Conversations with Liz Gold

How can we take care of ourselves during this intense time of uncertainty? What is really essential about your life in the present moment? In this episode, I talk with somatic practitioner, community organizer and healer, Sage Hayes about how disassociation is a strategic, incredible sign of resilience; people's capacity as it relates to privilege and how to listen to one's body.

"The people who have endured marginalization over many years - queers, the POCs, the poor people, the people with larger bodies, the disabled population, there is a pretty epic, almost like, endurance."

"It's just a very illuminating moment for what people have a lot of capacity and what people haven't built much capacity at all. People who have built a lot of capacity have only built that because they've had to deal, it has not been a choice. And there's a whole bunch of people have had a lot more choice around that because of their privilege. I think that's really interesting to watch people get disrupted."

"We don't usually get the whole story about what's truly happening."

"There is a lot of fear in the social nervous system right now."

"How do we do micro-moments of just taking a breath, or just getting out for a two minute walk or like connecting for a five minute conversation just to help kind of down regulate our stress a little bit?"

"Never before in our lifetimes have we had a moment like this, that has been so disruptive, so systemically, globally disruptive."

"There's an element of this which we can really make this an opportunity to get a lot clearer on what's important to us - individually."

"Reacting is different than listening. And listening asks us to slow down. It asks us to drop in and feel ourselves a little bit. Which I  know is not really, maybe realistic for a whole bunch of people right now."

"When trauma happens, it actually usually triggers many of our old traumas."

"We're going to be living with this sense of 'is this over?' for a very long time."

"There is always a good reason our body won't let us do something."

"Feeling ourselves is revolutionary. When we feel ourselves and we allow ourselves to connect with a little bit of the intuition of the body, there is so much there for us."

Cat de La Paz episode

Portland Outright 

Brooklyn Goju

Center for Anti-Violence Education

http://embodiedliberation.com

Instagram

Facebook

Sage Hayes Bio:

Sage Hayes (she/he/they) is a somatic practitioner exploring frontiers of embodied liberation. Sage is an anti-racist, trans and queer somatics practitioner with Embodied Liberation and a lead teaching assistant with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute. Sage's work integrates biodynamic craniosacral therapy, systemic constellations, evolutionary biology, quantum physics, ecstatic dance, Somatic Experiencing and intuitive wisdom practices. As an educator, a community organizer, a healing arts practitioner, Sage is passionate about creative ways to create conditions for embodied liberation which interrupt and help us heal from the trauma of supremacy, binary thinking and marginalization, in both systems and in bodies. Sage lives on the ancestral lands of the Narragansetts and Wampanoags currently known as Rhode Island with her brilliant partner and travels around the world to support trauma healing.

In January 2020, Nicky Cutler's family faced a terrible trauma when their stepfather was hurt in a hit and run accident with an 18-wheeler. Luckily, Nicky's stepfather is on the path to recovery but the journey hasn't been easy. I talk to Nicky about how that experience impacted their family and how Nicky navigates stressful family dynamics regarding gender and pronouns.

"We are doing what we can, each of us, to sort of fulfill the time and make ourselves happy."

"They still have not caught the person who hit my stepfather, it was a hit-and-run accident that is still just a mystery."

"Everything is altered. Their entire lives have been turned upside down and I've gone along for the ride as being the support."

"It's definitely difficult to watch. You obviously want your parents to be OK at a certain age, to sort of like live out their life in some kind of retired state but it's just not that way for everyone."

"I am 100 percent for the safety of humans first before small business but I also understand as a business person what it must feel like to the owners of small businesses who may never recover from this."

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what happens on the return for something like fashion. I have a very intimate rapport with customers and I hope that people will still want to go in and place hats on their heads and do things for themselves that may not necessarily be a need or considered essential."

"It's such a strange time to go from ready to build, build, build, build, build and just have it come all crash down."

On parents: "We may never fit in the box that they want us to fit into or what they thought we were going to become. But we are their children and we need to be seen."

"Regard a person the way they want to be regarded. It's so important."

"I was called selfish because I wanted the right to have myself seen as who I am."

"You can't be distracted from all of the things that are right there in front of you. There isn't a way to do it. You can't step away and travel for work and ignore what's going on in your relationships. You can't bury yourself in anything. You have to approach it head on."

Nicky Cutler bio:

Nicky Cutler has been working in the fashion industry for over 15 years.  As an early queer fashion label pioneer with the creation of DITC clothing line (Dykes in the City) back in 2004, Nicky paved the way for queer identity to be seen through the medium of clothing and hats. Nicky ended the label in 2011 when their newly trans identity no longer matched the initial cause.  Nicky’s career in fashion has continued by working for Goorin Brothers as District Manager in the California and New Orleans areas.  Over the last nine years they have continued to contribute to the lgbtq+ community in any way they can due to their extremely supportive company.  Nicky currently resides in the Los Angeles area, enjoys working out, animals, bourbon,  and ending toxic masculinity.

Nicky Cutler Facebook

Nicky Cutler Instagram

EDD CA - How to Get Through to EDD California by Phone

The Intentional Man Project

Gretchen Wylder is a theater actor who decided to take on the medium of creating a web series. The result is These Thems, a series on YouTube that centers around four queer friends in New York City. Hear the backstory of how "These Thems" came to be, how she pushed through some dark times to get this produced and some of the very tender storylines.

"This is actually my first film making project. It's been really, a very, very very intense learning curve."

"I am a cisgendered woman and although I'm queer as fuck I can only tell so much of someone else's story."

"I truly feel that every single person who crossed paths with me and this project was there to serve a purpose and was there for a reason. That's the only way to get through something like this because it's been so hard. No part of this has been easy."

"It is really a beautiful thing to watch in completion because I am so proud of the work. And I am so proud of what was able to be created but it was only because I had to push myself through literally the darkest times of my life. Truly.  I hit rock bottom, trying to make this happen, probably at least three times."

"I view it absolutely as a tool for cis het allies to be able to watch it and enjoy it and really learn from it in a safe way. It's not just a queer series for queers."

"It's been an interesting balance of lots of stress, lots of frustration while also experiencing lots of joy, lots of positivity. It's been wild, just wild.

Gretchen's website

These Thems website

These Thems on YouTube

These Thems instagram 

These Thems Facebook

These Thems Twitter

Gretchen Wylder instagram

Vico Ortiz  instagram 

Shaan Dasani instagram

Nick Park instagram

Directed by Jett Garrison

Produced by Sophia Clark

Lex

Clexacon 

Gretchen's bio

Gretchen Wylder started her acting career in Chicago and has been a working actor in NYC for the past nine years. She has originated roles in musical comedies Off-Broadway, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and also creates original sketch comedy content. In addition to working with legends Kathy Griffin, Julie Andrews, Anthony Rapp, and Judy Gold, Gretchen has performed sketch and improv at Amy Poehler's UCB theater, the PIT, Magnet, and Second City. Fav theatre credits: Avenue Q, Rent, Bedbugs The Musical. She has competed at the Miss Exotic World pageant at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Gretchen is an advocate for the Queer community and in 2016, organized a float in NYC's Gay Pride parade to raise funds for the Ellie Conant memorial fund, benefiting Astraea Lesbian Foundation.

It's the 10th episode of Conversations and we're still in the middle of a global pandemic. Join me as I talk with old friend, collaborator and fitness instructor, BJ Watkins, about what it's like being in New York right now, the racial and economic disparities that continue to shake the city and country as this collective trauma unfolds and so much more.

On being in New York during the coronavirus quarantine: "People are wild tense. We don't have the luxury of some other spaces who are quarantined or holed up, who can just like hang out on their front porch or in their backyard and have a lot of space. People are cooped up in super small apartments. Just trying to make do."

"It's a wild time to be in New York. It's a wild time to be living right now."

"There is no plan for how we all come back."

"People basically are stimulating landlords and paying utilities. That's all [the stimulus] is really good for. And trying to buy food."

"Think about it, it took people like basically three weeks, maybe a month - grown ass adults - to figure out how to wash their hands and stop touching everything."

"I find myself working harder than when I did having to report to a space every day."

"When you have a lot of people telecommuting - working from home - there's this new expectation of availability and false sense of productivity."

"I also feel pressure as a black person, as a black woman, to create content and to produce and perform in a way that pleases everybody around me."

"I'd much rather do something right and well than do it in a mediocre fashion and it be such a low benchmark or starting point. I, more or less, want to lead by example."

"All these things about ourselves that we hide for whatever various reasons are really starting to show."

"Black people have been saying what about reparations, what about reparations, what about reparations? And it's always never been possible. But all of a sudden we were able to turn around and create stimulus like it's no big deal. That was instant."

"I think this is a defining moment where actually people have a lot more power than systems have power because everything is so unknown."

"This is a moment for us to access our power especially from a communal space - and also start to understand there are disparities out there and if you are experiencing these just for 30 days, if your world is rocked, you are feeling shook, like this is the experience of the rest of the world and this is what we've been trying to tell you for a very long time. And you have not listened. You are only listening now because it is impacting you."

BJ is a certified trainer, cat lover, bacon enthusiast and a 3 Sport Gay Olympian.

International Women Artists' Salon 

Instagram 

Facebook 

What is courage? In this episode, I talk with Milo Razza, friend and leadership coach, all about what courage means (there's no easy answer), how running a business can be bootcamp for whatever your issues are and why there's courage in just admitting how much you want something.

"What takes courage really varies."

"We can gain strength and gain courage and have resilience supported by other people around us."

"I felt like I had to be different than I am in order to be successful."

"I'm very forthright; What you see is what you get with me pretty much. I wanted a brand that really reflected that."

"The growth for all of us lies in being just even braver than we were yesterday."

"There's this way that expertise gets so celebrated and one of the problems experts run into is often they become siloed."

"One of the advantages of being a generalist, a lateral thinker, or having a broad knowledge base is that a lot of times we can see the broader picture of impact and the connections that a subject matter expert can't see outside of that silo."

"There's a courage even just admitting how much you want something and then to actually swing out and go for it can be all the scarier, too."

"Conformity is one of the forces in our society. That's why we need so much courage."

"Almost everybody is wrestling with something."

Bio: Milo Razza coaches to increase the power, freedom, and choice of individuals and organizations so they can convert intention to action to impact more effectively, consistently, and easily. As your coach, Milo is unafraid to push back, call out bullshit when he hears it, and to be frank and direct for the sake of serving you. He is a dynamic partner in moving you through your internal resistance, and guiding you to see what is in your blindspots.

An outsider to mainstream coaching, Milo brings a combination of irreverence, humor, compassion, and encouragement to support your continued growth. Raised in Washington, DC, Milo earned a BA in Semiotics and Critical Thinking at Bryn Mawr College. His fascination with how we read and create meaning allows him to  discern how you are creating meaning and framing your choices in your life and work.

He draws on his experiences with The Coaches Training Institute (CTI), whitewater raft guiding, nonprofit management, owning a small business, and other influences. He has served clients across numerous industries in more than 12 years of coaching. He is trans/genderqueer and black/mixed race, and acknowledges the impact of systems of oppression in his coaching with clients, never at the expense of ultimately focusing on his clients’ path forward.

Even Braver

[email protected]

CrossFit Torque Strength 

Beginning CrossFit (blog post)

Join me during the show's first virtual happy hour when I talk with Shauna Hahn, a psychiatric nurse and storyteller in Portland, Oregon. We touch upon a variety of topics including TMS as a treatment for depression, vulnerability in storytelling and a little tangent on Tiger King! We also talk about her new book-in-progress that tells her personal story as a Plains Cree Indian losing her culture through adoption who sued the Canadian Government and is buying back her culture one activity at a time.

"When you're in a Zoom meeting, you see yourself. It's like looking into a mirror as you're supporting people. Some of my patients, particularly those with dysmorphia or body image issues, often feel very self-conscious looking at themselves as they are confiding. It's a sensitive format."

"We are literally forcing areas of the brain that don't tend to work well in anxiety, in depression, in post traumatic stress disorder, in brain injury. We are literally forcing these areas of the brain to fire down into the rich connectome - structures that aren't necessarily physically adjacent to that area, but we know are connected."

"A lot of people who suffer with depression - it is the exception and not the norm for people to feel better or to be adequately treated on their anti-depression medication."

"I'm a late-in-life nurse. I was just an unsettled young person; kind of a party girl. Then I had an unplanned pregnancy when I was in my first undergraduate degree, which kind of sidelined me."

"Psychiatry is just about having a kind ear for people's lives."

"I get to bear witness to some of the scariest, most shameful, deepest experiences a person's had."

"We can certainly have a meant relationship with a therapeutic provider and it can really take on a very deep soulful quality."

On live storytelling: "The person who breaks the ice, that is the hardest job, that is the anchor of the evening."

"There was always this one extra layer between me and the story where I wasn't really quite willing to crack open enough and invite that vulnerability in enough for people, to have raised the stakes and to make the story more compelling."

"That's why people seek out therapy, right? They need a sacred space with a professional stranger."

"The rough part of storytelling is cutting on your baby.  You've got to cut cut cut cut cut. And it hurts."

"That's what a good story does, it just shows you an aspect of yourself and helps you know yourself better."

Bio:

Shauna Hahn is a semi-accurate storyteller who very nearly tells the truth. She is a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner who owns her own TMS practice. She is a veteran of community health and twin parenting. She is a Plains Cree Indian from rural Saskatchewan who writes a lot about her experiences there. She makes and drinks wine, she enjoys reading really stupid books, and she skis—bunny hills only, because she is cowardly (which as she understands it, means towards the cow).

Framework Functional Psychiatry and TMS 

Framework Functional Psychiatry 

Shauna Hahn - instagram

Shauna Hahn - Facebook

Bad.ndn - instagram

Literary Arts

Mindy Nettifee

Backfence PDX

The Moth - Portland

Tiger King

Children's Book Bank Fundraiser

It's not everyday you meet someone with a portwine stain, especially if you yourself have one. But when I met Kat Kelley, I knew I needed to talk with her. Join us as we talk about our birthmarks, what it was like growing up with a facial difference and how we handle people's stares and remarks.

"Kids can be pretty harsh."

"While I never experienced outright bullying, I did always feel this distance with people. Especially kids my own age."

It definitely wasn't easy having such a visible and big birthmark on my face. There was a lot of really difficult times of looking in the mirror and not liking what I was seeing. And being so different from other people."

"For me, I would rather someone ask if you are staring. I would way rather you just ask me point blank. Like you are already kind of invading my privacy in a sense of just standing there and looking straight at me."

"I have eyes, I can see you looking at me."

"The people that matter the most are going to want you to feel the most like you and the most empowered."

"I'm still unpacking things and understanding my experiences."

"I feel like so much of our world and media and social media, it's beneficial for you not to like yourself."

"I think it's just a really radical idea for everyone to just fully love yourself."

Bio:

Kat Kelley was born and raised in Visalia, California and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past year. She studied and received her undergraduate degree in Psychology, which she hopes t someday put to use in a therapeutic setting. Kat believes in allowing space and conversations around mental health, especially around self confidence and acceptance. While she herself still has a long way to go with the later, she hopes to encourage others to let go of comparison and step into themselves fully.

Instagram

Teal Flamingo 

Stephanya Lulua Portukalian

Everett James Lewis 

Literary Arts

You might recognize Lucas Silveira from the Toronto band The Cliks; join me as I talk with him about coming into self love, experiencing spiritual awakening and how he's navigating isolation during the coronavirus.

"I started this journey that was basically, 'if it feels bad, then it's out.' No matter how little or how big."

"I started trusting my gut. Anytime I started having negative thoughts about myself, I would find something forceably positive. "

"I finally figured out that I had internalized my marginalization and that is a tool of capitalism."

"I truly believe that if every marginalized person on the planet starts understanding what it means to love themselves, there will be a revolution."

"If it feels like it's not dignified, I have to walk away from it."

"Sometimes people are your lessons and sometimes you are the lesson for someone else."

"I think being an artist is innate in every human being. It is who we are."

Please note: There is talk of suicide in this episode.

In addition,  I did not coin the term "divine inspiration" - I use it in the spiritual sense, rather than the Biblical. Feel free to Google!

Lucas Silveira info:

Instagram

Facebook

The Anchor Coach

The Cliks

Cover of Crying by Roy Orbison

Cover of Poker Face by Lady Gaga

Bio:

Lucas Silveira is best known as the front man for the Canadian rock band, The Cliks. He rose to fame in 2006 by becoming the first out transgender man in history to be signed to an international major label record deal with Warner Music and Tommy Boy Silver Label. The Cliks toured worldwide with Cyndi Lauper, Tegan and Sarah, Blondie, The Cult, The New York Dolls and more.

After a long and successful career in the music industry, Lucas now divides his time between writing, public speaking, songwriting and a private practice as a certified Life Coach focused on artists and marginalized communities looking to empower themselves through the practice of self-love.

Lucas’ writing is mainly focused on mental health awareness, non-religious spiritual awareness and practices and LGBTQ+ issues with a focus on the transgender community, including how to heal community from within.

Lucas’ focus in public speaking surrounds many topics that encompass the transgender experience from his personal story and lending itself to education for those within and outside of the community with a focus on how to educate using compassionate activism rather than call out or cancel culture.

Lucas is currently working on a children’s book about trans and non-binary identities and preparing to record his first studio album in seven years.

When I first interviewed singer-songwriter and PDX-based musician Olivia Awbrey in late February, she was about to take off with her band on tour, scheduled to perform in venues all across the country and in Europe. For an independent musician, this was slated to be her biggest year yet. Then the coronavirus hit. I talk to Olivia about the impact of this pandemic on her plans, her new politically-driven album full of relatable angst, "Dishonorable Harvest," and the sacrifices she's had to make to create a sustainable music career.

"I've been writing songs for like 10 years. I've just always done it because it feels good."

Olivia's Bio:

Portland, OR guitarist, singer and lyricist Olivia Awbrey crafts transcendental guitar riffs that pierce through her self-aware and culturally critical storytelling, making way for a new voice on the indie rock scene that parallels the heavy hitters. Her debut, self-released EP Fight or Fight quickly found popularity and led to sold out shows throughout the West Coast and UK. A singer-songwriter by nature, Awbrey balances sardonic critique of politics and culture with measured optimism and witty self-interrogation of her place in the world as a queer woman. Her debut LP, Dishonorable Harvest (Quick Pickle Records), is an unparalleled blend of guitar feedback and pop-infused synth lines, of poetic intrigue and relatable angst.

After a year of touring solo on the back of Fight or Fight, opening for artists like The Beths, Mal Blum, and Japanese Breakfast, Awbrey allowed her life-long fascination with English political punk and rock to lead her overseas. She met and became good friends with CJ Thorpe-Tracey, one of England’s most prized underground political songwriters and someone who Awbrey has drawn inspiration from afar. She also met guitarist Jen Macro (My Bloody Valentine) and Jon Clayton (engineer at One Cat Studio). After returning home and partially recording a few new tracks in Portland with her band, Awbrey left her job as a social worker and went back to London in spring of 2019 for another successful UK tour and to finish recording Dishonorable Harvest with input from the British cohort.

Lauded as “one of the best albums to come through Portland in a long time,” by #WomenCrushMusic, Dishonorable Harvest takes on the personal and the political with songs that are surprising in structure and viscerally sharp in their message. Awbrey’s songwriting is dense, each line a narrative to unpack. Her ability to transcend listeners into the world she creates, formed by lyrical edginess and sonic flexibility, makes her one of Oregon’s most captivating songwriters to emerge in the last five years.

Released on her very own Quick Pickle Records, Dishonorable Harvest is out on international worker’s day: May 1.

Spotify

Go Fund Me

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Email: [email protected].

Amazon Dragons Paddling Club