices and writing center the intersections of identity, trauma, (in)visibility, and connection.
Kintsugi Therapist Collective (KTC) is a virtual community offering embodied care, support, wisdom, and resources to trans and non-binary, BIPOC, chronically ill, and disabled mental health providers.
We aim to help other similarly situated clinicians build gainful income streams that do not rely on the same level of constantly reliable physical, mental, and emotional presence that is embedded in extractive business models and clinical training programs. We believe our private practices, in collaboration with the support of the Collective, can provide stability for our complicated bodies, not only existing for everyone else at the detriment of our wellbeing.
For more info find us here: www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com and @kintsugitherapistcollective
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#20): Susana Victoria Parras
Susana Victoria Parras (@heal2gether) is the founder of Heal Together, a Guatemalan daughter, Anti-Racist, LCSW, Intersectional, Mother and Partner. Susana is committed to justice and dignity for all peoples. In this dispatch, we hear a testimony of the intergenerational impact of multi-systemic oppression (separation, neglect, abuse, poverty, disordered eating, alcoholism), the way this trauma lives in the body of a parentified child, and the efforts Susana is making to reflect, transform, honor grief and proclaim: FUCK THE CONDITIONS THAT HURT CAREGIVERS THAT HURT US.
"My practice is to be a whole ass human with my child, with my partner, to keep the distance that I thought I couldn't keep because I thought I always had to be there for my parents."
I Knew I Had to Say it Out Loud: Nicole J. Georges
Nicole J. Georges is a graphic novelist and podcaster from Portland, Oregon. Nicole's podcast, Relative Fiction, adapted from her award-winning graphic memoir, Calling Dr. Laura. She is also the author of the book Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home, and the queer arts & vegan food review podcast, Sagittarian Matters. In this episode, Nicole and I cover topics ranging from punk righteousness, drawing comics, family secrets, podcasting, twelve step programs, chosen queer family, encopresis and making space for gentleness. Nicole makes the astute observation that “to be an adult, maybe, is to be less fragmented.” I urge you to check out all of Nicole’s work. She is prolific and funny and powerfully insightful. Since recording this episode I listened to every episode of the Relative Fiction podcast and I must say, if you are interested in complicated families, queerness, attachment styles, intergenerational trauma transmission, this podcast has that and more, so definitely check it out.
Email Asher at livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com to join the waitlist for Embodied Testimony, a 3 month program intensive, starting DECEMBER 5th The theme for this Embodied Testimony will be, quite broadly, SURVIVING ADULT LIFE AS A PARENTIFIED CHILD.
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
“Uninvisible Pod is an award-winning podcast about invisible conditions and chronic invisible illness, featuring interviews with survivors, their loved ones, advocates, and experts in varied healing modalities. Hosted by Lauren Freedman, an activist and patient advocate, who lives with Hashimoto’s disease, multiple sleep disorders, depression, and anxiety, Uninvisible uncovers real stories of survival and humanity – complete with laughter. In truth and with candor, Lauren and her guests offer solutions – and challenge the world to change. Lauren’s latest episode is an interview with Hyperacusis Awareness founder Jemma-Tiffany, a remarkable teenager who has devoted her life not only to having her rare and disabling condition — one that causes physical pain in reaction to everyday sounds — recognized as such, but also to raising awareness and encouraging inclusion. Catch this episode and over 130 more at uninvisiblepod.com or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. You can find Lauren and the podcast @uninvisiblepod on instagram.
Belly of the Beast: Da'Shaun Harrison
In this episode, we talked about the long term impacts of childhood illness and confrontation with the fragility of the body, anti-fatness as a barrier for receiving medical care, how liberal folk’s disdain for the south constitutes anti-blackness, their discovery of fat studies and the impact of survival sex work on their sense of self, the significance of mutual aid work in Da’Shaun’s life, the limitations of academia as an institution and of course, their new brilliant book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.
Da’Shaun Harrison is a Black trans writer and community organizer in Atlanta, GA. Harrison currently serves as the Managing Editor of Wear Your Voice Magazine, and is the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. A public speaker who often leads workshops on Blackness, queerness, gender, fatness, disabilities—and their intersections—Harrison’s portfolio/works can be found at dashaunharrison.com.
Scholars and Activists mentioned in this episode: Sabrina Strings (author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia), Sherronda J. Brown, Hunter Shackelford, Caleb Luna (@chairbreaker) and Aubrey Gordon (yrfatfriend).LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Swimming Upstream: Sini Anderson on Late Stage Lyme, Long Covid, Queer Community Magic and the making of So Sick (2014-2022)
Sini Anderson is an award winning film director, producer, video art maker, and feminist art activist who lives in New York City. Her first feature length film, The Punk Singer -a documentary about Kathleen Hanna, premiered at SXSW in 2013 and was acquired by IFC Films. The Punk Singer received a theatrical release in 121 American cities and in 25 countries around the world.
In 1994 Sini Anderson and friend Michelle Tea founded Sister Spit and Sister Spits’ Ramblin’ Road Show. From 1994-2001 Anderson and Tea held weekly shows at Blondies Bar and the CoCo Lounge in San Francisco. In 1997 Anderson and Tea produced their first, of four, Cross Country Tours. Packing two vans with 12 queer artists they zig zagged across the United States and Canada for six weeks performing 40 shows! It was such a hit, they did it again for another 3 years, gaining national recognition they were signed to Mercury Records and released 3 tour albums with them. In 2000 Sister Spit released their final album, I Spit On Your Country, on radical queer & feminist label, Mr. Lady Records & Videos.
Eventually Sister Spit would tour with over 50 queer artists and were credited with creating a queer literary scene that still thrives 20 years later as Radar Productions.
Anderson was the Chief Curator and the Co-Artistic Director for The National Queer Arts Festival and has served as the president of the board of directors for The Harvey Milk Institute and the co-chair of the board of directors for The Queer Cultural Center.
Sini is in the final phase of her second feature length film, So Sick (2014-2022) . The documentary is an exhaustive look at women/gender non-conforming people who are suffering so called “mystery illnesses” like Late-stage Lyme disease, Fibromyalgia, ME/Chronic Fatigue. 50 Million Americans been diagnosed with Autoimmune Illnesses, 85-90% of them are Women. So Sick uncovers infuriating truths behind women’s health care and the health care of PEOPLE OF COLOR and calls bullshit on American Medicine, Medical Education, and Bio-Medical Research, whose non-compliance with federal laws demanding Equality within government funded research, has only stoked the myth of “hysterical women” who are making themselves sick.
Contact Sini: sinianderson3@gmail.com
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Stealing Astrology Back: Alice Sparkly Kat
Alice Sparkly Kat is an astrologer. They use astrology to re-chart a history of the subconscious, redefine the body in world, and reimagine history as collective memory. Their astrological work has inhabited MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. They are the author of Postcolonial Astrology: READING THE PLANETS THROUGH CAPITAL, POWER, AND LABOR.
We had a lovely conversation on a wide range of topics, including, the power of magical recognition, language as an organizing tool, the influence of feminist zine culture horoscopes, what makes astrology western And of course, perhaps predictably, queers kinky relationship to astrology.
I hope you enjoy the show. If you do, please give us a 5 star rating on apple podcasts and if you write a review you will 100% get a big time shoutout on my instagram. It really gives this project such a boost to get those reviews.
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Purchase a recording of the Navigating Pandemic Fatigue from a Disability Justice Perspective Webinar: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/pandemic-fatigue
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Corporeal Biography: S.J Norman
S.J Norman (b. 1984) is a multi-award winning artist, writer and curator. His career has so far spanned 18 years and has embraced a diversity of disciplines and formal outcomes, including solo and ensemble performance, installation, sculpture, text, video and sound. He is a non-binary transmasculine person and a diasporic Koori of Wiradjuri descent, born on Gadigal land. Since 2006 he has lived and worked between so-called Australia, Germany, the UK and the continent known to many Native peoples as Turtle Island.
His practice is routed through the volatile interstices of the social and the corporeal. Working extensively with durational and spatial practices, as well as intimate/one-to-one frameworks, Norman's primary medium is the body: the body as a spectacle of truth and a theatre of fantasy; a siphon of personal and collective memory; an organism with which we are infinitely familiar and eternally estranged; a site which is equally loaded and empty of meaning, where histories, narratives, desires and discourses converge and collapse. Norman frequently utilises relational and process-based choreographies as a mode of structural critique: reflected in his work is an abiding interest in the space of co- and inter-corporeality, the forces that suffuse it, and how the live act might be utilised as a mean to examine, disrupt and re-inscribe prevailing systems of social power. Drawing on embodied ancestral lineages of ceremonial praxis, Norman seeks through much of his work to implicate the body of the audience and the body of the performer as co-agents in magickal acts. He has received numerous awards for both his art and his writing, including a Sidney Myer Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship, two of Australia's most prestigious honors for art.
In this episode, we discuss the precocity of the body, how death awareness shapes S.J’s view on life and the way being in transit helps him feel most at home and much more.
Knowledge of Wounds (program launch is June 21st)
National Indigenous Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia
Decolonial Love Letters: https://performancespace.com.au/program/xxx/
What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? First Nations Dialogues
Purchase a recording of the Navigating Pandemic Fatigue from a Disability Justice Perspective Webinar: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/pandemic-fatigue
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
My Body is not a Burden: Erica Woodland
Erica Woodland, LCSW is a black queer/genderqueer facilitator, consultant, psychotherapist, and healing justice practitioner based in Baltimore, MD. He has worked at the intersections of movements for racial, gender, economic, trans and queer justice and liberation for more than 18 years. In 2016 Erica founded the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network, an organization committed to advancing healing justice by transforming mental health for queer and trans people of color.
In this interview we talk about Erica’s childhood growing up black and genderqueer as the eldest child of a single mom, lessons he learned from work burnout, queerness as radical imagination, healing justice organizing and the danger of prescriptive self-care approaches and much more.
NATIONAL QUEER AND TRANS THERAPISTS OF COLOR NETWORK
Cara Page
Healing and Transformative Justice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fDHrgaTmpo
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Purchase a recording of the Navigating Pandemic Fatigue from a Disability Justice Perspective Webinar: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/pandemic-fatigue
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Safe Harbor: Christa Couture
Christa Couture is an award-winning performing and recording artist, filmmaker, non-fiction writer and broadcaster. She is also mixed Cree and Scandanavian-settler, queer, disabled, and a mom. Her seventh album Safe Harbour was released on Coax Records in 2020. As a writer and storyteller, she has been published in Room, Shameless, and Augur magazines, and on cbc.ca. In 2018, her article and photos on disability and pregnancy went viral. She is the weekday afternoon host on 106.5 ELMNT FM in Toronto, Canada, and her debut memoir How to Lose Everything is out now with Doulgas & McIntyre.
In this episode, we talk about finding a messy-middle of acceptance, a childhood living with bone cancer, life as a queer amputee, GRIEF AS AN ACCESS NEED and much more.
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Purchase a recording of the Navigating Pandemic Fatigue from a Disability Justice Perspective Webinar: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/pandemic-fatigue
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#19): Renee
"I looked like a tomboy... turns out I was": Colin Hagendorf
In this episode we discuss childhood gender play, complicating trans coming out narratives, the significance of sobriety and secure relational attachment in Colin’s creative life, her relationship to punk, dissociation and transformative justice and the clarity that comes when you get on the right psych meds. I really love Colin. I hope you enjoy this listen.
Colin Hagendorf is writer, podcaster, trans Jewess, and New Yorker in diaspora. She is the author of the 2015 recovery memoir, Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza, and an as-yet-untitled novel in progress about lesbians in Queens that Brontez Purnell described in a text message as “East Coast Love & Rockets.”
She writes the monthly print fanzine Life Harvester with her partner, Rebecca Giordano, and hosts, engineers, and edits the podcast Life Harvester Radio, a series of monthly conversations with writers, artists, activists, tattooers, musicians, and other counter culture types about their cultural production under capitalism, aka “why should we make stuff when society sucks?”
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
Register for: Navigating Pandemic Fatigue Through a Disability Justice Framework: A Webinar
March 20th
1-3pm EST
Navigating (not fighting off or “combating”) Pandemic Fatigue Through a Disability Justice Framework is an offering that aims to honor that this pandemic time, this "slowing down," is a pace of life that is necessary for many and also offers us a lot of lessons towards individual and collective liberation.
In this virtual webinar, Ilya Parker (@decolonizing_fitness) and Asher Pandjiris (@livinginthisqueerbody) will share their personal experiences with their complicated queer bodies during the pandemic and will provide a framework for thinking about taking lessons forward beyond “pandemic time.” Asher and Ilya will also present material on a disability justice perspective on rest, relating to time and moving through the world in ways that honor the body's needs. Registrants for the live event can submit questions before or during the event for us. Recordings will be available. If you haven’t already, make sure you head over to the LITQB podcast archives and check out our conversation. It is episode 14.
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#18)
Syd Yang: Finding Comfort in the Discomfort
Syd Yang (they/them) is a mixed race/Taiwanese American queer/non-binary healer, intuitive counselor and writer who weaves together magic, possibility and intention as an energy healer in the world through their practice, Blue Jaguar Healing Arts. As someone who lives with depression and anxiety, and has recovered from severe eating disorders, Syd's work finds its resonance in the stories we each hold at the intersection of memory, body, sexuality and mental health. Syd works primarily with queer and trans BIPOC individuals as well as regularly leads workshops, community healing circles and has been a group facilitator for over two decades, with a specific focus on grief, healing ancestral trauma, sexuality + spirituality, body liberation and eating disorder recovery. Their recent memoir, Release: A Bulimia Story, re-imagines what recovery would look like without shame.
@releasebulimia
Queer Spirit Podcast interview: http://queerhealingjourneys.com/syd-yang/
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
You Are Wanted: MJ @margejacobsen
In this interview MJ and I explore so many topics including body shame, living with mental illness, showing up with compassion and softness for oneself, parenting, polyamory, examining proximity to whiteness and finally, the experience of being found by their biological family. Watch the journey unfold @margejacobsen
Margaret Jacobsen (they/them) is a writer, photographer, and copyeditor in Portland, OR. As a volunteer coordinator for nonprofit Free Geek, Margaret’s interest in tech accessibility combines with their care for underserved communities. At Portland PR Agency, EARLY, they work as a writer and copyeditor helping sustainability, health and wellness, and lifestyle businesses strategize and advocate for their place in a shifting world. Their writing on Blackness was once praised on social media by Beyoncé, and IRL when Beyoncé sent them flowers. Margaret’s writing on life while Black, queer, non-monogamous, and a parent have appeared at Romper and Medium.
Sign up for Queering the New Year (www.livinginthisqueerbody)
A workshop about eating, rest and nourishment in a decidedly anti-diet, anti-resolution, allowing for messiness space
Tuesday January 5th, 2021
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Becoming the Spell: Sarah Faith Gottesdiener
Sarah is an artist, writer, psychic tarot reader, teacher, & business owner living in LA.
@gottesss www.modernwomenprojects.com We talk about the lingering impact of childhood trauma, living as a queer adult with ADHD, queerness as ideology, accessing protective energy for oneself and much more. Shockingly we do not talk about TAROT but we do talk about the moon.
Sign up for Queering the Holidays (www.livinginthisqueerbody) QUEERING THE HOLIDAYS
Friday December 18th 5-7pm EST How do we navigate caring for ourselves, our partners and our friends during this pandemic holiday season? A portion of proceeds will go to The LGBTQ Freedom Fund How do we nourish ourselves? (In this first “holiday” session we will focus on food) How do we identify our needs when the demands of heteronormative, colonial settler and patriarchal holiday discourses threaten our self-determination and sovereignty?
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
"Check Your Past:" Eva Reign
In this episode, Eva and I talk about our shared hometown of Saint Louis, MO. We address the ways that Eva has`worked to undo her internalized homophobia, transphobia and anti-blackness. Eva also gives us her take on the current "trendiness" of transness and BLM. Eva Reign is an actor, writer and artist originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She is a columnist at the Condé Nast publication Them. where writes on Black trans life and profiles people across the country. Her work as a performer has been showcased in the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art through the films by Tourmaline. When she isn't performing or writing, she works as Digital Media Manager of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute.
IG: @msevareign
In this episode we discuss racial segregation in Saint Louis, MO
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2015-04-20/author-visits-10-segregated-cities-stops-in-st-louis
http://www.stlamerican.com/entertainment/living_it/walter-johnson-book-parallels-history-of-racism-in-st-louis-with-u-s/article_caa4205c-a618-11ea-a0c2-bf63aa08f5be.html
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Disrupting Linearity and 2 Spirit Body Reclamation: Coyote Park
Coyote Park is a Two Spirit artist, oral historian, and educator. They are Yurok (with their ancestral homelands being near the Klamath river), German, and Korean. Coyote grew up in Honolulu, Hawai'i and moved to New York when they were 18. Currently, they have relocated to Los Angeles where they are doing online lectures, finishing up schooling, and multi-media work. They cofounded ENBY Spoken Histories with Angel Labarte. ENBY Spoken Histories is a storytelling archive with the trans community, as it centers nonbinary, 2spirit, gnc, intersex, and genderqueer voices. The archive is preserved within the Library of Congress and ENBY Spoken Histories has a partnership with Storycorps. In the past, they have had multiple recording sessions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Hawai'i. There were set recording dates that had been pushed back due to Covid-19. However, on a digital platform ENBY Spoken histories has been hosting zoom parties with performances, book club meetings, and has done one healing circle run by QTPOC facilitators. Coyote's personal practice is documentary photography where they photograph the intimate moments within their daily life and trans family. They have also been curating a QTPOC dream zine, working on other written projects with artists in their community spaces, and have been utilizing social media as a tool for connection for Trans youth and emotional resonance for other trans folks. Coyote is passionate about building a framework of understanding of gender outside of the colonial gender systems and uses their work as an outlet to vocalize those narratives.
Instagram: @nativeboytoy
QUEER THE WELLNESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX LECTURE: GET TICKETS here.
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
What a cute girl: Joon Oluchi Lee
JOON OLUCHI LEE lives and writes in femininity and feminism, whose latest novel is "Neotenica," published by Nightboat Books in June. The author of two other works of fiction, "94" (2015) and "Lace Sick Bag" (2013), both published by Publication Studio, as well as various essays on queer theory, feminism, and fiction writing, including "The Joy of the Castrated Boy," and the blog "lipstickeater," Joon is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Creative Writing at Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner Roderick Schrock and their rescue dog Nella.
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris is a Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#17)
These pandemic times have been a time of interrogation, reflection, learning, and unlearning–which for me, includes exploring my gender identity and the ways in which I can get so tied up in how others may hypothetically react to it, let alone perceive it. I sat on this recording for several months as my fear of not “succeeding” kept me discouraged and apprehensive. Perfectionism–a very old learned behavior of mine from childhood– is the antithesis of everything I believe gender and queerness to be. For me, gender and sexuality are not fixed, and there is no right or wrong way to express those parts of you, as long as you aren’t harming others while doing so. Yet, sometimes what we know to be true in our hearts isn’t always present in our internal dialogues and the way in which we treat ourselves in private.
IG: @annefacee
The Unseen World is Trying to Liberate Us: Lama Rod Owens
Episode 34 features Lama Rod Owens, a black queer Buddhist Lama and author of the recently published book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger. In this episode, we discuss the dangers of disembodied anger, what it feels like to navigate transhistorical trauma in the body, anger, and the woundedness beneath anger, as an entry point to embodiment, and Lama Rod's relationship with depression and much more. It was a true honor to speak with Lama Rod Owens. I really encourage you to read or listen to his books and follow him @lamarodowens.
Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor and authorized Lama, or Buddhist teacher, in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism and is considered one of the leaders of his generation of Buddhist teachers. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School and is a co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Owens is the co-founder of Bhumisparsha, a Buddhist tantric practice and study community. Has been published in Buddhadharma, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle and The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and offers talks, retreats and workshops in more than seven countries. In, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger (June 2020), Lama Rod shares his personal journey with rage—how, at a young age, he internalized the belief that his anger was dangerous. “I have seen over and over again,” he tells us, “that anger can get me killed. I know that this is how I have survived in a Black queer body in America. My fear of death and policing has translated into a self-policing of my anger to such an extent that if it weren’t for my meditation practice, I wouldn’t know how to find my anger.” You can find out more about Lama Rod @lamarodowens on instagram or www.lamarod.com
REGISTER for EMBODIED TESTIMONY (REGISTRATION ENDS 9/20/20)
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#16)
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#15)
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#14)
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (Trans Folks Fighting Eating Disorders @transfolxfightingeds)
Deep gratitude to: Kacey, Kian, OJ (@thirdwheeled), Scout (@wickedlittletown) and Ethan (@heartshapedhickies).
This episode features non-black voices, in part, because food/nourishment and dysphoria are things that take time and energy to talk about. These topics are particularly vulnerable to talk about publicly. White trans people have privilege and, in this episode, they are using this privilege to draw attention to the depth of pain and struggle that is housed in trans bodies. There is so much more to say about the impact of a culture that devalues specifically black trans bodies and how this traumatic impact lives in trans bodies, how it troubles one's relationship to nourishment and safety.
There are many trans, non-binary and gender queer BIPOC people who struggle with dysphoria, disordered eating and other challenges to nourishment. There are SO MANY additional barriers, challenges and systems of oppression (white supremacy, transphobia, heterosexism, diet culture, fat phobia, toxic masculinity, settler colonial late stage capitalism) that these communities must contend with when trying to come to terms with, attend to, and find support around nourishing trans and BIPOC marginalized bodies and communities.
There is righteous rebellion happening right now. We are in a time of great and sometimes emotionally overwhelming change and pain. And, our black, trans, femme leaders MUST be nourished. Food, rest, hydration, deserving. It is time to center nourishment in our discourses about radical systemic transformation. Diet culture disguised as "wellness" or "spiritual" coaching has NO PLACE in this revolutionary moment.
A few Health at Every Size, trauma informed resources include: @sonyareneetaylor, @the_bodylib_advocate, @blackandembodied, @chr1styharrison, @fit.flexible.fluid, @covid19eatingsupport, @heydrsand, Dr. Sabrina Strings (author of "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia), @lamplight.space, @decolonizing_fitness, @iamtianadodson, @badbadprettygood and of course, @transfolxfightingeds.
As much as possible I aim to center the voices and experiences of BIPOC queer folks. That being said, I know that participation can involve significant emotional labor, both in generating a dispatch as well as opening up publicly and sharing often marginalized and discarded voices. I will be collecting stories all summer so please, if and when you feel moved and spacious, send along a 1-5 minute long dispatch via email (livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com) or text (email or DM me for my cell).
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#13)
Deep gratitude to: @qweenamor, @blackqueerbaby and @love.gia
$upport AND DONATE TO:
@btfa (Black Trans Femmes in the Arts)
Activation Residency @activationresidency (Venmo is Activation, PayPal is info@activationresidency.com)
As much as possible I aim to center the voices and experiences of BIPOC queer folks. That being said, I know that participation can involve significant emotional labor, both in generating a dispatch as well as opening up publicly and sharing often marginalized and discarded voices. I will be collecting stories all summer so please, if and when you feel moved and spacious, send along a 1-5 minute long dispatch via email (livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com) or text (email or DM me for my cell)
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES (#12)
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times (#11)
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times (#10 EMBODIED TESTIMONY)
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times (#9)
Queer Futures: Sav Schlauderaff
As the global pandemic continues, I think we are all feeling quite deeply and concretely the barriers to embodiment in various aspects of of our life, perhaps more acutely than ever. My guest today is someone who is very well versed in speaking about the body in pain and the multiplicity of embodied experience. Today I have the honor of interviewing Sav Schlauderaff.
Sav (they/them) is a queer, trans, disabled PhD student in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. Their research in critical disability studies centers chronic illnesses, (embodied/felt) memory, pain, trauma and self care/community care for the bodymindspirit. Sav combines their academic training in genetics, molecular biology, and gender studies with poetry, autobiography, current research in molecular biology and genetics, and theoretical work in their writing.
Outside of research, they currently are the Graduate Assistant at the Disability Cultural Center, they work at the LGBTQ+ Resource Center at the U of A as a Safe Zone facilitator, they are a member of the Disability Studies Initiative at the U of A, and a co-founder of “The Queer Futures Collective” where they create accessible, educational & healing workshops and performances (in person and online) that focus on listening, vulnerability, learning through art, and collective community care.
You can find out more about Sav @savthequeer on instagram or www.queerfutures.com
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES
I hope everyone is finding ways to access ease and comfort in this pandemic time. If you haven’t listened already, there have been some beautiful mini episodes in the Living in our queer bodies in pandemic times series. If anyone would like to join this project, just record a one to two minute voice memo and email it to me at livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris
Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times (#8)
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic times (#7)
I am the Site of Possibility: Shira Erlichman
In this episode, which was recorded many months ago, Shira and I talk about what it means to not be able to “outrun” her Bipolar diagnosis and the long process of acceptance that followed this confronting reality. Shira shares about her early childhood growing up in Israel, noticing as a radical act, the mind as queer and a lot more. I am a such a fan of Shira’s book, her poetry and most recently I have taken such pleasure in watching her daily instagram stories in which she prepares iced coffee.
Shira Erlichman is a poet, musician, and visual artist. She was born in Israel and immigrated to the US when she was six. Her poems explore recovery – of language, of home, of mind – and value the "scattered wholeness" of healing. She earned her BA at Hampshire College and has been awarded the James Merrill Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center, the Visions of Wellbeing Focus Fellowship at AIR Serenbe, as well as a residency by the Millay Colony. Her work has been featured in Buzzfeed Reader, The Rumpus, PBS NewsHour’s Poetry Series, The Huffington Post, The Seattle Times, and The New York Times, among others. Her debut poetry book, Odes to Lithium, came out in September 2019. She is also the author and illustrator of the picture book Be/Hold. When not on tour, she lives in Brooklyn where she teaches writing and creates.
@sheer_awe and https://www.officialshira.com/in-surreal-life
DISPATCHES FROM OUR QUEER BODIES IN PANDEMIC TIMES
I hope everyone is finding ways to access ease and comfort in this pandemic time. If you haven’t already, there have been some beautiful mini episodes in the Living in our queer bodies in pandemic times series. Most recently, my friend Cassie shared what they learned in the process of recovering from Covid-19. If anyone would like to join this project, just record a one to two minute voice memo and email it to me at livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris
Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris
Recovering from Covid-19 (Dispatches from our Queer bodies in pandemic times part 6)
Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times (Part 5)
To be in the middle of what is here: Susan Raffo
In this episode, recorded in the midst of a global pandemic, we explore, with such tenderness and fierceness, what it means to be in the middle of what is here. Susan talks about mutual aid initiatives as "collective nervous systems" and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging what is unfinished in us (intergenerational trauma or other complex traumas that many of us hold in our bodies) while we work towards shared liberation. Susan and I talk about how death rests right alongside our embodied aliveness and much more.
Susan Raffo is a queer bodyworker with ancestry in both the colonized and the colonizer. She has studied craniosacral therapy through the Upledger Institute, the Milne Institute, and with Body Intelligence. She is also informed by Global Somatics, a practice that emerged out of Body Mind Centering and by a range of nervous system integration models. For the last 16 years she has focused her work on the connection between what happens in systems and communities with what happens within individual bodies both through work with the US Social Forum movement, as well as most recently through the People’s Movement Center. Based in Minneapolis and from Cleveland, Ohio, Susan happily lives with her partner, Rocki, and their daughter, Luca.
To find out more about her work, go to www.susanraffo.com
SEND ME A VOICE MEMO for the Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times
livinginthisqueerbody@gmail.com
or
ANCHOR
https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris
LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.
Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody
The Host: Asher Pandjiris
Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator
SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody
Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris