Hello, my dear, and welcome back to this Sunday’s episode of human becoming. Let’s start with a breath, shall we. A deep inhale, and a deep exhale, as we settle into place, and into today’s listening session. 

One of the things that I love about the new human becoming, or the evolving human becoming, is that these episodes feel like a true weekly check in. What I’ve experienced in the week will influence what I come on here and speak about – and this week has been challenging. I’ve been so busy lately, creating the apothecary and launching the second season of human becoming and working through a lot of my own shit in the process – while also doing a lot of thinking about the future, and where this path is leading me. I’ve been birthing and creating some really exciting projects that I am so grateful that I will be able to share with the world, but I also have been feeling BURNED OUT. I didn’t want to admit this to myself for a very long time, because I put so much thought and care into working with this surge of energy that is passing through me WHILE tending to my body and to my whole-being-wellness, but I am human and even with all of that tending – I feel burned out. (Wow. I really didn’t want to admit that to myself.) But I have danced with burn out for a very long time. I often move into periods of such a high intensity, of doing, and creating and birthing, and it almost feels like a high. I feel like so many possibilities are opening before me and it’s so exciting to just run with them. And yet, when I do, I inevitably come to a space of “shucks, I’m tired!”. This is, truly, the most uncomfortable space for me to dwell in. It makes me feel really vulnerable, and powerless, and incapable, and fearful. 

This burnout that I cycle through is deeply connected to the core belief that – I am not enough, and to become enough I have push myself beyond what feels authentic, and possible – and what I am actually capable of. to be enough, I need to ignore and extend myself beyond my actual boundaries and true capacity – right, like what I’m actually able to do. only then, if I do this extending, if I do this stretching, if I become a chronic yes man, will I be loved. will I be cared for. will I not be abandoned. I’ve spent a lot of my life constantly pushing myself past these very human limits because I thought that the only way I could be ‘good enough’ - essentially if I am not me. So, hello! My name is Tumi, and I believe that I can only be loved if I become something other than myself. Breathe. WELCOME TO HUMAN BECOMING.

And so, thinking about this episode, and what I wanted to create that would be authentic to where I am at right now – and to how I am feeling human today, I want to speak about pussies. And you might say? Huh? How did we get there? But something that I’ve been doing a lot of healing around lately is my pussy. And my pussy is one of the places where this belief shows up – that I can only be loved if I push myself beyond my boundaries.

I thought this was going to be an episode on reclaiming the word pussy – which will be another podcast episode. I have so much to say about pussies! Off the bat, I want to name that this is a topic that can be triggering and challenging for some people to hear about and listen to – specifically, I want to name that discussions about genitals can be uncomfortable for trans folk – like myself. I have had a very complicated relationship with reclaiming my body, and the language to talk about it that feels good, but that ISN’T gendered. And the reality is, so many of the words that we use to describe our bodies, to describe our world – are gendered. And so I want to make some notes about how I will be using this word: Firstly, pussy is beyond gender. Anyone can have a pussy –  men have pussies, women have pussies, non-binary people have pussies – and in the same breathe, men don’t have pussies, women don’t have pussies, non-binary people don’t have pussies. PUSSIES ARE BEYOND GENDER. There are no rules about what bodies have pussies. No assumptions can really be made about what bodies have pussies, because YOU DON’T KNOW. You are welcome to relate to your pussy (and gender) in any way you would like (and you don’t need me to affirm that) but I do not gender my pussy – and please do not assume that other people gender their pussies, either. With that note out of the way:

Let’s begin.

So, what is your relationship to your boundaries like? For a long time, my relationship to my boundaries was “anything goes!”. And, at points in my life – this actually felt true. And what I mean by this is, it actually felt true that anything could go. As I mentioned in the last episode, I was so shut down from my desires that for most of life I wasn’t able to name what I authentically wanted (and didn’t want). I couldn’t say this, because I didn’t know. I HAD NO IDEA. And this makes sense, right. If we don’t know what we authentically want, we often don’t know what we ‘don’t’ want. And let me personalize this quickly: when I didn’t know what I wanted, I also didn’t know what I didn’t want. This is because there was a deep, deep shut down from any embodied – internal – intuitive – sense of knowing – knowing that this is a clear YES or a clear NO. I was a chronic ‘yeser’. I used to just say yes to everything – and now, I’m speaking very broadly, not specifically about sex and intimacy but including sex and intimacy. – but it’s true – I would say yes to pretty much any request that someone made of me – for emotional support, for physical intimacy, for help with a project, for anything. And it wasn’t that a clear no came up in my body, it’s that there was the absence of any feedback of yes and no. And that’s not completely true either. It wasn’t the absence of the yes and no – my body would speak to me in very clear ways, but I hadn’t yet learned to understand the language of my body, and so what it felt like was apathy – it felt like the absence of any feedback. And because I didn’t yet understand my no, I didn’t know how to listen for it or how to honour it. And this chronic yessing is what led to my burn out time and time again. I say “yes, yes, yes, yes!” until my body, in a very big way – usually through physical exhaustion – says NO.  

Now, to contextualize – as a society, we have a boundaries problem. I believe that this is something that is changing, and in the future emotional intelligence will be a big part of what children learn in school, and what we value as a society and so – socialize. But, many of us (most of us) were not socialized in society’s that truly valued self-awareness, authenticity, essentially – being who we are, honouring where we are at, what we can and cannot do. Instead, (and once again, I’ll personalize). I was raised in a society that didn’t value authenticity, that didn’t value me holding and honouring my boundaries. I was raised in a society that said “jump through this hoop to be loved!” and “give up this part of yourself to be accepted”. And this model of society is so damaging (and it is also not the only way for us to be human). Many of us were raised in a world that encourages the fragmentation of self – don’t be this, but these parts of yourself are acceptable to keep, chuck away that part of you into the farthest corner of the universe because NO ONE will accept you if you embody that, and so on and so forth. (a puzzle) And the THAT can be anything – but for this episode, my THAT is my boundaries. I internalized the message from a young age that I couldn’t be accepted for who I am AND have boundaries. And this also ties into family of origin stuff – I grew up with a mother who had her own trauma around boundaries, and so didn’t model how to maintain personal boundaries in a loving and connected way. I also experienced a lot of boundary crossing as a child, and I often felt fearful around my boundaries (physical or emotional) not being honoured. So, my big boundary lessons became – In order to stay in connection with other people, I can’t have boundaries (and will need to override my own boundaries). It’s not worthwhile to track my authentic capacity – essentially, what I am able to do and what I am not able to do – because I am going to override that capacity anyway. And, in small child language, that making myself as available as possible FOR ANYTHING is how I would ensure that I continue to receive love from the people around me.

I want to make a note here about gender socialization, because I think it is HUGELY important to situate in any conversation. Our gender socialization shapes what we are allowed to be in such HUGE ways. And once again, because I can only speak about my socialization, one of the HUGE messages that people who are socialized as girls receive is – you are not entitled to your boundaries. If you were socialized as a daughter, or a sister, often these social categories become particularly awful sites for the gender messaging about boundaries. those labelled sisters and daughters are much more likely to be encouraged to cross their boundaries, to ignore their own discomforts to appease the other (be it the guest, the parent, the school). And children, in general, are disempowered from owning their boundaries. There are so many ways that you were likely told to override your boundaries as a child – regardless of gender socialization. Hug that relative, go do this or that thing for the parents, perform (my favourite – like dance in front of the relatives). And sometimes you might want to do those things, but sometimes you don’t – and then adults invoke the big shame guns to say “if you were a good boy or girl” you’d do this thing. A quick note about language here: you’ll notice I’ll always “people who are socialized as girls/boys” instead of boys/girls, women/men. I do not believe in gender – it is another human program – but while gender is a construct, it is a construct as Resmaa Menakem in relation to racism-as-construct puts it “with teeth and claws”. Whether we have continued to identify with the gender that we were assigned at birth, or have disidentified from that assigned gender, our gender socializations really do impact us – and I find it useful to name these larger systems and the messages that we receive from them so that we can see that we are not simply individually struggling with these messages and beliefs but rather are all struggling under the claws of an oppressive system. 

I’ve spent a lot of time healing my relationship with my boundaries, and this is where my pussy has been a wonderful guide and teacher. For a long time, I experienced chronic vaginal tightness and pain. I thought I might have vaginismus (a condition where your body automatically responds with fear to some or all types of penetration) or vulvodynia (which is chronic pain in the vulva). Whenever I wanted to have sex with someone, I would feel this intense spasming and tightening of my pussy. For most of my life, penetrative sex has not been possible for me because of this reason. As part of this pussies- boundaries reflection, I can see now that my pussy was saying NO at a time when I was incapable of finding those words within myself. It’s quite amazing what the body will do, and how it will speak to us, and how it will protect us, but at the time I didn’t think it was amazing. I was frustrated, and felt ashamed, like there was something wrong with my body and there was so much that I wanted to experience – but wasn’t able to. 

So, likely from early childhood experiences, past life experiences, and this life experiences, my pussy has carried a lot of trauma. I’ve been celibate for the past two years (I’ve actually just come over the two year anniversary mark) and it’s been an incredible experience. I’ve used this time to get to know myself, to connect with myself more deeply, and to come into better relationship with my body and with my pussy. I’ve learned that my boundaries aren’t something that prevents my being in intimacy with people (and that I wouldn’t want to be in unboundaried intimacy with anyone, anyway), but rather my boundaries are a gift that I offer those around me to stay in sustainable intimacy with them. I’m still learning how to hear and honour my authentic yes, and no – especially my no. And this has been really challenging, it’s why I say I’m still learning – and I will continue to learn this for the rest of my life. It will likely take years of peeling back the impacts of socialization and early childhood experiences to even allow myself the room to hear that authentic yes. I’m so used to an automatic yes, a chronic yes, that sometimes I even hear it slip out of my mouth before any brain activity has occurred to process the request. It’s like mid someone else speaking my body just automatically goes “YES”. And this doesn’t serve me, or the people around me – which is what I believed for a long time. I believed that I was doing people a service by crossing my own boundaries – and I wasn’t for two reasons. The first, is that in crossing my boundaries constantly I would go into a very high level of resentment which absolutely corrodes intimacy. The second, is that I wasn’t giving those people an opportunity to grow. When I would not set a boundary or cross a boundary thinking it was in service to the “other”, right like the thinking here would be “this person isn’t capable of doing x y z, of meeting me where I’m at” or whatever other excuse, so I’ll just cross my boundaries to meet them. And when I started setting my boundaries, I did experience a lot of loss – and people who didn’t want to be in my life with my boundaries being lovingly maintained. But, for the people in my life, and new people coming in, it has provided a wonderful opportunity to experience boundaried intimacy – which for me, is the absolute peak of intimacy. There has to be boundaries. I want to live a sustainable life, where I can SUSTAINABLY be in intimacy and community with people, SUSTAINABLY show up. And if I’m constantly overriding my internal “yes/no” mechanism, I just cycle through high intensity Jim Carrey Yes Maning, and then very high intensity burn out. In learning to honour my boundaries, I not only take care of myself – but I teach people how to be in sustainable intimacy with me – and that just creates this beautiful ripple effect of healing where suddenly – we’re all affirming that we get to show up with boundaries.

And so, a big realization that I’ve made lately around my sexuality is that I’m not asexual (which I thought I was for a long time) and I don’t have a broken pussy. I have a pussy that knows very clearly what their yes, and no is. I have a pussy that is very clear in that yes and no. And I have pussy that loves CONSENT, and being asked and respected. My pussy is not a yes-man, and I don’t have to be a yes man either! I am allowed to say “yes, I want that” and “no, I don’t want that”. Part of this journey, that is so exciting, is also learning how delicious, and yummy and fantastic a full bodied yes can feel! I’m so used to inauthentic yessing, that when an organic yes arises from my body – it is such a pleasure filled experience. And so this journey is teaching me to think before I say yes, to check in my body before I say yes, to honour my no when it is does emerge, and to get to know what a full bodied yes and a full bodied no feels like. This has had such profound implications on all aspects of my life – and is another place where I say “wow! sexual healing touches every part of who we are – because we are sexual beings”. When I am connected to my yes and no (essentially my boundaries), I find it so much more pleasurable to be in connection with the world. I’m not hyper attuned to any potential boundary violations and moving in a state of fear and anxiety because I know that I can maintain and honour my boundaries. I’ve been burned out in my friendships FAR less than I used to be – I used to stretch myself so far beyond my capacity to meet the needs of my friends, and it was so unsustainable. Now, I let people know when something does and doesn’t work for me – even if it might be disappointing to them. I’m a lot better at sitting with other people’s disappointment, whereas before other people’s disappointment terrified me. I used to live my life in a way that aimed to prevent disappointment from other people as much as humanly possible because I always had to be YES MAN TUMI to the rescue – I had such a saviour complex – because I felt that I could only be loved and accepted as the saviour/caretaker/person who is NEEDED, because I didn’t believe that I was wanted. Learning to sit with other people’s disappointment has been revolutionary to me. It allows me to inhabit this space where I am allowed to desire what I want and honour what I don’t, and so is the other person. When we do that, and don’t squash our desires, there often is disappointment – because our wants will not always be met. Learning to love and honour my boundaries has actually created more room for me to embrace my desires fully (while knowing they will not always be met/reciprocated) and I have more room to explore other people’s desire for me in a way that feels nourishing and healthy (because I know that I am entitled to my YES AND NO. before, I often scurried from other people’s desires for me because I was trying to protect myself from my chronic yessing). It’s much easier for me to speak and share those desires, because I value other people maintaining their boundaries and I would much rather have someone say “No, not interested” then inauthentic yes maning. Having boundaries allows me to feel safer in my body, it allows my pussy to feel safer. Having boundaries and honouring my boundaries and my authentic capacity reminds me that I am human – and I deserve to be treated as fully human, I deserve to say yes and no.  For a long, without boundaries, I was stuck in the paradigm of choicelessness. “I don’t have a choice, I have to show up for this person in this way, I have to do this thing that I don’t want to do” and I’m not really speaking about things like “ugh, I have to take out the trash” but more the interpersonal exchanges that we take part in that we’re often not 100% enthusiastic about, but feel we have to do. Knowing that I am entitled to my boundaries has allowed me to say “do I? do I have to do this thing? do I have to call this person that I don’t want to call?” because I know that I AM ENTITLED TO MY BOUNDARIES. I am allowed to say YES AND NO. I am allowed to make choices about my life and what does and doesn’t serve me.

And so, my wish for you in listening to this episode is that YOU know that you are entitled to your authentic yes and no. And you might not be connected to that internal system yet, and that’s okay. But the journey of discovering what an embodied yes and no feels like is so, so liberating. I hope you’re able to take some time now to really reflect on your relationship to your boundaries, the messages and beliefs that you carry around them, maybe explore the things that have been triggered for you in this episode – and find out what your body is wanting to tell you now about you boundaries. This is one of my favourite things to work with people through: boundaries! I’ve taken a break from working with clients while going through my initiation, but I will be seeing clients from October (ish) onwards – so if you’ve listened to this podcast episode and thought, I would really like support around finding my embodied yes and no – you can email me or dm on Instagram and we can explore whether this would be the right container for you. And that’s it for today folks! I’ll be returning to pussy healing hopefully a few times in the next while because I think it is HUGELY important and I love speaking about it. But, for now, I’m signing off with : 

human becoming is like a quickie. getting your needs met in record time.

I look forward to being with you again, here, next week. Until then. Take good care.