October 23, 2018
Kellen is pleased to host a workshop this Saturday at 2pm, Chinese Medicine for Trans Health: Feeling Safe in Our Bodies. For one hour, a small group will gather to talk about how different Chinese Medicine practices can increase feelings of safety, help recovery from physical and spiritual violence, support scar healing, and relieve stress and fear. This workshop will be exclusively for trans-identified people.
Because living as a trans person is full of pain. The life expectancy gap between trans people and cis people demonstrates that. I work to tell myself, no matter the people who prescribe and perform conversion therapy, the people who don’t have room in their mouths or their minds to call me who I am, by my name, with my pronouns (even after I tell them), the people who want to write a law saying my people are as imaginary as unicorns. They cannot erase us or shame us, but it hurts that they try to.
Living as a trans person is also awesome. There is such glory in living as my real, true self. There is deep liberation in writing our own rules. I love the moments when I find my people, speak and sing my truth, and see pockets of love–like a homemade “Black Lives Matter” sign that has add-ons including trans lives and immigrant lives. The relief of having my whole self embraced is something I notice more because I can’t take that embrace for granted.
Melody Beattie, in her book The Language of Letting Go, which Ellice relies on daily, says, “When we stop trusting our truth, when we repress our instincts, when we tell ourselves there must be something wrong with us for feeling what we feel or believing what we believe, we deal a deadly blow to our self and our health.” She says, “I will trust my truth, my instincts, and my ability to ground myself in reality. I will not allow myself to be swayed by bullying, manipulating, games, dishonesty, or people with peculiar agendas.” (In case you think I’m making this up to point at Trump, the book was published in 1990.)
This Saturday, let’s set aside an hour to focus on our health and our truth together. Please RSVP for the workshop on North Node Clinic’s Facebook page, call us at 414-239-8234, or reply to this email.
If you can’t make the workshop, take some time this week to take stock of how much you know about your own healing:
When, with whom, and where do you feel safe?
How do you or can you recover from violence?
What scars do you want to heal? How have you worked to heal them already?
What do or can you do to relieve your fear and your stress?