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.
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I began learning about trauma and its impact on the brain and body, and could recognize my own behavioral patterns as outdated survival mechanisms that no longer served me, my entire life changed.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. When our nervous system has been dysregulated for so long, anger, fear, and shame can become our default setting. It isn’t these feelings that are “bad,” but rather the inability to process them, keeping us in a constant state of activation.
I know I cannot show up for others the way I want to without first showing up for myself. This is important to me because caretaking is such a beautiful part of my life. It is true that many of those who have been harmed may also cause harm, and so the legacy of harm continues unless we tend to the parts of us that 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