The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation

Drs. Mackenzie Steiner and Alex Iantaffi discuss their collaborative program, The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation. This is a new, somatic-based program created by trans people for trans people in service to our collective liberation. In this episode, they talk about how the program started, the values it’s rooted in, and how gender is an embodied experience. Mackenzie and Alex also talk about how their collaborative process is heart-centered and based in relationality, rather than product-focused and treating the collaboration as a mean to an end, as is often the case in dominant culture. While the program is by and for trans people, the episode has much to offer to cis folks as well in relation to a deeper understanding of gender and to what a collaborative process centered in decoloniality might look like.  

Mackenzie Steiner is a reformed clinical psychologist with over 20 years of clinical experience specializing in attachment, gender identity and socialization, as well as addictions and trauma recovery. For 20 of those years, she worked with veterans facing just about every possible type of concern related to their identities, relationships and mental health, but particularly at the interface of addictions and complex post-traumatic stress. Mackenzie transitioned into private practice at the beginning of 2023 to stretch her wings and be free to practice with communities and in ways unencumbered by organizational constraints. At the heart of her work is building an attuned, compassionate and safe relational base from which to explore the challenging aspects of one’s history and how it intersects with the present moment. Mackenzie accomplishes this through a mosaic of attachment, mindfulness, emotionally and somatically focused approaches as well as parts-work perspectives that she has found most efficiently and humanely promote long-term change and deep healing. And she has found that nature can be a profound ally for this process! 

On the more personal side, she is an avid outdoors-person who is most nourished by activities ranging from landscaping to hiking, climbing and backpacking. She is also a seeker of mysteries, having an insatiable curiosity to discover the knowledge and wisdom underlying our physical, psychological, relational and spiritual realities in service of promoting our health and authentic evolution. 

Find out more about the Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation and Dr. Mackenzie Steiner at the following links: 

Website: https://www.gender-alchemy.org/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collectivegenderalchemy/ @collectivegenderalchemy 

Dr. Mackenzie Steiner’s website: https://naturesmosaictherapy.com/ 

Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub

Transcript

0:33

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Gender Stories. I know that I'm always delighted, but I'm extra delighted because I get to talk about a project that um my wonderful colleague and now friend, Dr. Mackenzie Steiner and I have been working on for quite some time. So first of all, let me introduce you to the wonderful Mackenzie. Mackenzie Steiner is a reformed clinical psychologist with over 20 years of clinical experience. specializing in attachment, gender identity, and socialization, as well as addictions and trauma recovery. For 20 of those years, she worked with veterans facing just about every possible type of concern related to their identities, relationships, and mental health. But particularly, she worked at the interface of addictions and complex post-traumatic stress. Mackenzie transitioned into private practice at the beginning of 2023. to stretch her wings and be free to practice with communities and in ways unencumbered by organizational constraints. At the heart of her work is building an attuned, compassionate, and safe relational base from which to explore the challenging aspects of one's history and how it intersects with the present moment. Mackenzie accomplishes this from a mosaic of attachment, mindfulness, emotionally and somatically focused approaches, as well as parts work perspective that she has found most efficiently and humanely promote long-term change and deep healing. And she has found that nature can be a profound ally for this process. On the more personal side, she's an avid outdoors person who's most nourished by activities ranging from landscaping to hiking, climbing, and backpacking. She's also a seeker of mysteries, having an insatiable curiosity to discover the knowledge and wisdom underlying our physical, psychological, relational, and spiritual realities in service of promoting our health and authentic evolution. Hi, Mackenzie. So good to have you here as a guest for Gender Stories. Thank you so much for making the time and agreeing to doing this with me. I really appreciate it. You're so welcome. I've been looking forward to this and imagining that given the project we've been working on at some point we would be doing this. So it's exciting to be here. So first of all, let's talk about what brought us together, like how we met each other. When we first met, you were in Austin, Texas, I believe, and now you're in California. I'm up in Minnesota, so we're not local to each other. And so let's explain to the listener a little bit about how we met. How does that sound? All righty. So as some of you might know, I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, just like Mackenzie is. And I have over the years done a few webinars for Somatic Experiencing International, which is the training home for Somatic Experiencing. And at one point, as part of the collaborative work that I've been doing with Somatic Experiencing International, I was one of the organizers, volunteer organizers for a gender and sexuality conference and I presented around I believe the topic of gender dysphoria from a somatic perspective if I remember correctly I was like I was trying to think back I was I was like I think that was the presentation and it's been a minute doesn't it so two years ago I was presenting on this and as I often do, especially when I'm feeling it, I said, you know, if anybody wants to collaborate, there is so much work to do on gender from a somatic perspective. And Mackenzie, you took that call, which was wonderful, because often people think that I'm just saying it for saying it, but I mean it. And you emailed me and we started this uh conversation. And then the conversation became this project, the Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation, which we'll tell listeners more about and now here we are, uh know, two and a bit years later, you know, having a project, having um something that we're ready to offer to the world um and doing this episode which is really wonderful. So I'm curious about what inspired you to kind of connect with me from that presentation. Yeah, so for me a little bit before that, I was two years into my transition and had been looking to, obviously I was deep diving into integrating this more into my practice. This was being having worked at the VA, wasn't a central piece to be focusing on issues of gender identity. And so I was rapidly absorbing lots of different perspectives and then I saw that somatic experiencing was going to be putting on this one day conference, which um I was very excited about. And then you sort of played to use the baseball metaphor cleanup at the end of the presentation and I was enjoying it. And then I heard you speak and it was like, my God, the level of subtlety and profundity of perspective around the community was so moving. I could feel your heart. was in it so deeply, like I feel your compassion. And I felt a sense of like, my God, I would love to work with this person. And afterwards I was sitting with a fair bit of anxiety about like, do I have, mean, I'm pretty young in this process around gender identity. And then I started to reflect on, well, like this is a, who knows where this is gonna go. I've been trying to step more into embracing mystery and not. having to know everything before I step in and there was a part of me like saying, think I need to do that. um And holding on to that I had, I felt like I had a lot of experiences and perspectives having worked with um complex trauma and addictions work. And I felt like, you maybe I will have something to share and contribute, you know, so I reached out and um here we are, you know, there's It's been long journey and a lot of things, a lot of water under the bridge in the process. Absolutely. And one of the things I love is that this hasn't been, I might get emotional when I talk about this actually, I just realized I was like tearing up and I was like, it has been a journey because this hasn't been just like, oh yeah, let's collaborate and make a product, right? What really struck me every time we spoke was, First of all, your deep authenticity and vulnerability, which I treasure with my whole heart. Not only you are a very experienced practitioner, and yes, sure, you might have been newer to your gender journey, but you are a very experienced mental health practitioner and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, but also the willingness of being so authentic, so vulnerable and so real, which is something I really deeply treasure, right? Even at the beginning, because it's been a couple of years with a lot of like health challenges and other changes in my life. And so I remember even early on, you were like, it's okay if you don't want to do this and you're trying to let me down gently. And I was like, no, no, no, I literally had to reschedule a couple of times because, you know, life is a lot and living with chronic health issues is a lot. so, you know, just even just initially like the very direct communication, which I really treasure. But then as we work together, you know, just we were really able to get vulnerable with each other. Finally, earlier this year, we met in person for the first time and you were so generous to open your home to me and one of my partners. And then at the second visit, because I got to visit you twice to one of my kids as well. And um it's just been wonderful, right? And from my perspective, because... It has not just been about let's do something that centers gender from a somatic perspective, but also let's really... uh go through a process that reflects our values, that goes as slow as we need to go, that has much integrity as we can, right? And really value the connection between us. So I don't know, that's how I've kind of experienced that process. And I'm curious about kind of your, at your end, kind of how you experienced that, because I really value that. I think... You can find collaborators professionally, but I think it's such a gift when you also find collaborators where the values align and there is this kind of depth of connection that then has led to a friendship as well as a collaboration. So I'm curious about your experience from that point of view. So I can really join you there. The experience that I had was very much in contrast with many of the ways that I've collaborated with others. From the very get-go, it was about relationship and heart first, more than anything. And most of the types of... When I've collaborated with other people or worked on projects, it's felt like the project is at the heart, that's the center. And so throughout this journey, whether it was you're needing to put some pauses on in my uncertainty and checking in like, hey, is this something that you're really interested in? Because there's a part of me like, maybe this isn't going to be the best thing. I'm not maybe the best person. There was some insecurity coming up yet again. um And you were very generous in being open and sharing that like, no, you're still very into the idea of what we were wanting to pull together. And so, and then that sort of like what started more on um something that you needed some space or time or some pauses, then it flipped, you know, as I went into eventually having surgeries and going through a divorce process and needing to take time or dealing with the emotional impacts of that. always felt like before we got to anything about this project that we were trying to bring into the world, It was always about checking in and it has always remained that throughout every meeting that we have, that as at the heart. Like our relationships centered first before we get into anything else. And I think it creates a incredibly um safe foundation for the work that we're doing. Absolutely, and I know that we want to talk a little bit more about that. But before we do that, let's talk about what we're doing, because we know what we're doing. But I just realized, I was like, yeah, we haven't told the listeners what we're doing yet. So we've come up with this beautiful program called The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation. which is kind of a somatic skills program by trans people for trans people and trans people as the largest, broadest umbrella. So trans, non-binary, two-spirit, gender-expansive. anybody who feels like who can resonate outside of the cisgender experience, let's say, is welcome. And there's so much to say about this. But let's start with how did we decide to do this? There were so many different directions that we could have gone. And I'm actually trying to remember myself. was like, what happened two years ago when we started talking? I we got very excited about oh how somatic skills could be really helpful within our trans community. And then kind of we came up with this beautiful program eventually, which did take us a long time to kind of develop. And I love what you said about um that throughout the process, it was always people first. was like checking in with each other, making sure we were okay, making sure that, you know. we have the space and connection we needed to do this work, which in a way it's reflected in how we develop the curriculum too. But let's try to bring ourselves back to our first conversations two years ago. And why did we feel that something like this was needed within our community? Yeah, for me, I was very conscious of the ways in which I've had a long standing concern for marginalized communities, even before I had the words for it. And I didn't really ever understand why. Like, there's a part of me that's wondered, like, is it because of my own degree of marginalization from an early standpoint without being known as trans or any of those things, there was a way in which I was um sort of seen as less than by so many. And so there was a part of me like, maybe it's because of that that I have this sense of connection with others who are struggling or suffering. um There's also that part of me, you know, I'm neuro spicy. So, you know, there's a part of me that very much believes in fairness and that is incredibly important, you know, and so. There was an awareness of, I feel very privileged and have been very privileged in my life at a lot of different levels. There's a feeling of wanting to give back. And I think this, em you've been doing this work and been a part of community. And um I've been really moved by the levels of activism and advocacy that I heard through even your first presentation, but getting to know you. m And I've always had this idea of wanting to give back. I'd already started a process locally, taking some of the principles and ideas that I had started to develop and work with veterans around trauma healing uh and trying to do it in a way that felt gentle and supportive rather than some of the more traditional models. And so for me, it was this idea that we could begin to share these ideas with our community. give a shared language that allows us to start to dialogue with one another, learn how to better support one another, and through a very different lens in a lot of ways. One that's more somatically informed, more uh of a bottom-up process than this conventional, therapeutic idea of top-down and dominating the body, dominating our emotions through some perceived action that we think is going to be most therapeutic. Like how do we support communities to then be able to come together, you know, because so many of our community members have struggled with a lot of uh difficulty, trauma, hardship over the course of coming out. And I think there can be a fracturing that happens in relationship because of our, each of our different wounds don't always jive well with each other. And how can we find a way to... help support the community to come together, especially at a time that's gotten progressively harder over time politically for our community. It feels even more important and timely that we have a shared weight of coming together and eventually supporting one another in the long run, uh realizing the sort of collective strength that we have when we come together and sort of in keeping with some of the principles, you know. rely on one another, support the sort of community interdependence and solidarity. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it more beautifully. And I think that's one of things I really love about what we're co-creating with this program, The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation is that it's not just about somatic skills on an individual level and just like healing on an individual level, but it's on a relational level. And like you said, especially at this time of increasing anti-trans hostility, I think we are witnessing even more what sometimes is called lateral violence, like aggression within our own community. I've seen people talk about it's because some trans activists in our own community have gone too far, whereas because non-binary people are trying to push the edges of gender too far. And I can have a lot of compassion for that and I think that happens in a lot of minoritized communities. When we're under attack we go into the survival mode and so it can be easy to think about okay let me look around and who's to blame of the people around me and also who feels safe to blame to a certain degree because you know it doesn't always feel safe to kind of actually call out what's happening systemically in terms of the power over us right and so for me there is so much value in what we're trying to do because it's It's not just like, let's teach some somatic skills through the lens of gender, but it's actually like, let's build capacity within our community. Let's build the shared language. Let's kind of work together to... push back on this colonial white supremacist model, not just of gender, but also of healing, like you said, right? This top-down dominance of the prefrontal cortex, more towards this interdependent ecosystem um so that we can actually find strength within our own community and be able to connect because there are so many trans folks who are really isolated or find it difficult. to being community and even when we're organizing there can be so many fractures that happen because em we're suffering or in lots of different ways, right? Not just emotionally but also in terms of access to resources, access to stable housing for a lot of people, you know, and so when we're all in survival mode or a lot of us are in survival mode, how can we relate to each other? And so... I think that is so much part of our vision, but I'm curious about what stands out to you from our vision. Because as you were talking, that's what kind of came to me, but I'm curious about what you think it's like, the thing that you value the most about what we're trying to co-create. Well, I think you spoke a lot to that in what you just shared. And the thing that was coming up for me is thinking about how, and we've talked about how there seems to be this convergence of other sort of individuals in our community who are all sort of coming to this recognition of the need for solidarity of one form or fashion. You know, had Dean Spade recently on an episode and... his fantastic book of Love in a Fucked Up World, which is speaking very directly to these same ideas from a very different lens as an activist, but also supporting how do we support one another in moving towards recognizing the ways in which colonial, capitalistic, other types of forces are creating a fracturing, have created wounds that make it hard to come together. and the essential piece of that. So that feels at the heart of it. And m I love this idea of like, you know, there is the personal body, but there's the larger body of, and like how do like cells coming together and working together rather than like letting these intrusive forces sort of cause um us to struggle in terms of thriving and working together. um The other big piece I felt like was really that I liked about this idea is that my own experience has been in my own healing journey that so much of the conventional approaches don't address something that I think is foundational for most of us, which is, know, when we think about when gender emerges, when is it that we start to become aware of a sense of our relationship to this thing called gender that is a part of the world? It is at incredibly early ages when most of our experience is not a cognitive experience, it is an embodied experience. And when we have been exposed from such an early age repeatedly, whether it, even if it's not hugely traumatic events, just the constant erosion uh of this sort of what I like to refer to as an unintentional, unconscious gaslighting that occurs. Mm-hmm. most people that are out there, the parents, um others, they're not trying to gaslight. It is something that just happens because they are too are bought into this colonialist idea of gender that then teaches someone to disembodied, to not trust the intrinsic messages that are coming up within us. And so for me, a huge part of the heart of this is this idea that, and what I love about somatic work is it really bypasses all the intellectual uh ideas of what and how we should be, the idea of roles and patterns that we've been taught. And it gets to the heart of like reconnecting with body. We're really getting to the foundations of like our bodies will actually help to sort of guide us in the most effective way towards healing. It is also in our bodies that we can start to learn to trust ourselves again. And in that practice also learn how to support one another. Like that instead of getting into ideas of trying to convince or to present a certain perspective, we can meet each other in our emotional bodily experience and allow that to inform how we move forward. So to me, this is at the heart of it. I love the way you described it. I was like, wow, this sounds so cool. And I was like, yeah, that's what we're doing. But you described it so beautifully. And I think that there is something to be said. There's a couple of em things I'm thinking about at once. So I'm going to. But my mouth can only say one thing at a time. Isn't that such a limitation sometimes? So one part is like what I love about what we created with this program, The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation is that it's we're both talking about the individual and the collective body and the connection that we have to the larger ecosystem. So we have gone really the down the road of lots of like nature metaphors and we'll talk a bit about em that in more depth in a moment. But then there is also em this other piece about When we're talking about the collective body, I think there are so many fractures that because of that colonial rigid gender binary are within our community. Even a lot of therapeutic spaces or community spaces are often like, uh you know, trans masculine folks or trans feminine folks kind of separated from one another. And I think there is something to be said for us coming from uh different experiences as a trans person, myself and a trans feminine person yourself, like and also coming out at different ages as well. Those differences in a way strengthen the container and that's what I'm hoping for participants too, that when we come together from this more embodied... grounded place of not just in our prefrontal cortex, but in our kind of fully lived embodied experience. There's a sort of transformation alchemy that I think happens and that kind of just expands like the possibilities uh both on an individual level and on a collective level. I don't know how that's landing for you. I'm just kind of riffing on what you are saying at the moment if that's a word but I'm just curious about that's landing for you. No, em think that's the other piece of this is that instead of the more conventional, therapeutic sort of ways of going about this and the ways in which we can, for various reasons, because many of us have gotten into little silos of one form or another and it does sometimes feel easier as a way to reduce, I mean, we are all collecting, have so much we can emotionally contain at any given moment. We are all collectively really overburdened by the demands of life. our personal histories and the interface between that and the present. um And I think any, like it's normal that we might go towards like, oh, all the trans femmes into one group and all the trans mascs and the non-binary and we have all this separation, but I think there is something that's lost profoundly. you know, number one, we are a small community and our capacity to push back, to advocate, to support one another, we need all of us in the journey. And so, um It's okay that these other sort of communities spring up and they do serve a function. I know it's been hugely helpful for me to have a group of other transfems. And I've seen in my work sometimes where a transfeminine and transmasculine, like the journeys are really divergent in some ways, right? And they can, you know, when we come together, sometimes some of the things that we're pulling for from one another or inviting can feel conflicting. And yet in that rub, right, we don't grow. um If all we do is stay within our comfort zone, we cannot grow, right? We have to stretch outside of that. We have to, not to a point where it's overwhelming to our nervous system, but we have to create that rub that creates the potential for us to gain some resiliency, some strength, some capacity to like... struggle together with one another towards something larger than oneself. When we suffer in this culture that is hyper individualistic and can further encourage our fracturing. Absolutely. And I think that we have experienced that rub even as we were developing the project in a lot of ways, ah if you can hear some yapping, that's my new puppy for the Gender Stories listeners. So apologies for that. He's adorable. But whenever he hears my voice, he gets very excited. um And so we have experienced that kind of rub within our process too, right? Because in a way, like you said at the beginning, you know, So many collaborations are focused on a product. And we were actually like, relationship first. you know, humans first, like, we are way more important than any product that may or may not come out of this collaboration, right? And as we, which already is kind of counter cultural, right? Because there's always this push, but we have to do the things, right? We're putting time into this and time is precious, uh in air quotes, under capitalism, and we should have a product, right? But actually, so we already were kind of in a way pushing against that kind of cultural norm. And then as we were going through the process, we also started with this much more linear curriculum, right? Here is our curriculum, here the skills, right? We have all these documents that we were writing in and something wasn't quite coming together. And then we stepped back to look at what kind of where the pillars, which actually then became petals. Because the more we did this work, the more we realized, hang on a minute, why are we using all this kind of nature, organic metaphors, but then we're talking about the nervous system like it's an engine of a car, right, or a mechanism. And so we've also experienced, you know, kind of that rub like, against the culture, against the kind of traditional psychological framework of pathology and mechanics almost of the nervous system. And so that's been a journey to come to this, five petals that we came up with of embodiment, know, mystery, transmutation, interdependence and solidarity. And we even represented them in a way, in a nonlinear way on our website as a kind of pentacle to really highlight the connection between them and the nonlinearity. But it was a process and I'm curious to hear your perspective about how that journey for that process was for you as we were kind of having all those moments of like both insight but also in some ways discomfort, right, of doing something different, of doing something that was moving away from more traditional approaches to mental health in many ways. Yeah, I mean, we were sort of collectively working on this project and it did have a bit more of a conventional sort of mental health feel to it. And I loved that this process has been very organic in a lot of ways where we just sort of started to talk about what felt like the most important concepts, ideas, how to organize that in a more linear way. And then after a while, and I think if I recall correctly, we had a period where We sort of stepped back a little bit and then we came back as we were really looking to and getting ready to launch the project, you know, several months in advance. And then we started realizing like, there just feels like, you know, a need to step back from like all the trees that we had started to plant and put down, you know, in this sort of rows and everything um and start to say like, what are the big principles or practices and. And it really at the heart of it, you know, arose those concepts of embodiment, mystery, transmutation, interdependence, and then solidarity. And we even took some time to figure out what is the right order of these things, you know, and really getting that, you know, at some level, this idea of like focusing on our, our personal embodiment as the starting point, not that this is an individualist journey, individual journey, but that a part of this is also just recognizing that Like, what does it mean to focus on and embody in a culture that really teaches us to disembodied, to push, to disregard how we feel, whether that's based on personal familial needs, whether it's based on issues of personal disability or other factors. How do we start to come back to a center that's not driven by... all of the conventions, all the crystallized ideas that are out there in the culture about how to live and what you should be doing. em And so, and then from that, you know, there was also this awareness of this need for like, and less about, less emphasizing the idea that knowledge is central, but that really it's this, there's, how do we step into the mystery, you know, of this process with one another and within ourselves? So like, how do we create space for something new to grow. Because if we're constantly just rehearsing the conventional ways of thinking, the conventional narratives, the conventional sort of emotional patterns, then we are not really creating the potential for something new. And so to me that was at the heart, you know, really. And it's out of that that capacities for change and new ways can emerge, right? And gradually as we do that also if we're each doing this journey together, we can start to connect with one another in deeper ways and less sort of, I don't know, like the ways in which we've been fractured by the culture, like ways that are less conventional and taught to us, if that makes sense, more authentic. Absolutely, it's about that expensiveness and I think that... There is something really profound for me to say that we start from embodiment as trans folks, because in a way I know that personally, like you said, I had an embodied knowledge of gender before I could have the words, right? Like the joy that I felt as a five-year-old when people thought I was a little boy and I would just let them think I was a little boy and go with that on the, you know, at the park or on the playground. that wasn't coming from an intellectual place. I mean, it was the 70s. I wasn't on the internet. I didn't know what trans people were, but I just knew that I felt joyous in my body and I would just go with it, you know, and that there were people that would see at the park, other kids who thought I was a boy because I never told them any different, right? And that joy was so deeply embodied. But then when we take our experiences and put them in this like more traditional psychological framework, It's all about how, you know, it's all about emphasizing the dysphoria, the disconnect, right? The dissociation between who we are and what our body is like, you know, even the narrative. And not to say that the narrative is not helpful or that many people don't feel like they're born in the wrong body, air quotes, but even say wrong body in some ways kind of. emphasizing the kind of biological determinism, well, because you're born in that body, that's why you've been assigned this gender instead of because you've been born in this colonial culture, people are not paying attention to you and who you are and letting you expand into who you are, you know, rather than putting all this meaning and significance on your body. Right. And so in a way, we're really inviting ourselves and each other in this program to really like how do we reclaim the all the gifts that come from embodiment and all the gifts that come from the transmutation of knowing who we are and even the for those of us who choose to undergo em physical transmutation through hormonal intervention or medical intervention, there is a magic to that too, right? And that magic is also not new because people have done a lot of medical, of body modification even before Western medicine, right? And so think there's something about the expensiveness of that lens and that reclamation of the joy and... gifts of embodiment. don't know, maybe I'm going on too much of a tangent. That's what kind of came to mind as you were talking about our program so beautifully. no, no, go for it. ahead. I was just gonna say, like, coming to the personal, I mean, the thing that, like, uh while there's certainly my version, like, from early on when I was recognizing and had a sense of, oh, I wanna be a girl, I need to be a girl, em something is wrong here, there's that, but, like, from the therapeutic standpoint, I really had this experience that, I'd had an assault that happened very early, know, 13, 14, shortly after, like, I really became aware about this, where I was drawn and my gender identity. And I tried to do a lot of different types of therapies that were much more conventional therapeutic approaches. And I really put at the center the somatic, I was doing training in somatic experiencing there. One of the things I love is this idea that we start from a place of practice. It's always about working with ourselves and our own nervous systems as central to this journey. And I really credit that my ability to come out at 51 came after having done work around this assault and healing around this assault that was very much paired with the assault was very much connected with me doing something that was. even just remotely feminine as these three guys sort of uh assumed and related to me. And um as such, you know, I had this as in the semantic experience, this idea of what we call an over coupling of really high intensity with something that felt um alive and authentic and real. And it made me very afraid to choose to actually um pursue my identity. And so it was really thanks to that work that um allowed me to free myself up and it was really central to this coming back to this idea, which you were talking about earlier that a part of this and what we've been doing is recognizing also, like, cause I came in coming from working with a bunch of veterans, I had this metaphor that I'd come up with to sort of explain, you know, the, we understand about the nervous system from a polyvagal standpoint and trying to take this very technical idea and make it more understandable. And I came up with um this metaphor of the three, like that this is like an automatic transmission and there's three different gears from sort of social engagement to sort of what we think of as fight or fight to the freeze response. um that was one of the other big moments in our work, in this sort of transition, which was like we had a little bit of like trying to, and I was really appreciated that like, At the moment, while I was really getting a little defensive and struggling, because this was sort of my baby, something I'd created that had worked really well within a veterans community, many of which uh involved working with vehicles and things like that, it worked very well. But as we were really exploring, this was another area of incongruence. It was a way in which, like the conventional ways we had started to talk about what we wanted to do that felt a little bit staid and... stuck within a conventional mental health narrative. As we started to expand on that, we started to see that like, hey, uh this doesn't feel congruent. There's a lack of organicity and understanding. There's way more complexity than this very hierarchical model that uh is, uh while helpful, it is oversimplified. And that was another moment that really, I think, pushed us forward towards advancing what feels like something that's more of a congruent model about how to approach um supporting our community. And I think that was also a beautiful moment in our relationship because it was a little bit of a rupture in some ways and that we're both activated. But we were both able to just like, hang on a minute, let's slow down. What is happening here, right? And like own our parts. And then, you know, I was able to be like, no, this is like. I so value the way you think about things and everything that you bring. And also it just doesn't feel coherent, right? With how we are approaching this or how we are striving to approach this from much more of this kind of, you know, place where there is room for. non-linearity, where there is room for mystery, where there is room for complexity, you know, and we were really able to use our somatic skills in a way to really, and I think that has happened a lot in our relationship, but that moment really stands out because I think it could have easily become a broader fracture or brought like some em distance, but from my point of view, at least I feel like it brought us closer. And it's also expanding what we're offering to people because now we're kind of playing with a completely different metaphor, which in a lot of ways is more complex and it's giving me a bit of a headache, but in a good way. I'm like, yes, are as humans, our nervous system are so much more complex than like an automatic gear, even though there is value also in having those metaphors, you know, and I use them in my practice, but I think we wanted to offer something more organic and more nuanced to the community. And I think that is really beautiful because it's inviting us into really bringing this kind of decolonial perspective all the way through our work. Right? all the way in our relationship, all the way through the work and really um trying to expand some of those ideas em into something that is still, um you know, that we can still explain to people, but that honors the complexity of us as humans and also honors kind of people's choice in a way. Because I think the way we're working with this model is like, And it might work differently for you. And in this model, there is still room. Because I don't know about you, but I've experienced a lot in traditional mental health approaches and psychologists especially. This is the model. If you don't fit, that's your problem. The model stays. And I think we're trying to create a model where there is room. for that kind of expansiveness and diversity of experience. I don't know if, yeah, I don't know how clear I'm being, so I'm curious about how that's landing for you right now. Yeah, yeah. so I like this idea, what you're talking about, that so many of the conventional approaches have a bit more of a linear, predictable narrative. There isn't as much flexibility in how do we approach these circumstances. And it gets people stuck in this idea that if I don't um align with this, what's wrong with me can be one of the narratives. This sort of self-questioning that there's something wrong, that this thing isn't working with me. And I think what's really important that as we've been stepping away from the linear models, as we've been looking at things that feel more circular in some ways, that more organic, I think what we've been stepping back from allows us to see and create space for people to come in and bring their complexity, that we're not driving the ship in a very predictable way that would be easier for us, but to really instead say, Like we're going to give some ideas, some structures, some principles, have exercises that sort of hopefully open things up and in such a way that differences are going to emerge in the group, know, differences around how does this land, you know, that we then that creates the that we're going to be meeting the complexity of the people that we're working with and really trying to center those who are participating in these. um retreats, these trainings, however you want to conceive of them, that this is less of a, we are the experts, we're the ones dictating a process, this conventional sort of top-down sort of dominant model, it's much more sort of like, we are merely introducing some ideas, hopefully creating the safe space for each of us to start to step into the mystery and the mess a bit, to start to encounter that with each other and and do so in a way that hopefully feels safe enough, you know, that we can... um start to let those parts of ourselves that are messy, that are difficult, start to be met by others and understood in a different way. Seeing as coming from a place of authentic vulnerability and uncertainty. any thoughts you have on that. No, I think you've got the thread beautifully, I think it kind of goes back to the beginning almost of like, and it speaks to the larger vision. You we talked about how our own process has been centering relationship and centering heart and centering connection. And this is what we want for the larger vision, right? We don't want people to just like come do the training. and then everybody brings it back to their individual lives, never connecting again, which is why, well as like the, in February, we will have our, the first time that we deliver this training, I can't wait to see how it lands. But then as well as having like the intensive retreat, there will be integration sessions, right? And our hope is then that people might wanna come back for like, a second phase and a third phase. And the idea is to build, know, to start more from like, okay, let's have a common framework, common language, work with ourselves, that experience with each other, but really focusing on self in the first part. And then the second part, now let's really start to bring it into relationship and then really into kind of this kind of co-creation piece, right, between participants. And so it's really about in a way creating more of a movement of how do we show up kind of not driven, constantly driven by the urgency of survival and having to push back on all the systemic violence in the world, which I mean, it's totally necessary, right? But it also depletes us. But also how do we then kind of nurture each other, you know, um in a way makes me think of like, how so many black trans women in our movement have also created spaces for people to come together in our community and be nurtured, be cared for, be truly seen, uh Exactly as people are. And I think that that is not always accessible to everybody. And so I think in a way we are walking into this legacy, right, of wanting to create uh environments are nurturing and recognizing the one of the obstacles to creating nurturing care towards each other sometimes is kind of all the fracturing both individually and collectively that we experience because of trauma. And that's the first time I think that I framed it that way, but I was really feeling, especially Miss Major was like, you know, our most recent ancestor, was really, you know, thinking about her work and what she created and real feeling like, oh, this is part of the legacy, this is part of this work and um how can we kind of contribute to this beautiful work with the skills we have. And I'm curious about that landing because that is the first time I think I've named that so clearly even though we have talked about. know, trans-sesters and gender-blessed ancestors, but that feels like an important part to name. That it's not like we're coming out of, with this out of nowhere, right? There are so many teachings and people that inform us and yes, so I'm curious about, No, no, go for it. I'm curious about how that's landing for you. Yeah, I I love that you're saying that and um there we are really we're standing on the shoulders of other people who have lifted us up and made it possible to be sharing these ideas and there's a diversity of perspective and yes like the the amount of collective safety that has been created for so many people. I don't know that I would have come out at 51 had there not been the movement of so many individuals, especially moved by the black trans women over the years and creating space for us to then launch something that hopefully in some ways to me feels like a circling back to a model where it's like mental health work is very expensive. It's a hard, costly journey for many people. It's not accessible to many of us. And it's not that this is going to totally replace mental health work. I don't think that's possible. But what I do, I mean, a big part of the vision coming back to what you were saying is this idea that, you know, through doing this work within ourselves, in community with one another, and starting to develop a shared language. You because I think that's one of the complications is we an incredibly diverse array of people in our community, from different racial backgrounds, different disabilities, know, different ethnic backgrounds, spiritual backgrounds. And those things also are hard differences to travel by themselves. But then when we put all these things together, you know, how do we find ways to come together that can support one another? And I think one of the things that um feels very near and dear to me, and I loved that it felt like for both of us, this has been really important, which is this idea of like, we can start to hopefully build something that starts to develop semi-autonomous or autonomous communities uh of support in different locations. One of the original ideas, even though we're gonna launch this, You know, in February is more of a online uh service, which that will have certain benefits. It also doesn't quite help us to always work with the embodied experiences fully because we're doing it through a digital medium. But like our original idea is that we're going to be dropping these skills in in person in different cities throughout the U.S. And hopefully through that, people will come that know one another, that then can gradually start to come together. support one another, create all types of things that we can yet, like can't even imagine yet, right? And in different settings where there's an artistic settings or more fit conventionally sort of support group settings. My hope is that this eventually grows large enough that we have something that's analogous to like, you know, having come from the addictions world, something like a 12 step model, not so rigid, not so, you know, limiting in some ways, but really that where there's a core language, a core commitment, you know, and through that, I think that then is going to bleed out into the larger community. You know, if we, if we have been doing this work and we're feeling held and we're feeling safer within ourselves, one of the core principles, you know, despite some of the complexities of the attachment model and some of the complications of it, One of the things that's lovely about it is this idea of like, it's insecurity. It's when we feel safe within ourselves and with one another that we feel safe to expand into territory that is more stressful, risky, threatening. um And that's where I'm hoping this will eventually lead to an emergence of something um that can really give back to our community in a. another way, hopefully moving the needle a little further from all those things that our transcestors have committed and given to us. Absolutely. I think that is also what is a little bit different about what we're doing is that, like you said, our hope is really to plant those seeds and then for people to just nurture them and see how they bloom. It's not like, neither of us feel like proprietorial about it. Of course we want to, we're putting in the work and it's always good to like, know that we're building on other people's work and other people will build on our work and we have that openness to that and in a way we don't know what it's going to be we don't have this image of like we're going to create an institute or we're going to like trademark anything it's like we're going to scatter those seeds to the wind you know and we're going to see where the land and then in a way that's going to be like you know They're going to be taken into different communities and bloom into things that we can't even imagine at the moment. Again, this very organic model in some ways of in this openness to the alchemic. mystery in some way of transmutation. But yes, we have some ideas, we have some seeds to plant, and we're going to plant them and then people are going to take them all over the place. Hopefully, that's our hope, right? Which I think is a good segue into like, I mean, we've spoken a little bit about what is our hope that people will get out of it, but Also, how do we think this might support us as a community in this moment? Because we're very clear that this is a T for T, trans-for-trans somatic skills program. And so I'm curious about how you feel the... oh importance or the relevance of our contribution to this particular moment where we're seeing so much anti-trans sentiment coming at us and in a way triggering a lot of that survival that we're trying to kind of expand beyond in many ways. Yeah, mean, for me, the... um at the heart of this is the idea that like we have this culture that is creating like sort of turning up the ever like all constantly on us. So many of the anti-trans laws that are going on, so many of the ways in which so many, know, especially our trans kids, you know, that are out there and who are no longer able to access or may have limited capacity to access um the needed, whether it's hormone therapy or eventually getting to a place of surgeries when the timing is right. And uh then just the ways in which there's all this uncertainty about how are we, um what is our safety in moving through the world? There's such a ratcheting up of survival level responses, like the terror, like many of us are living with frequent moments of high anxiety, of terror. of being afraid to go outside of our own home. I'm working with people who had claimed their identity and have retreated from it and are hiding, you know, have detransitioned, you know, but not really. They're still wanting to be able to reclaim it, but the environment feels so toxic that it's hard to do. And so to me, as the heat is getting turned up, as we are dealing with more events that are naturally going to like... You know, like if I wasn't um as far as I am in my own journey, I could envision like going backwards if I hadn't dealt with some of the traumas of assault and worrying about like how is someone in the, like the risks of assault are greater now it seems, you know, and um might I want to retreat, pull back, shrink the world I travel in? Some of which is inherently necessary for some of us depending on where we live, what. what cities, what states. um So to me, a huge part of this is like wherever we are, how do we meet one another in places that create the potential to get through this moment, um find ways of thriving, know, and in the connection, feel a sense of vitality of being met, being seen, being affirmed, being valued. um I think that that, like, it's going to naturally then lead to... um when people feel that way, will feel more of a sense of like, what do I feel are the challenges I can take on in the midst of that? Whether it's activism, whether it's merely being willing to speak within our families to someone that might be disapproving, or be sort of ambassadors in smaller or larger ways. I think it creates that capacity to effectuate change because if we retreat too much and we're not seen, if we're not like, and again, this isn't a journey that all of us need to be. Some of us like in the military, one of the things that, you know, there's all the people on what we call the front lines dealing with some of the most frightening circumstances. And frankly, it's mostly the BIPOC community, trans members that are dealing with the front lines, not because out of choice, but because they're just forced into those positions in a lot of ways. But. anyone from the front lines, regardless of identity, all the way to those like working with letters, speaking in ways that feel safe, or working within families. I think it just creates a potential to allow us to still remain being seen to the degree that we feel comfortable and safe to do so and start to have an impact on the culture. um I think that's gonna be what helps us get through in the long run, know, helps us survive together, create safety with one another. um and also gradually create a sense that like, we're all still here, we're not leaving, you know? And I think, yeah, I mean, those are the main things that occurred to me. I could say more, but I can also keep rambling. no, I so agree. I mean, you can absolutely keep talking because everything you said is so, um I think it's so reflective of the work we've been trying to do. And I think there's something about, I love what you said about, it's also about creating safety with one another, right? uh Not all of us are gonna be safe to like um do that kind of more... um coming head to head in some ways with the systemic hate. And a lot of us are not going to have any choice also on the matter. And so being able to find community, finding safety with each other is so important. There is a lot of talk even on social media about the importance of community and how we keep each other safe. But then a lot of people are like, but how do we do it? What does it mean? What does it mean to care for one another? What does it mean to keep each other safe? how can we come together across differences sometimes and how can we learn to trust each other or even being able to tell each other, ouch, that was hurtful, let's like slow down and let's figure out what's happening relationally, right? And our hope is that. that we can facilitate the learning of some of those skills that keep us connected, that keep us um in that web of relationship in a way that kind of nurtured the mycelium. I know I went with the seed metaphor earlier, now I'm going with my fungi metaphor. But in a way, we are trying to really strengthen that mycelium network of our trans community um with those kind of somatic relational skills that we center and the space that we want to hold that it is going to be a very relational space as well. Yeah. I feel like I could keep talking with you for hours, which we do often. And we will keep doing as we keep developing our program. But I want to be respectful of your time and the listeners' time. And so I wonder if there is anything else that we haven't talked about around The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation that you were hoping that we would cover or that you wanted to make sure we talked about. um I think one of the things we were talking about is how um this goes beyond, like we're really a very small community and um We can only do so much. And I think the cis community, the broader community has, I think, more potential to effectuate change in some ways than we do. They have a certain privilege and an access to influence others by speaking on behalf of us. So I think our jobs in some ways, not that it's something that all of us need to do, our circumstances are different, but I think to the degree that we can be in relationship with other cis folks. It allows them to hopefully carry some of the, is to see and hear our personal stories. I know for myself, one of the things I did on Facebook, I'm not like on social media all that much, but one of the things I felt like I called to do at one point was to say, here are some. of the types of things that I deal with that are not the big traumatic events. Here's just the everyday anxieties of inviting a contractor into my house and having someone who, most contractors tend to be conservative. I live in an area where there's a fair bit of people who are conservative. Like what, like how am I safe? Simple things like that. And through starting to raise awareness with one another that we can hopefully have the cis folks that are out there, that are in relationship with us, that witness us, see us, see and normalize our existence, that they can also push back, advocate and do a lot of the work that we cannot do, since our voices are often diminished in the eyes of those who have power. So I don't know your thoughts on like just other aspects of how like maybe our cis allies and what's the term, more than allies, accomplices, yes. that's it. You know, like how they might be able to further support us too. Absolutely, you know, I think that... cis folks also like, you know, one of the premises of gender stories is that we all have a relationship with gender, right? That's why I have had a lot of cis folks as guests on the podcast. And I've been intentionally been focusing more on trans non-binary gender expansive to spirit folks this season because of the times we're going through. the premise for me is that all of us have a relationship with gender, even those of us who are a gender or reject binary genders in the way live in this culture. and have to deal with it. And so what I would love to see from cis accomplices is like pushing back on this rigid gender uh binary and also put some resources if they have them, right? Not everybody is economically privileged just because they're cis, but maybe for the more privileged uh cis folks, especially cis white folks, how can they contribute to their local mutual aid and trans organizations? And if they feel moved to support this work. We are going to charge for this because we've got bills to pay, right? We're trans people ourselves and we know, you know, that usually trans folks are not paid as much, know, underemployed, all those kind of things. We want to support our families. And so we are going to charge money for our program. Well, my hope is that some of our cis allies will choose to contribute so that trans and trans folks, you know, want to access this and don't have the financial means. I mean, we're not going to turn away anybody from LACO funds. And also, I think that creating this kind of mutuality and community. so if there are any cis listeners who are interested in supporting this, keep an eye on our website. All the links are going to be on the episode description. So the website for The Collective Alchemy of Gender Liberation. is going to be in the episode description too. And soon we're going to have a way for you to donate and maybe even to donate in a way that's tax deductible so that you get a little bit of an advantage because this is the dominant culture we live in. But finding a way of having that exchange, having that support as well as doing the work. Because I think often what happens is that us as trans folks are doing the work of educating. the work of organizing, work of volunteering a lot of hours in making sure that cis folks are educated. And I think it's time to call in our kind of cis accomplices and be like, hey, we need you to do the work, but we also need you to support us because the reality is that I know that we... are not going to have the same opportunity as many of our cis colleagues. We're not going to have the same platforms. And we're not going to have the same level of financial access. That's just facts, right? And so we want that flow within our community. And if there are any uh trans and binary gender-experiencing uh two-spirit folks who listening and who are interested in our program, also please come to our website. Our first offering is going to be in February. uh As you said, McKenzie is going to online because we decided that was the most peaceful and accessible and also COVID safe at the moment. And just safe from RSV and flu and all the other respiratory stuff that goes around this time of the year. But also if you want to bring us to your community, contact us and let us know. We are really willing to kind of work with you to try and strengthen the mycelium network, scatter the seeds, choose whichever metaphor speaks to you, beautiful gender stories listeners. Anything else that we wanna say at the end of this episode? I know it's been a little bit different because it's really a conversation about our joint project rather than me just interviewing you. But yeah, anything else you wanna add? I think I wanted to come back to something that you had said earlier that I had meant to say, respond to and had forgotten. And that is just that I think you were talking about the ways in which, em you know, we're talking about how these seeds may gradually expand and create something that we're standing on, that we were talking about this idea that we're standing on the shoulders of. And I really view that, like, I think one of the things I loved about the project is that we were really believing that um each one of these retreats, trainings, whatever we end up calling them, is actually going to be something where the community is giving back to us. This is a project in evolution. This is like we are taking what knowledge we have up to this point, but then we're going to be meeting. And we've talked from the very get-go how much we both value this idea that we're going to be putting this out there, but we're going to be not just giving, we're going to be receiving and growing and modifying this project in such a way that hopefully it advances, improves. I hope that we have other professionals that care to join and become a part of this and gradually grow something and take their own special skills and put their own twists, ideas onto it so that uh we just keep uh building a stronger and stronger platform and pathways. to greater liberation for our community. that felt important to come back to. What a beautiful, I think that's a beautiful full stop on this episode that I'm sure that we'll have more to say, but I love ending on that because in a way we started from our relational, our processes speed and we end with like we want this to be a relational process. It's not us coming in as experts. This is actually a relational process that is going to grow with us and it's going to really be nourished by all the contributions that participants are also going to bring. So what a beautiful way to kind of bring it back. Thank you, Mackenzie. Thank you. so much gratitude for you and this process. Thank you so much. And for all of you gender stories listeners, thank you uh for being part of this journey. Thank you for keep listening to this podcast, which is really a labor of love as far as I'm concerned and a love letter to everybody who has ever thought about gender. And please have a look at all the links. They're going to be in the episode description if you're watching this on YouTube. It's gonna be in the description below and follow us for our website follow us through the Instagram I'm also gonna share in the episode description and also Just take the time to nurture your own selves. Take the time to nurture your beautiful body minds and move into expansion with yourselves and one another as much as it's possible and safe for you to do so. And until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Bye. Take good care.