What this work means to me
As a queer and trans person who has personally experienced trauma and grew up navigating poverty, housing instability, addiction, domestic violence, childhood abuse, parental death, and lack of mental health resources, I understand how life-changing accessible care can be.
Trauma-informed yoga and somatic healing have both provided me with clarity on the way my own trauma has impacted my mind and body, allowing me to reestablish agency for myself and reconnect to who I am at my core, and the tools I need to live in a capitalist society that is not designed for embodied connection with ourselves or eachother.
I grew up as a gymnast and dancer, and found love in basketball, soccer and swimming. At the age of ten I began teaching myself both guitar and piano, and music became a significant way that I could cope with the chaos of my childhood. I started writing poetry and was always nose-deep in a book when I had the opportunity. Anything I could do to move my body and express myself brought me deep joy. I created a world of my own to live in, since the one I was subject to was often violent and uncertain.
Somewhere along the way I became disconnected from myself and the world, and survival became my primary function. I longed for safety, stability, and care. I became resentful for the pain I was experiencing and ashamed of my upbringing, and I isolated myself as a means of self-protection. I was suffering inside a shell of myself and I lived this way for years.
Once I began learning about trauma and its impact on the brain and body, and could recognize my own behavioral patterns as outdated survival mechanisms that no longer served me, my entire life changed. A balanced nervous system shifts smoothly between states of activation and rest, much like the way an automatic transmission works in a car. My nervous system had been dysregulated for so long that anger, fear, and shame had become my default setting. It wasn’t these feelings that were “bad,” but rather my inability to process them, keeping me in a constant state of activation, and a mindset that I could never heal.
Eventually, I moved to New York City from Houston, Texas in pursuit of accessible trans healthcare and mental health support. What I found here was a haven of community care unlike anything I had experienced before. Through proper healthcare, free therapy, sobriety, abuse recovery programs, spiritual guidance, somatic healing, queer and trans community, holistic medicine such as acupuncture and massage therapy, and accessible opportunities for mindfulness and movement—I found my way back home.
I learned first-hand that I cannot show up for others the way I want to without first showing up for myself. This was (and is) important to me because caretaking is such a beautiful part of my human nature and a way that I express love to the people in my life. I realized many of us who have been harmed may also cause harm, and so the legacy of harm continue unless we tend to the parts of us that really just need deep love and care.
Healing is relational, like everything else in this world. And so we are here together.
With love and warmth ♡ Zachary