S4EP20: Education, Identity, and the Journey of Self-Discovery with Tamara Williams Van Horn

Life is a journey of self-discovery. Along the way, we overcome barriers, navigate systems, and most importantly, learn to be true to ourselves. Join Dr. Lee this week as she welcomes Tamara Williams Van Horn. 

Tamara is an advocate for public education and a beacon of support for marginalized students. Together they uncover the magic and possibilities that education can offer to individuals and society.

Traversing personal tales of overcoming adversity to excel academically, Dr. Lee and Tamara tackle the social determinants of health, the struggles faced by those in poverty, and how these factors shape the educational landscape. They celebrate "black excellence," acknowledge the power of education and the importance of creating space for diversity within the system. 

They dive deep into the whirlwind journey of college choices and academic identity, discussing the pressure to conform to societal standards and the importance of mental health in academic success.

The conversation culminates in exploring personal, gender, and sexual identity, confronting societal expectations and norms, understanding the struggle of fitting in, and the power of self-acceptance. 

Guest Bio: 

Tamara Williams Van Horn, (She/They) is the Principal Responder for Auntiecorn Leadership Strategies. Their current work seeks to deconstruct the "differences that difference makes" through engagements of somatic animation and personal, community, and cultural service and exploration. Tamara is based out of Boulder, Colorado and is looking forward to building expansive experiential collaborations with you. Tamara loves, lives, and leads with Strategic Thinking® CliftonStrengths® themes and Wisdom, Transcendence, and Leadership character strengths. 

Interested in working together? Connect for dialogue at tamvanhorn@gmail.com; @TamVanHorn (Instagram) and at Auntiecorn Leadership Strategies on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AuntiecornLeadership. 

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:06

Hi and welcome to the Becoming Trauma-Informed podcast where we help you understand how your past painful experiences are affecting your current reality and how you can shift those so you can create your desired future. I'm Dr Lee, and both myself and our team at the Institute for Trauma and Psychological Safety are excited to support you on your journey. We talk about all the things on this podcast. No topic gets left uncovered. So extending a content warning to you before we get started if you notice yourself getting activated while listening, invitation to take care of yourself and to pause, skip ahead a bit or just check out another episode, let's dive in. Hello everyone, welcome to this week's episode. I'm joined by the incredible, amazing, lovely, glorious Tamara Williams-Fanhorn. Tamara, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for having me Saying your name out loud, because that's a place for me that I have trauma around my name, and so I always try to say people's names right and don't always succeed.

Speaker 2: 1:12

And I still remember the first time you were like. You say it, like think of the song Annie, like Tamara, and I'm like I every time I say your name. Now I just sing that and I know how to say it, and so that's awesome, I mean, you know, to be associated with a plucky song like why not?

Speaker 2: 1:30

Right, it really works. So now all of our listeners will always say your name, right, because we'll have a song on their head too. You're welcome, y'all. You know, I usually talk about how I know our guests and I was actually thinking about it before we started. I forgot that Tamara, not Tamara, our friend Tamara introduced us. Tamara is one of my favorite humans ever, and she and I met through another friend in back like way back when I don't know 10, 12 years ago, when we were both doing network marketing and ended up on the same team, and I think she just messaged you right. It was like hey, you should check this out.

Speaker 2: 2:10

It was like I think that you would be into this and really into it yeah and like you like fast forward a few years of just like I mean, it was a total stepbrothers moment for me, of like did we just become best friends? Because I have just been in love with you since the moment I met you and I'm really excited for you to tell everyone who you be, because y'all tomorrow I don't know if you've met me, but I like to talk and Tamara is one of the humans in my life that, like, when she's talking, I don't want to talk, I just want to listen. That's rare for me. So I'm so excited for you to tell everyone who you be and also to just have this conversation with you, because I'm excited to expose our guests to the same experience I have of like, oh, just keep talking. Like I'm just going to like curl up and sit crisscross applesauce by the fire, as Auntie corn Samara like says all the things. So, yeah, please, just who are you Like? What's important to you, who you know right here?

Speaker 1: 3:11

What do you do? Yeah, it's so interesting that you talked about, like, the importance of saying names correctly. I have a lot of ambivalence around name and labels, which we're going to get into. So I am legally Tamara Renee Williams Van Horn of the Cincinnati Williams's and the Wyoming Sharonville Van Horns.

Speaker 2: 3:39

It's so weird. It's so weird we're from the same little like teeny, tiny town.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Absolutely so. My spouse's family is actually from Sharonville and my husband grew up a military brat and did not have a close connection with that side of the family. So when we met it was just. I mean, literally. It's just how the universe is tiny and small and who I be is the onto corn. I am full in my auntie era. I know there's been some conversation in the on Rihanna's internet about you know, black women of a certain age really having, you know, complicated thoughts around Auntie.

Speaker 1: 4:25

I'm a historian, among other things, so I love the stories that inform how we name ourselves, how we talk to each other, how we treat each other, how we collaborate and group together. So it should be no surprise that my undergraduate degree is an African and African American studies and my master's degree is in sociology. So I spend a lot of my time supporting young people. I work at a university and I work mainly with the students who have been traditionally marginalized or parts of traditionally marginalized populations. So that's women in FIM, that's LGBTQIA plus students, that is students of color, and then also students of culture, so our ethnic and religious minorities in the country, so non Christian folks. We really do a lot of programming. I'm on a team of 10. We are professional identitarians, which not a lot of people do.

Speaker 1: 5:27

I get paid to show up as a black, non binary human and I use that platform to sharpen my thought leadership, to pass along lessons that I've been given and that I've learned, and to really stand for things like public education that our elders fought and died for. Because, again, I have this degree in African and African American studies and I'm also 30 something year member of Sigma Gamma Rostroity Incorporated. So greater service, greater progress. We were founded by four teachers seven teachers, I'm sorry at Butler University in response to clan violence in the 1920s. So I am the Anticorn and I profess leadership strategies and I'm unique in that I'm a. I love being an auntie, I have a very nurturing quality that I want to bring to the world, but I also dabble in magic and I dabble in possibilities and I want for all young people to have a better world, the best world that the biggest brains on this planet can make for them, because they deserve it.

Speaker 2: 6:46

See, see what I'm saying. There's like so many different directions that I could take this. And you and I had a conversation a couple of days ago that spurred me to really think about like, oh my gosh, we need to do a podcast episode about this. And then my in-laws came into town and my father-in-law is also historian. Really gosh, the man knows everything about the wild, wild West and, like you know, that era of American history, and also just like military history, and we were talking about the new show, bass Reeves.

Speaker 2: 7:25

He was kind of educating me on, like you know, the Lone Ranger that whole character is based on, actually a black man, and he was talking about how he couldn't read and write.

Speaker 2: 7:34

And he's like it's so fascinating to me.

Speaker 2: 7:36

He's like I just he's like I know it was a different time, but I just can't imagine looking at an entire group of people and being perfectly comfortable, like subjugating them, and he's like, and the thing that makes the least amount of sense to me is like that you know, bass Reeves didn't know how to read or write and he used that to his advantage because that was how he captured a lot of the outlaws that he brought in.

Speaker 2: 8:00

I think he brought in over 3,000. And he's like, why would they teach them how to shoot guns but not teach them how to read or write? And it was fascinating for me because my father-in-law is a very smart man and I was like, well, think about it. Like education is the most dangerous weapon you can give somebody. And I just that story just popped in my head as you were talking, because you're still in the academic space. I've been, I was in the academic space for a really long time, both as a participant and as a mentor, and it's one of those things that it really it strikes me that you know especially talking about the sorority that you were part of, like we're forming this in response to violence and it's based on education.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Absolutely, and that's you know if you're listening to this, listeners anywhere near when it's released. Angelina Jolie's daughter, zahara, who has adopted Ethiopian Indecent, just pledged Alpha Kappa, alpha Sorority at Spelman and it's been all over the news and it's been really, really interesting. Like we talked on Friday, I'm addicted to the comments so I have to read the social response to some of these news articles and the amount of misinformation and disinformation that is out there about the history of education and the availability of education in this country and kind of the vitriol to folks being willing to do almost anything to secure the chance of education, not even for the generation that's working on it but for future generations, has just been fascinating to watch and there's been a lot of grief around that that luckily I've been working to build a tool chest in the toy box to process because being in the African American history space is tough, yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Yeah, and you know the work that you're doing right now. It's not your first rodeo, right, Like? I mean, you've been in that space, I know you're in that space in Cincinnati and the new venture that we were talking about, that you're embarking upon the synchronicities are kind of clicking in my head right now because you've always focused in on you know we refer to them as the babies, right, Like you've always looked at, how do we help the generations that are, like, coming into adulthood, really deal with the what's the word, the disillusionment and the confrontation and the stark contrast I think a lot of times of what you thought that was going to look like and what it actually looks like, and, in particular, for those, those babies, those new grown ones that are entering into that space, where their identities are not understood or validated or honored in the spaces that they're coming into. So yeah, so like, I guess I'm curious, you know what? Well, I know a little bit of these answers, but I also want the listeners to hear I'm like, like, why is it important to you?

Speaker 1: 11:36

Yeah, because Anticorn is a play on unicorn. I am a unicorn. First of all. I live in the Wild West, now I live in Colorado. So Bass Reeves and stagecoach Mary have been real new, new ways to communicate with the history and looking at a different perspective on the experience of African descendant folks on Turtle Island and the Buffalo Soldiers who my dad was fascinated with.

Speaker 1: 12:09

You know, I grew up with stories just like everybody else. I went to public schools just like everybody else. I had a very ordinary upbringing and also I was not supposed to be here. I grew up in the projects. My mother is a single parent. She raised three of us on her own, not a lot of money, of course. We were on public assistance, not only with housing, but we received food assistance. I was on reduced lunch and yet by the time I was 12, I was comfortable at a symphony, at a ballet. I was exposed to an amazing library system and was encouraged to read. I got my library card as soon as I could sign my name and I practiced from five to six to be able to sign my name, even though that wasn't on the curriculum yet I started reading it too.

Speaker 1: 13:05

So you know, as a sociologist. We talk about demography isn't destiny, but it's darn sure deterministic. And the social determinants of health is where I focused my attention, because I grew up in front of a dump. Literally there was a chain link fence separating the end of the housing project with one of the major landfills in Cincinnati, because that's where cheap land was. 30 years later I'm now able to put that story together and things like environmental racism and where you build public housing, because that's where you can get cheap land for underfunded government projects and really the barriers to success that exist for people who are embroiled in poverty and using public assistance that says you can't make more than this much money or will take away your benefits, or in my day it was you can't have a male in the home. So I grew up knowing that there was no incentive for my mother and father to make it work because financially it was better off for them both to live in separate households. So you know my own personal story is very important to me because I quote unquote got out. My mom worked really hard and was able to win us a house in one of the dollar lotteries. I don't know if these still exist, but they'll take condemned houses and that have been taken over by the county and they'll raffle them off for a dollar plus guarantee that you can have it renovated to a certain standard. So when I was nine years old, we left the projects and we moved to a very low, lower middle class working class let's be real neighborhood and also it was ours and I got to pick the color of my walls and I got to have room and we didn't have to have social workers coming over to check on us and make sure that we were doing all the things in compliance, and there were a lot of kiddos that I left behind.

Speaker 1: 15:16

I was never sent to a neighborhood school. I was always bussed to schools, to magnet programs. I grew up in the first public Montessori school in the country. So I'm super weird in that I have a completely different pedagogical foundation than so many black children in Cincinnati proper, regardless of their economic status. And that carried on, I would. You know Walnut Hills, which is still one of the top 100 high schools in the country. It's a classical college preparatory school. I'm a legacy to Walnut Hills. I have my mother, my uncle, you know.

Speaker 1: 15:59

So education was very much pushed in our family and I responded to it very well.

Speaker 1: 16:04

I have two younger brothers who responded very, very differently.

Speaker 1: 16:08

So it's important to me to not only account for and leverage the privileges that I've been given, but also to understand that stimulus and response is not guaranteed and to make as much spaciousness for as many different experiences to thrive within the systems of education because, like you said, it's critical to our future as a planet that we scrape as much talent and grow as much talent from all the places and all the experiences.

Speaker 1: 16:44

And so, yeah, I spend a lot of time kind of holding space open for students who don't think they can come through, to come through and to really let them have the experiences in the educational system that they have and try to use my networks and my knowledge to place them where they best belong, including sometimes a different educational environment than where I work and what we sit in, and even you know when they're looking at where they want to go after high school, like really helping them customize that journey to fit their needs and to account for their needs.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Many of the students that I work with are like me and they were never told they were allowed to have needs. When you grow up like me, you know that you have to get out, you know you have to get up and you know you have to give back, and those are put upon us. To whom much is given, much is required. It is something that I heard from lots of different places and I took that very, very seriously. And I still do take it seriously and luckily, with the work that I've been doing in the trauma informed space, I'm allowing that to soften and come from a place of joy and generation and not from a place of obligation and fear.

Speaker 2: 18:14

One of the reasons I love talking to you is because when you're sharing your experience, it clicks things in around mine that like we're a little wobbly or nebulous and I'm like oh, oh yeah. And you know, you and I were having this conversation around black excellence and I am so incredibly grateful for the fact that my grandparents on both sides white and black really understood that the way that they were going to help their kids my parents and my uncles was through education, was through ensuring that they got good educations. And you know, you talk about your experience of like getting out and then paying it forward. My experience was less getting out, Like the getting out was was two generations ago. You know my grandfather, so my let me get this right my great, great uncle. He was the principal of an all black school that ended up getting integrated and so he really protected my grandfather, ensured he was involved in basketball and you know there's some ways for him to get out. So it's so that get out generation was was two generations ago, and I believe that my sister and I were really the last like carry it forward. You know, take it as far as you can, keep progressing, keep bringing the legacy to fruition, and one of my absolute favorite things is looking at my children and going.

Speaker 2: 19:47

I don't know if all three of them will go to college, and I love that for them, you know well. First of all, we've told them, you know, like, look, three of the four of us have doctorates and your dad could totally have a doctorate, Right, Like, if it, if it made any sense for him to get one, he'd get one. And what are you going to do? Get to? There's no way for you to carry this forward any further, other than what you just said around shifting your education and what you decide to deepen into and learn more about and bring to the world. Shifting to a place of joy and generation instead of obligation. And because I don't fault my parents for this one bit, but there was no conversation around if I was going to college or not. It was which college are you going to and how much of a scholarship are you going to get?

Speaker 1: 20:43

Absolutely Same same and you know that, juxtaposed with the environment, like you are special, you can do things that other people can't, and so you are required to embody that fully. But it was a vision that was cast forward for me. Yeah, I started looking at colleges at 13 years old, when I took the SAT, because there was a talent search program and what I understood at the core of my being was that I had to put myself in positions where people could see the academic talent specifically academic talent. I have other talents those were not nurtured and to position myself to get into the best school, the school with the best reputation possible. I applied to 10 colleges. I got accepted to 10 colleges and I ended up accepting admission to Cornell University because at the time I was obsessed with hospitality management.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Again, through the trauma work, I'm like oh, first responders, hospitality, these nursing, these are places where people with a lot of trauma show up. So now it makes a lot of sense and it was a flame out here. It was my first academic failure. It rocked my identity. I had no idea who I was without academic accomplishments. I had no idea I had never had to be resilient in that way and I wasn't. There was no like OK, we're going to dig in the office hours and set up study groups. No, it was like I am a failure, I am disappointing the fought and died, I am a waste of the investments that were given and I'm the one who got out. And so look at what I'm doing with my chance. That sits with me every time I sit across from a transfer advisor or a student. Now I remember feeling like that and I remember all of the resources that it took to get me back to a more stabilized orientation of my internal worth. And so I start there with students and I start there with transfer folks because I am at a flagship university. Everybody thinks their student needs to be here or else what's the point. And I really tell people listen, this is a great place for a lot of humans and this is a place that will grind some other humans into the dirt. And let's do some real intentional thought processes and nervous system processes and resource evaluation, like let's survey and see if this is the right solution for your educational goals. And sometimes they're not.

Speaker 1: 23:45

And I've had a few students who have either transferred or chosen to go to a different place, and I keep my door open I say I want to know what happens, regardless of where you go. And I've gotten a couple of thank yous, like from people who made a different choice and they're so much happier, they're so much more regulated. Some of the things that are really hard to do here weren't as hard in other places and they're like and that was the same thing when I was teaching, too Like my students generally hated me after the 16 weeks but given a semester, and then they came back and they would say you know what? I thought you were just doing this out of dysregulation. And I'm like yeah, well, I was.

Speaker 1: 24:35

And also, but they're like I did this other thing and it was so much easier. I did this other thing and it made so much sense and that was actually how I was trained. And so I you know a little bit of the Midwest butt kicking that I got actually turns out to be just what some humans need, and I supplement that with a little bit of the wild westness of there is no right answer. Yeah, we get to pioneer our own course and now you are a legal adult, let's do it Like. We get to hold up everything that you've been taught and take a look at it and you're gonna keep some of it, and you're gonna negotiate some of it, and you're gonna bury some of it or burn it with fire, and I will be here to support you at every step of the way.

Speaker 2: 25:27

You just said a whole word right at that very end. I was like, oh, okay, I'm listening to her and I'm like just taking mom, like, oh, I know where I want to take this. And then I'm the last part. I was like, nope, going somewhere different, because you know, we do a lot of the same, that same work, at the Institute of like and and I know you know this, you've been through you, you've been in a lot of our spaces for a hot minute now and and that, like, we're gonna hold this up and look at it and go yeah, I know I know you thought this is where you were supposed to be and it still might be where you're supposed to be.

Speaker 2: 26:03

And Also, are we allowed to question that thought? Yeah, like, are we allowed to hold up this identity that you've created for yourself or that other people have kind of, you know, strong-armed you into creating for yourself For some of us from a very young age? And and like, can we? Can we hold it up? Can we look at it? Can we examine it from all sides? Can we look at how harmful it is, can we look at how beneficial it is? And Can we take the emotion out of it for a minute, and then also Can we go way deeper into the emotion of what it means to hold this identity than probably anyone's ever held space for you to do so. I Know you do that because we've had conversations about the students who come right through your door and sit on the couch and like in existential despair, like what am I doing with my life? And that's not. You know, that's 1819, 20.

Speaker 1: 26:59

Yeah, and it it first of all want to thank your spaces because Before it was an instinct, and particularly well developed instinct, it was a way to Make sense of the educational trauma that I experienced because I came out here to be a doctorate. I came here pursuing a doctorate in sociology and I left at the critical stage in the process called all-bit dissertation and Again, just like that Cornell academic failure I had. All of that came right back like who are you? You, your mom, didn't work so hard to get you out of the projects for you to go ahead and mess this chance up and and and that was.

Speaker 1: 27:50

That was what I lived with for a couple years. Yeah, and as I began to put post doctoral life together in a different way, I Knew what I wanted to take forward, what I wanted to keep and when I wanted to burn with fire and so Going into getting more trauma informed because I had done a ton of research in Intergenerational trauma as part of of my degree and I had actually worked in hospital based Trauma before that. I was part of an injury prevention team that specifically worked with black community churches to Do a lot of education around car seats and helmets specifically, but also just in general, thinking about intergenerational trauma from a physical safety perspective and the ways in which our neighborhoods and streets might not be set up with the same safety Mechanisms as other neighborhoods that maybe had a different ratio or ethnic mix or different socioeconomic status. So I've been in trauma spaces and and what I really wanted to do is meld this big brain that's hypervigilant and Overthink and and to really make that my superpower and, as I bring my nervous system more into Alignment and attunement, the capacity to attune, to really be able to give that to students way earlier than my mid 40s, which was when I found it, and In doing that they can make their own decisions. I don't need to put my experience on them, I don't need To save them from their disapproving families or or any of that. I can present them with opportunities to experience a different way and space and language and vocabulary, to figure it out and feel it out, and then they put together their own solution packages and I just kind of support them and try and Hold them accountable to what they've built for themselves. So it's not accountability like, oh, a late library, fine, or anything. It's more accountability like listen, you sat on my couch and told me that you really wanted to live your life in your truth and I want to support you in doing that. So how can we regulate you to have hard conversations to tell people who you are, rather than Exist in like a passive, aggressive? Go along to get along. Don't rock the boat piece, because you're in this liminal state. It's it's hard. It's hard to be a college student and it doesn't end in college.

Speaker 1: 30:48

I do this now with my friends and my colleagues anybody who's in transition, anybody who's Getting a new piece of data that rocks their world and flips their identity. I have a friend who Her last child was born with Down syndrome and she's a highly accomplished you know PhD and it was a shock. It was it. It was a shock and it took some integration, it took some Processing, it took some holding up of oh, here's all these places where I was holding on to these expectations and these ideas about myself. And now that this new piece of data is inserted, I gotta go through the archives and like reframe and and some stuff's got to go.

Speaker 1: 31:36

And I love holding that kind of space for people. I love watching them move through Into self-trust, I like watching them experiment and be like whoa, mess that one up, how do we repair around that Whoops? And then when they fly, when they notice themselves doing the new thing or being the new being, it is so incredibly gratifying. That, to me, has become my definition of education Still love text, I still love vocabulary and it's no longer the end. All be all of the possibilities of education.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, I've seen you do this. You know I've seen you be that human for people in our collective. You know that are in that like liminal. You know, and it's one thing for me as the, the putter together of the, the group of humans, to to hold that space to. You know the proverbial couch for you to plop down on and go like what am I doing? And I've seen you do it several times with people where you very and it's very when when I think of auntie and my sister and I were talking about this that is a respected elder in your community but not respected because you have to respect them, right, like you respect them because when they tell you something, it is valuable for you personally, it helps you come more into alignment. And so I've seen you just do that and and and really embody that role so many times and see so many of our collective members be like thank you, right, and you know what you're talking about here with this, this education piece.

Speaker 2: 33:36

One of my youngest and I we watch, like we get hooked on shows, and you know some of these shows people are like, oh my gosh, you're watching this with your 11 year old and I'm like, yeah, because we can talk through it. Like what better way to educate her about some really hard topics that she said yesterday? She was like, oh yeah, seven years till I'm an adult, and I was like Holy cow, that's not a lot of time, you know. I know that feels like a really long time to her. I'm like that's not a lot of time. And so we're watching this show. A rational with how.

Speaker 2: 34:06

I can't remember his last name, but Jesse, he was the one of the famous detectives on Law and Order and also in Rent and he has his. He's a professor and he has his students do quote unquote experiments. And at first my academic brain had a very hard time with this show because I was like there's no control and they're like setting up experiments with no IRB. He's just like sending them out and they're doing the thing. And then I thought about it and I'm like, well, you know, he's actually telling them to go out into the real world and see and translate data, translate topics and concepts, and be like, does this actually work where I'm at, with who I am? And I was like, oh, this is rubbing up against me so much because this is what I wasn't allowed to do with my doctoral degree, which is exactly what I was trained to do with my doctoral degree. I wasn't allowed to do this in the academic space and at the Institute I get to do this every, every single day, which is like what's so exciting for me. So whenever people are like, oh, like you're not really using your degree, I'm like I'm using it more than I ever dreamed possible.

Speaker 2: 35:14

And I brought that up because, you know, I think of one of the other identities you mentioned is, you know, the LGBTQIA plus community, and you know we've spoken publicly, my husband and I. We have a non binary kiddo and our eldest and who changed your name. And you know, talk about a moment where, as an adult, there's a lot of deconstruction. That gets to happen, especially when you you identify as Catholic, when you identify as a person who is tolerant and accepting, and all of these things kind of come up and you're like, wait a second, am I Catholic? Am I tolerant and accepting? Am I these things that I've ascribed to myself and just never really thought about because they never got challenged? Yeah, and you've been you. I think we're also.

Speaker 2: 36:09

You know, there's so many reasons why I feel like we met when we did.

Speaker 2: 36:14

But one of the beautiful things about you being in our lives is you were one of the first humans I ever met who used she they pronouns and I was like wait, you can do both. Like what's going on Right, and you actually were a human that had already kind of cracked that door open to go okay, maybe these are things you get to look at more. And so then when our, our kiddo went through it, it's like all right, you now get to kind of walk your talk, you get to practice what you preach. And the interesting thing is is that you know my husband and I we both came out of that whole process. I won't speak for him, but we came out of that process in different ways and you know we both examined our beliefs in different ways and we both love the shit out of our kid and accept them fully and all of that. And you know, what I believe religiously now is different, what I believe politically now is different, what I believe in a lot of areas is different and that was really scary.

Speaker 1: 37:17

Yeah yeah. Try being in your mid 30s when you come to the realization that the categories that you have lived with literally I'm an extremely bitable human, like no one ever made room for anything different than your cisgender, heterosexual and straight. You're a girl, you're a woman. You're definitely I mean, I grew up when pregnancy was the big bugaboo black woman, and so I got so much don't get pregnant that nothing else came through literally nothing else.

Speaker 1: 38:00

So, as smart as I was, as all these books that I had read, I was like clueless on a huge part of my life, which is my gender and sexual identity, and there had been a lot of friction because I showed up in a lot of spaces as a young person a little bit too much tomboyish.

Speaker 1: 38:19

In some interesting ways it wasn't sports.

Speaker 1: 38:22

I am very protective of my women friends and I love to spoil my women friends in ways that is extremely threatening to folks in traditional heterosexual relationships that haven't been challenged, and so I had a lot of my friends, boyfriends and husbands be like if we ever get into a fight you're going to go move in with tomorrow and leave me, because just the way my energy and I always thought that there was something wrong with that and I tried to mold it and shift it and like be a certain kind of distant from from the humans that I love so much.

Speaker 1: 39:02

And then, when the opportunity came up to leave home and come out West to go to graduate school, I was working on a different project, a public health project around sexually transmitted infections, and I found a sexuality institute that was like a summer research institute and I'm a good student and I knew I hadn't been in the classroom in a while, so I was like what better than to spend the summer before I start my doctoral studies boning up in San Francisco, which doesn't suck, and it was totally that stereotypical you go to San Francisco and get turned out. I met people who were like I am queer in this way and I am gay in this way and I am Polly and I am disabled and kinky and I'm like I was like you messed yourself up like in the best of ways, right In the best way.

Speaker 1: 40:00

And so I arrived on campus with this license to study and this new awareness of possibilities and so many things like you said earlier about when I taught, so many things clicked in the place. I was able to go back and do a queer reread of my entire history. I was like, oh, I just didn't have the vocabulary or the social space to make these explorations. And again that forms a lot of how I show up and what I want to be in the work that I want to put out in the world. And even now using they then pronouns came way later and it came after working with the students, because I was aware of some ways that my preaching was out of alignment with my practice, because I am in a very straight passing relationship.

Speaker 1: 40:56

I am with a man who has never had a question about his gender identity and he's white to boot. So we're in an interracial relationship and we married late and we have chosen not to have children. So we're doing a very queer project, a very queer project within a very, very traditional set of windowpains and I was aware of that and it didn't feel right. It felt like passing if folks know about the tradition of non white folks who can pass as white, passing as white. It felt like passing, and so that's when I added they to my she pronouns and I tell everybody you can't get it wrong. It's not triggering or harmful and it doesn't activate my dysphoria to say she or to refer to me as a woman and also because I'm a history buff.

Speaker 1: 41:53

Nothing is, it's not as simple as like my body doesn't feel no.

Speaker 1: 41:57

In this country, the body that I live in, an existing, has never been allowed traditional womanhood, and so non binary makes complete sense to me in the fullness of the truth, not only of my internal but my external and how I am framed and even what health conditions are in my life course because of epigenetics and histories and lack of access to different resources.

Speaker 1: 42:30

So it's been a wild ride. It's been internal family systems work before I knew what that was bringing out, the exiles of all of those behaviors that were queer and neurodivergent, that I was raised in a family where there was no way I could have been diagnosed neurodivergent without causing extreme harm to the family, perhaps even being taken away from my source family, and now just having all these possibilities to explore and not know myself and to be in that experimental phase, I think that helps me do that for other folks, whether they're students or even my colleagues, who were like I'm too old to explore and I'm like, yeah, you're never too old to explore and what's going on in this world? We better all start exploring.

Speaker 2: 43:26

Yeah, yeah, we were just talking about before we started and I was like, oh, I almost wish that we'd said this after we started recording and I'm like, oh sweet, I get to bring it in. I'm gonna be 37 in a few weeks and I grew up in TGIF, like Family Matters, boy Meets World, all of those things. And I had just seen a TikTok before I hopped on with Topanga Danielle Fishel, who has not aged a day, and I saw her and it reminded me of a little conversation I was having with my sister the other day where another woman had come up. Oh gosh, I can't remember the name of the band, but I saw her. And in the comments cause I also like to go to the comments this woman said do I want to be her or do I want to be with her? Like I can't really tell. And I was like, oh yeah, that's what's happening inside of my body right now. Like there are instances in which I see women and I'm like do I wanna look like her or do I wanna look at her or do I wanna be with her or be her? And that was something that, when I was younger, was there, and yet it was never something that consciously, I even thought to put into words and express externally, because my brain didn't understand the construct right. It's like before, if you've lived in a space where you've never seen the ocean and you've never even read a book that's described the ocean and, like you, have no knowledge of what an ocean is, cause you live in a landlocked space and somebody takes you to the ocean and you're like whoa Right, that was the experience. And then I started.

Speaker 2: 45:16

And so when our kiddo came out and so we started having these conversations, I was like, wait, did I ever think about if I wanted to get married or not? Like, did I ever think about if I wanted to have kids or not? Did I ever ask myself any of those questions, or was it? No, you're gonna grow up and you're gonna fall in love and you're gonna get married, you're gonna have babies, you're gonna work until you retire, you're gonna get a really great degree, you're gonna have a six-figure job, you're gonna have the 2.5 kids and the dog and whatever, and like that's it. And so at that point, when our kid comes out, we have the dog, we have the three kids, we overshot it, we have three kids, and yet I have to ask myself those questions and like my husband did not, but like that did not feel good for him to have me ask those questions, and I'm like but look you, and he started asking himself some questions too. And I was like but we have to ask ourselves these questions, as uncomfortable as they are.

Speaker 1: 46:14

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:15

Because I wanna know that I wanna be married, I wanna know that I wanna have kids. I wanna know that, like I am coming to a place where I am choosing that and there's a part of me that's like do not say this out loud, but I have so many mom friends who are like man, if I had known this was an option, I wouldn't have had kids. Now I'm not that woman. I would have still chosen to have kids and there's some grief in that that gets to be felt of. Like I quote unquote made a decision that wasn't a choice and now I'm finding out it was a choice Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 47:00

And it's the same on this side. Being queer in the weird way that I am is not super stabilizing for the human that I'm married with, like, because our traditions, our society, has taught us to be very possessive and to see any questioning as a signal of dissatisfaction. And that's not what it is. It is a commitment to truth and it's a commitment to intentionality. And luckily my spouse is very resilient in some other ways, so it's not a deal breaker. But it takes a particular kind of mental toughness to be with a person who says I'm pansexual or I'm bisexual, or I'm bisexual or I'm questioning my gender, or I have friends whose spouses have come out as trans. Yeah, and all of a sudden you're like what does this mean for our relationship? And sometimes it does mean separation, and sometimes it means falling in love with a whole new person within the confines of where you are and we don't have conversations that support these experiences, we don't have tools and resources that support these experiences and we really are just getting into the vocabulary and like developing language to put words to it. So when people who don't have to have a need, a compulsion, to answer these questions, go on about the alphabet soup or all the pronouns, or talk about how much of a burden it is to use they as a singular pronoun. It does irritate me a little bit. And then my educator takes over and I'm like what in your life would benefit from an examination, an inventory? What could be strengthened in your life if you just didn't take it as status quo? And so that's really what I hope to be bringing to the world in terms of business offerings and products and services here.

Speaker 1: 49:17

Next is I'm part of Generation X and I love it. I've been interested in Generation X as a generation since the early 90s when it kind of came into fruition. So I know it's formed from marketing. It was never intended to be the psychoanalysis of classes of people. It's about how to get you to buy things. And also it's just, it's so interesting the shared experiences that are drawn upon. And I say we're X for a reason, and I do think we're meant to be a bridge population to a new set of conversations. And so I wanna reach back, I wanna reach forward, I wanna reach across difference and really bring some of these gender-based conversations into a space where we can question them safely, with psychological safety, wherever we are entering from.

Speaker 2: 50:15

I love how full circle this came.

Speaker 2: 50:16

Coming back to that, let me back up.

Speaker 2: 50:18

First of all, I'm so freaking excited for this Y'all don't even know, like the 10% of me that just still gets so stinking, turned on thinking about oh my gosh, how can we market and how can we message and how can we strategize, how can we offer this? Like when you started talking about this, I was like I am not gonna firehose you because I have so many ideas, and also like I want it to come out organically and in the most aligned way for you possible. And I'm so excited about this because I just there's such a need and this is come back to that full circle part right, I actually think that treating Gen X and boomers anyone Gen X and older as humans who don't care or humans who are completely comfortable with the status quo and don't wanna change, I think that is one of the most damaging things that we do. I think what we actually do is what and I'm gonna say a bold thing here is the same thing as not teaching someone how to read or write, but letting them keep their guns. That's right.

Speaker 2: 51:25

You are saying I trust you to be violent and nothing else, and like that's just not the way that I mean. I'm not gonna speak for you, but that's definitely not the way that I wanna view anyone in humanity is. Oh, and please.

Speaker 1: 51:40

I was trained to be a black feminist by a black feminist, patricia Hulcolins, who just won a million dollars for her thought contributions in black feminism which is wild was my undergrad advisor and one of the things about black feminism that is very distinct is that black feminism does not leave men and boys behind. It definitely sees a uplift of the entire community and the advancement of the evolution of gendered ideas as all of our work and benefits to everybody. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to bringing that core part of my being out to say to folks it's okay to have big feelings. It's okay to be confused and scared and feel like your foundation's being rocked because a little bit it is and it's also okay to use that as fuel to get curious and to connect, to connect in a new way, connect in a different way so that we can create these new possibilities. Of some of my students come to me and tell me stories about their grandparents being the most forward with accepting their different gender projects or even their different life projects.

Speaker 1: 53:11

I am working with a lot of women who don't wanna have children. They are heterosexual women and they just don't wanna choose motherhood and in the cultures of many of the students that I work with. That is not okay. There is like that scene is something wrong. So it's fine to have traditions and big feelings and questions and confusion and what if? What if you could get supported through that and you don't have to fix anything, including yourself? You may get to learn some new skills. You may get to approach life's curriculum a little bit differently. You may be able to access some pieces of yourself that you didn't know existed from a curriculum Like what if we could structure it less as you getting shocked and surprised at Thanksgiving dinner with.

Speaker 1: 54:08

Here's a step-by-step process that we can walk through and deconstruct these things, including how can I give you pieces of your culture that have been stolen by colonization? The reality is that alternative gender categories and existences exist in almost every culture that's been colonized. It exists in Hawaiian culture, it exists in many, many, many native nations, it exists in many African traditions, and colonization is what gave us a form of Christianity, as, especially as African descended folks in the United States, most of us are some form of Christian by tradition. It's what our mamas were and our parents were, and then spirituals and enslaved right Like, and also we were given a particular version of the Bible, literally All of the pieces of the Bible that enslaved folks were given when they taught a few people how to read the Bible and that is it.

Speaker 1: 55:18

Removed the Exodus story, because that was the story that talked about slaves rising up and taking back their identity and leaving their masters, their overlords. So that's cool and that's interesting and it's legitimate and I wanna be able to be like that's cool and that's legitimate. And also, if you knew that this is not actually foreign to our experience, what could that open up for you in terms of healing and other parts that have nothing to do with your personal gender or sexuality or your Christianity? How can you make more room for other folks and make more room for yourself?

Speaker 2: 56:02

Yeah, yeah. I'm just really grateful for number one, for your willingness to you're offering to come on here when I was like.

Speaker 2: 56:11

I don't know what I'm gonna talk about, and you were like, oh, let's talk. I'm like thank you, thank you, number one, for that, number two for like, just your friendship and your thought leadership, and also like I think the thing that really just resonates so deeply in me in our connection and watching the work that you do in the world, is you are I don't wanna say this the work that you are doing is so beneficently subversive which is exactly how I describe what we do at the Institute. It is so beneficently subversive, and what I mean by that is like traditional subversion is like I'm gonna come in and just like covertly, fuck your stuff up. And the beneficent piece is like I'm gonna come in and, like you said, I'm gonna, I am going to wreck the way you look at life in the best, most beneficial way for you possible, with your full consent. With your full consent, so we're not gonna look at anything that you don't wanna look at. And also and you're allowed to be like I don't wanna look at this and also let's look at this. Yeah, or I'm really pissed about looking at this and also let's look at this, or I'm really pissed that I looked at this and now I can't see things the way that I used to, and so can we have a conversation about that.

Speaker 2: 57:39

Like you said this and I think this is such a key piece for what you're going to be doing in the work that you are doing and are moving towards doing more, as your business is people are allowed to have their feelings Like you're allowed to be, like this is bullshit to you, as they're learning about gender and identity and self-expression and sexuality and all these things, because the beautiful part of that it's the same when people come to me around trauma and like saying like it's bullshit that people are acting this way and showing up very dysregulated. Show up dysregulated to me, babe, right, because if you're showing up dysregulated to me and we're working through it, if people are showing up dysregulated to you and you're working through it, what that means is you're not showing up dysregulated to the person in your life that it would be so profoundly harmful to do so, and what you don't know in showing up dysregulated, is that you're making yourself vulnerable and allowing yourself to experience that unconditional acceptance and undivided attention, and so you're getting the medicine regardless.

Speaker 1: 58:47

So you can show up dysregulated like around all of it. You can show up dysregulated around all of it and still get the medicine. And if you only wanna take one vitamin, then that's cool. Yeah, like I guarantee you. What I know for sure, for sure, is that my medicine is time released. So it'll be a year from now and something will happen in your life and that piece, that super activated, you will drop in and you'll use it and you'll be like, oh, and whether you come back to me or not, you're changed Like I'm a theater kid and that song at the end of Wicked is changed for good. Yeah, you know, and that, if we can be that to each other, yeah, a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 59:41

What a novel form of education.

Speaker 1: 59:43

Absolutely, and you don't need to pay $60,000 to come to a flagship university to do it Gosh, preach, oh gosh.

Speaker 2: 59:52

Look at who you want to. I'm here, right. I'm like, as I sit here with, like we just got my student loans under six figures, hallelujah, right. And it's like, yeah, you don't. You don't need a doctorate, you don't need an AB, like to be at ABD level, like you don't need any of that. This is, I think, one of the things we say at the institute. That I think translates over to your work is like this is a remembrance. Like this is an uncovering, not a recovery you know, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:00:27

So, yeah, sometimes the education you need the most is like forgetting some stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:00:34

Yeah, unlearning, unlearning some stuff. Sometimes the best learning is unlearning yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:00:40

Well, my dear friend, I'm sure that you've intrigued many a listener with this. Where can people go to learn more about you, learn more about the work that? You're doing how you're being in the world.

Speaker 1: 1:00:54

All right. So you know you've heard about how I show up in the world, so most of my work is actually not publicly accessible yet. So if you're curious and want to have a conversation, it will not be a sales call. It will not be me trying to sell you something. So I can be reached at Tam Van Horn, which is my name, at Gmail. That's also my handle on Facebook and Instagram, tam Van Horn. And if you want to check out my thought leadership that I put out in the business space on T-Corn leadership strategies as my page on Facebook, I like making little videos. You'll get to see a lot of Boulder, colorado. You'll get to see the mountains and the creeks and really pretty buildings, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:01:42

I'd love to further the conversation and I work in a very bespoke manner, so if you are cooking up something and I'm the missing ingredient, let's chat. I love that.

Speaker 2: 1:01:57

And also, don't worry y'all, I will be using my Midwestern butt kicking came to get some more of this public because, please, please, so you know there might be a TikTok channel or something coming, you can talk. Yeah, so when that comes, however it comes, we'll circle back and make sure we add it to the show notes and we'll make sure that we have your email and your Facebook and the show notes for everyone as well. Thanks for joining me, friend. I love you so very much. Say thank you. All right, y'all, we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Invitations ahead to our show notes to check out the offers and connections we mentioned. Or you can just head straight over to InstituteforTraumacom and hop in our email list so that you never miss any of the cool things that we're doing over at the Institute. Invitations to be well and to take care of yourself this week and we'll see you next time.