Living in this Queer Body

In this episode, recorded in the midst of a global pandemic, we explore, with such tenderness and fierceness, what it means to be in the middle of what is here.  Susan talks about mutual aid initiatives as "collective nervous systems" and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging what is unfinished in us (intergenerational trauma or other complex traumas that many of us hold in our bodies) while we work towards shared liberation. Susan and I talk about how death rests right alongside our embodied aliveness and much more.

Susan Raffo is a queer bodyworker with ancestry in both the colonized and the colonizer. She has studied craniosacral therapy through the Upledger Institute, the Milne Institute, and with Body Intelligence. She is also informed by Global Somatics, a practice that emerged out of Body Mind Centering and by a range of nervous system integration models. For the last 16 years she has focused her work on the connection between what happens in systems and communities with what happens within individual bodies both through work with the US Social Forum movement, as well as most recently through the People’s Movement Center. Based in Minneapolis and from Cleveland, Ohio, Susan happily lives with her partner, Rocki, and their daughter, Luca. 

To find out more about her work, go to www.susanraffo.com

SEND ME A VOICE MEMO for the Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times

[email protected]

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ANCHOR

https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris

LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience.  Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.

Livinginthisqueerbody.com  @livinginthisqueerbody

The Host:  Asher Pandjiris

Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator

SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody

Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris

Thank you to Cassie Peterson (cassiePetersonLCSW.com), Isake Smith (@is_she_okay), Corinna Rosella (@riseupgoodwitch), Coyote (@nativeboytoy) and Sara Jane Stoner (@thingpartofus) for sharing your pandemic life with us.

I hope this interview brings you something good in this time of quarantine.  I recorded this episode quite a long time ago so the content is not directly reflective of the time in which we are currently living.  Visit Alynda on instagram @hurrayfortheriffraff to learn more about what she is doing (singing to us! + much more, as always) in this current wild wild time.

Alynda was one of my dream guests when I imagined this podcast.  I love the way her music rests in such beauty, the traveling life and all the wisdom it holds, political clarity and much more.

Alynda Mariposa Segarra is the Nuyorican songwriter, activist and visionary behind Hurray for the Riff Raff.

Alynda was born in the Bronx and has been writing and singing since she was a child. Inspired early on by classic musicals, punk, and beatnik poetry, she was always drawn to the artists and radicals of the world. She explored the underground of New York City and was educated in squatting, train riding, and radical politics at a young age. At age 17 she left home and traveled the U.S. by freight, eventually landing in New Orleans where she helped form a hobo band of 7 called The Dead Man Street Orchestra in which she played washboard and sang. At age 19 she began to record and write her own songs under the moniker Hurray for the Riff Raff, with the intention of using her knowledge of folk music to write songs from her own unique queer latinx feminist perspective. Now at age 32, Alynda has recorded 9 albums and has traveled the world playing her songs.

She released the critically acclaimed album "The Navigator" in 2017 which featured her anthemic love letter to the Puerto Rican diaspora: "Pa'lante".

Alynda has spent 2019 working on new music, healing and growing. She is inspired by plant life, the ancestors and the global community of protest music.

Also this video.  Pa’Lante!

Alynda would like to remind everyone to remember those suffering in ICE jails at this moment. We must demand that during a worldwide pandemic ICE stop their raids and release those still in detention.

Alynda’s links to New Orleans based and nationwide orgs doing great work:

New Sanctuary Coalition in NYC,

https://www.newsanctuarynyc.org/

Voces Unidas in New Orleans

https://www.facebook.com/vocesunidaslirc/

Isla Immigration in New Orleans, https://www.islaimmigration.org/

Freedom For Immigrants nationwide network.

https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/

SEND ME A VOICE MEMO for the Dispatches from our Queer Bodies in Pandemic Times

[email protected]

or

ANCHOR

https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris

Host:  Asher Pandjiris

Website: livinginthisqueerbody.com

In this episode we speak about Adrienne’s powerful discovery of pole dancing, the complexity of sobriety and harm reduction, the experience of learning to love her body after struggling with body dysmorphia and disordered eating.  Adrienne sees this body nourishment as an expression of connection to the land and a fuck you to colonialism.  We talk about much more and I hope you enjoy our conversation.  Adrienne you are such a warm and open person!

Adrienne Huard is a Two-Spirit Anishinaabekwe born and raised in so-called Winnipeg, Manitoba and registered at Couchiching First Nations, Fort Frances, Ontario.  Huard graduated from Concordia University in 2018 and is currently attending OCAD University’s graduate-level Criticism and Curatorial Practice program. She is on the planning committee for the upcoming Two-Spirit Pow Wow happening on May 30th in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It will take place during Canada Pride (a nationwide Pride celebration) and Adrienne is really looking forward to a high attendance this year.

You can connect with Adrienne on instagram @adrienne_loon

LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience.  Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.

Livinginthisqueerbody.com  @livinginthisqueerbody

The Host:  Asher Pandjiris

Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator

SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody

Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris

 I hope these LITQB podcast alumni voices are soothing during this time.   More to come!

Thank you

Adrienne Maree Brown, Meg Bradbury, CJ Miller, Adele Jackson-Gibson, Leah Jo Carnine and Ilya Parker.

Please excuse the volume issues.  This is like a mixtape--- made with love, but not expertly edited.

SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody

We talk about how J found community on youtube, their gender feels, the morality discourses we place on fatness, finding accessible forms of movement and more.

J is a nonbinary fat activist passionate about trans advocacy and making the world a little more accessible for people of size! They believe in self compassion and the power of a good laugh. J writes about their experience as a fat nonbinary person out in the world over on Patreon (patreon.com/comfyfat) and shares resources for the plus size community on social media.”

@comfyfattravels

LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience.  Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.

Livinginthisqueerbody.com  @livinginthisqueerbody

The Host:  Asher Pandjiris

Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator

Register for EMBODIED TESTIMONY: A 3 month LITQB Program Intensive

SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody

Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris

In this episode, we discuss Jewel's love language (words of affirmation), her powerful and important work organizing black/queer/trans party spaces (A Ratchet Realm), the influences that impacted the expression of her sexuality and much more.  Jewel was such an open, lovely, fierce guest!

Raised by a Haitian single mother in Brooklyn East New York, Jewel Cadet is a vibrant virgo force to be reckoned with. Multi-awarded (Featured in #BETQueerAF: 29 Days of Black Queer Excellence) both locally and nationally for her activism and community organizing, Jewel thrives on supporting the Black Queer, Trans & GNC Community. From curating monthly liberated party spaces called “A Ratchet Realm”, where the Black Queer and Trans Community can get their lives on the dance floor to creating free dance fitness classes full of twerking and whining, she boldly claims her right to take up space in this world. As a speaker and educator she is dynamic and engaging while being vulnerable to her experiences as an Intimate Queer Partner Violence Survivor. As a self-proclaimed Ratchet Revolutionary, Jewel is a Black Queer Woman who will tell you like it is, unapologetically.

https://www.jewelcadet.com/

@jewel_thegem

A Monthly Black Queer & Trans Centered Party Experience

@aratchetrealm

Talk Show Host & Producer of

@Jewelsgems_talkshow

LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience.  Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another.

Livinginthisqueerbody.com  @livinginthisqueerbody

The Host:  Asher Pandjiris

Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator

WAITLIST for LITQB Program Intensive

SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody

Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris