Hello everyone and welcome to the Awaken Together podcast.
I am Jen and today it's going to be me and a very special guest as we unpack concepts
around gender, sexuality, our inner teen, religion trauma.
We're bringing all these big concepts together.
Gender is a gender fluid, creative spaceholder and mystical being for real, for real, Sagittarius
Sun, Taurus rising, Cat Moon.
And our virtual program that we have co-collaborated on is officially launched.
This program is called Inner U and it's a self-paced guided virtual program to help
you with deeper healing with your inner child, inner teen and inner young adult self.
There is so much good in this program.
We created it in Asheville, North Carolina when we were supposed to have a neurodivergent
live retreat.
It ended up falling through, but we still knew coming together and creating something
was so important and thus was the starting point of birthing this program.
I would love for you to support us and join us in this virtual experience.
It's $44.
You can find the link to access the workbook and all of the videos for this program at
my Instagram, Senseful.Wellness on my website, SensefulWellness.com or on Phoenix's bio,
which is healing portals on Instagram.
Thank you for your support and let's get talking.
Welcome Phoenix to the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me, Jen.
I'm so happy to be here and to get to unpack all of this.
This is exciting.
Yes.
So we just spent what four days in Asheville.
So much has come up as we've really explored concepts around our inner teen.
I feel like we've made so many like light bulb moments.
So I would love you to share just some of the highlights of your journey and how you
stepped into some of your power that has really been more embodied and recent now.
Yeah.
Thank you for that question.
I love that.
So thoughtful.
So it's been a beautiful journey as someone who's narrow, divergent, queer, sentient,
and very sensitive to the feelings of the world.
And it's in my astrology, as you know, I was born into this world and felt almost like
a raw nerve end at certain points in my childhood, like overstimulated all the time.
And in this world where we're taught to suppress our emotions and I have very big emotions,
it kind of led me down a very dark, shadowy path of suppressing and numbing and escaping
and finding different unhealthy coping mechanisms, whether that was disordered eating, a day
addiction, different stuff like that.
And the beauty of that part of my journey is that eventually it led me to a bit of a
rock bottom where I found my spirituality along the way.
So now I am very blessed to have a focus on nervous system regulation and holistic healing
with myself and holding space for all the parts of me.
And the way that I've done a lot of transmutation and a lot of healing is letting myself heal,
living intentionally and ceremonially, tapping into things like breathwork and yoga and Reiki
or energy healing, just tons of different healing modalities that have literally been
lifesaving.
And through all of my intuitive practices of intuitive movement, different ceremonial
things, I've traveled a lot and learned a lot as I've gone, I've just been able to tap
into my own intuitive magic and mysticism and wisdom.
So with that, I felt very passionate about sharing that with others and helping others
reconnect and deprogram and this reconnection is to our own innate healing and magic abilities.
Beautiful and just to really shout you out, Phoenix also travels the dream realm in the
craziest way.
Every single, very common, every night you receive really profound messages that really
make sense and it's a really big connection for you.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, it's definitely like my moon and Neptune in the nine paths.
Yeah.
And it's very connected to the dream realm.
It's always been powerful for me and I like to journal my dreams and have dream practices
and I love the wisdom and messages I get and they come in very different forms and ways
and as a kid, it manifested as a lot of night terrors.
So getting to have such a healthy relationship with the dream realm is really beautiful.
And do you feel like the more that you created space for all the versions of yourself, you
noticed that like shift and change of being able to see wisdom through your dream space?
For sure.
And like once I was able to be awake and holding space for my grief and my fear and my anger
and my doubt and my insecurity and my disappointment and all of those things that are sacred parts
of me and holding space for my teenage self that felt a lot of those things very intensely
but suppressed them because there wasn't time when you're waking up at 6 a.m. and going
to school and then you have religious obligations.
It was a packed schedule and a society where you're not meant to feel.
Absolutely.
And yeah, so for we've spent some time and reflection.
We called our teenage self forward and you know, I think for Phoenix and I like being
inside kind of different religion bubbles but still some religion bubbles within the
same it's so hard to kind of know.
You know, you kind of make excuses for hunches you have around different things.
I know for me we were like cracking up laughing, looking at old photos that make it so obvious
that we are not straight.
There's so many so many signs like the photo had me cracking up.
It's like little symbols.
But it's so funny because I remember that teenage version of myself just like writing
things off in ways where I felt like there would be less judgment.
Like writing things off as I'm just like fun and silly and I love everybody and it's
fine.
And like, you know, just coming up with all these like ways to like soften some of that
reality because I was so scared of revealing like deeper truths not only like outwardly
but even to my own brain I fought myself for so long on some of that.
So I thought it would be very funny.
Like we had one of our favorite stories we were going over talking about summer camp.
So I don't know if any of you had like a religion summer camp.
I know I have a lot of people that listen to this podcast with religion trauma but we
really talked about some of the pressures of camp that there were like just like seeping
out these like pressures of like all of like the cooler kids at camp would be like going
and sneaking off for my camp.
It was going behind the wall.
We had this like literal like wall but it was such a metaphorical wall because I that
wall put like a wall in my heart because so many of the cool kids got to go behind the
wall.
I never was allowed to interact with the wall because I just didn't have people.
I was like a very like yeah I had a lot of things going on as a kid.
I didn't fit that like typical like yeah patriarchal view and honestly we were teenagers.
There was like so much like weird sexualization within so much of the religion trauma shit.
But anyway our camp selves like we were reflecting back to how yeah even though we didn't make
it for Phoenix it was going to sure.
Yeah for me it was hill time and I feel like us not making it was actually such a blessing.
Such a blessing.
We were laughing a lot about Jen not making it behind the wall and Phoenix not making
it to hill time successfully.
But the thing is about hill time which was very the same vibe as behind the wall time
was that you know like I ended up having beautiful like kind of like asexual experiences.
Neurodivergent kid friends with the counselors more than the kids like also it's hard because
kids are expressing their sexuality and when you're closeted and suppressed you can't even
go there because you've blocked that off so far from yourself.
And it also was like very dystopian when you think about it that they want these kids to
like co-mingle within their religion and procreate and like I don't know further the cause.
Yeah they love to see like just the traditional like couples coming up and like very much
trying to pull from any expression in any other direction.
And it's really weird how certain like young couples get celebrated because they're so
quickly trying to get you to follow this like one life path.
And make more babies in it.
It's wild.
So we reflected that although our inner teen selves really wanted to try to keep up we
were queer we were neurodivergent we had so much more to learn like so many things and
so the wall and the hill like were played out exactly as we should be.
Yeah and although I was not fooling around in the bushes I was stargazing and listening
to great guitar music and that was part of my path.
Love that.
And I was in a cabin full of girls probably pretty happy.
In my own way.
Yes.
Oh gosh.
Oh so good.
So good.
And so yeah I think I would love to hear you just with that inner teen self when and how
did things start to feel as you noticed that you weren't going to fit the kind of traditional
mold of things.
That's a really good question.
So what's interesting for me is that so because I went to a very private Jewish day school
from and I've never talked about this in front of a group of people so this is exciting to
like let this go I went to a very private Jewish day school and I moved in fourth grade
and the kids had been going to school together since kindergarten.
So it's kind of the odd one out.
I stood out because I look different like I was the only blonde haired or one of two
blonde haired blue eyed kids and it was very interesting because I was bullied a lot and
because of that by the time I got to high school and had friends I was very scared to
shift anything because I didn't want to be back in that place of feeling social rejection
feeling like an outcast like feeling lonely.
So for me a lot of the portrayal and media of people coming out was very very dramatic
very traumatic their families rejecting them their friends rejecting them them dealing
with all of this and coming to terms with stuff.
So that was one thing like even mean girls was like a huge influence of like someone
getting shunned by the whole school for being a lesbian like that stuck with me and I didn't
realize this consciously at the time like I very much was just like everyone that I
came out to was like oh we know sweetie like we know.
And so that was just interesting and I was always weird and unique and eccentric but
I just started to kind of dim my light as a survival mechanism because in middle school
and such whenever I started to shine it that's when I got picked on.
So I learned to associate shining with like being a target whether that's for predatory
energy or bully energy.
So it's been doing a lot of work of like unwriting that story.
And can you tell us a little bit about your journey with using he they pronouns how that
shift started happening to you?
Yeah that's a beautiful part too.
It's like as soon as I figured out the sexuality it was like gender.
You open the treasure box.
Literally my whole life started to make sense.
Like I definitely my whole life had been like joked, joked quote unquote I'm a boy, I'm
a boy and I've always had like part of me has been trans.
I've done inner child healing where it's like my eight-year-old self and my 12-year-old
self are very much like he, him and I have younger ages that are they, them.
I think there's like very little me that just doesn't care about pronouns at all.
But for me it's like when I first moved to Colorado that's the first time I had met trans
people in real life.
It's the first time I started going to poetry and art events where people were like this
is my name, this is my pronouns and I learned that gender fluidity was a thing and I felt
myself on the spectrum of gender fluidity of sometimes feeling like I don't have a gender
at all.
I'm just a magical creature.
Sometimes feeling like I'm a man and just being on my own journey with that and realizing
that I can be fluid in it.
I can change everything and this world is in constant and it's been such a blessing
and a lot of my life and my childhood and my romantic relationships have made sense.
I've always had very romantic friendships with women and gay men and I was like oh because
I'm kind of like a gender fluid lesbian and a gay man all in one.
It all makes sense and yeah it's pretty cool.
I just had a reconnection with a lot of my friends from high school and it's been since
the pandemic and it's really it was just so healing to see all of us because we were all
closeted in high school to see all of us be out and happy and like pursuing relationships
that are aligned with us instead of just being like the only kids who didn't date.
You know so it's just like seeing that was healing on a lot of levels and like then we're
here during this teen and high school healing.
It feels really good.
I love that.
Thanks for asking.
Yes, absolutely and thank you for sharing parts of your journey.
I think yeah for myself looking back at I mean the religion trauma truly has even unpacked
like so much deeper probably within the last like even three years I would say.
So yeah so Saturn return for real.
But I think so much of how my young college self definitely like explored and experimented
in so many ways and I didn't have a lot of block in experimenting and trying but the
energy behind it was always so rebellious and bad and like I associated it so much more
with partying like I just love everyone when I am drinking and it's fine and you know just
like playing off of a fun hype instead of it being like a real intimate vulnerable like
accepting energy which honestly you know has taken so much time to kind of like circle
back to.
I think the layers that have yeah come up even since you know Danny and I got married
in 2018.
We had very big talks early on about like staying open to concepts because I still knew
so much was evolving and so much was growing and luckily I have a partner that's willing
to like expand and grow with me and play with anything that comes up for us.
So Danny and I have even explored like polyamorous thinking and looking into yeah it's giving
space to so many versions of myself that although are in like the past and you know timeline
it's there still very much here and have really we're not really allowed to own up so many
parts so being able to just allow that energy moves where it needs to go and that there
is room and space for all those sides of myself that in the actual time of living it and being
in it we're not getting in full expression.
It's so beautiful to be able to allow for all sides of that and yeah just knowing that
you are safe and that society is shifting so much in these concepts and I think for
me one of the biggest like light bulb moments actually happened really around Roe v Wade
all of the just seeing the like kind of how threatened the queer community was within
so many concepts like bled into that and how it felt like it could be like a domino effect
so easily right like what we're going backwards when you know we've been trying to expand
and then you see something like that happen it was like this huge moment for me I felt
the collective pain I felt pain for every version of myself and it was truly where I
realized that I was kind of riding the privilege of being married and just you know being able
to play off this seemingly more traditional even though Danny and I have very expansive
concepts I hadn't brought in a lot of those things like out into light because yeah it
was kind of easy just to ride the normal but I started feeling like super heavy like holding
that in and realizing that being bisexual or even pansexual and exploring all of that
like that's always been a part of my journey I've just kind of kept it so quiet and close
because it's how my life conveniently worked but it's so important that we bring all elements
of our story to light because right now what we are really battling is this expansiveness
that's happening and it's happening so beautifully I can cry about it at any point of the day
just thinking about how much is shifting for the better people being able to claim and
move through really so many things and the judgments getting less and less and society
is it's so much easier to find your people than what it was but it's also you know there
is a little pushback the old is dying and there is a desperate claim for the old that
is happening but the more people that are even in comfortable situations that also remember
the elements of their story that very much fit against this narrative like bring that
to light is so important right now and when I felt that deeply it helped me even expand
that even more.
Wow that's so eloquent thank you for sharing that I love that all of that and just how
you feel the collective I understand that that's very relevant and I like when we talked
about how we kind of talked about how it's interesting because this revolution and this
reclamation is happening and it's happening fast and it's happening strong and it's been
like the pandemic and everyone taking some time off from like the toxic productivity
culture constantly working like spread even more awareness and shed more of a light and
what I realized and what we kind of talked about is that it's like a many-headed beast
that we've been like kind of shaking that from all sides and that starts with us doing
our own decolonizing work within us that helps with us all sharing our truths and healing
our trauma and sharing our stories and letting people know they're not alone and that it
doesn't have to be stigmatized and the thing is like it's like when you we're destroying
this beast the old ways of not even the oldest ways but like the old archaic like not suiting
society ways are dying out with that generation dying out and it's like right now we are
at the tipping point and it's like this mountain cistern is going down it's dying it knows
it and it's doing its final whiplash it's doing its final rearing of its head its desperation
to survive its final thrashing and it's looking like the roe v way being overturned it's looking
like trans rights being like taken away it's looking like all of these things but i think
it's so important to remember not to lose hope because that's the idea of this final
slash that's what they want is us to lose hope with we're on the brink of success we're
on the brink of birthing this new world and like i do believe that like we as people have
to remember how powerful we are and how we're more powerful than the corrupt systems and
how we're all of our awareness is powerful and our stories our stories us and knowing
that this isn't okay that children having their consent violated that people living
on stolen land and charging crazy rent like we're literally the only species that pays
rent to be honest with it and it's literally killing people and like just the police brutality
like all the different things it's crumbling from all the different facets the industrial
prison complex like we have awareness of all these things so they're we're taking our
power back and like i just want anyone listening to remember that like not to lose hope that
it has to get the darkest before dawn and i think we're really seeing for the first
time you really being able to lean on community versus necessarily the full structure system
you were given and that feels so good for so many people and i think it's important
that if yeah you've isolated you know some of these concepts are within you too that
you reach out and find people knowing that that is like the biggest form of advocating
is just being in community with people because one day you're strong and then the next day
you need people to remind you and i think it's important that you can cultivate some
of your own strength and power through you know reclaiming your story accepting all these
parts but we need each other and that's the real point is that we are connected and i
think the connection lines are getting so much stronger because there's so many more
people tuning into themselves but you have to reach out for that side because our system
isn't set up for community thinking but it still exists and i think it's you know we're
circling back to those concepts to helping each other out and that starts by also plugging
in and plugging in to maybe even groups that feel very scary at first to plug into it can
feel very different than maybe groups you previously plugged into but there is a community
component to a lot of this too. I agree. It's community and it's also remembering
like our connection to everything whether that's the animals or the planet the trees
like that's our community too and that's like an old old old ancient wisdom that we have
within ourselves within our DNA that we're getting to reconnect to supporting each other
supporting the earth and allowing each other allowing others to support us as well you
know receiving is a big part of that too. I love it and if yeah if you don't talk to
trees on the regular 10 out of 10 recommend. It's so important. My oldest friends. Yes.
The great listeners. Uh-huh and I would love for you to share um I know we discussed too
like you coming in just uh yeah like going through the airport some of the stuff around
just like the structures still that are in place for comfortability around pronouns
and stuff do you have a few things like as you've branched into that that can help to
create more space and just what has felt good for you that people have um yeah asked you
how that's kind of integrated in. So what's great is um I love having pronoun pins that's
always fun to be like look it's on my hat. It's on my shirt. Say them. So cute. But a
lot of times I feel like um we're shifting as a culture and I think the biggest thing
that I've been doing on my own journey um which is like a decolonizing and like a de-gendering
of my mind is to just try and stop taking the gender out of things stop gendering everything
right so it's like I used to see like two people like a parent and a child and I used
to think like that's a mom and a son or a dad and a daughter or whatever like because
that's how we're programmed to think so now I'm like oh look there's a parent and child
when I worked in retail I'm like that customer in a dress I'm not assuming they're a woman
because they're in a dress and um so working within myself that was a big part so I would
encourage people to kind of think about how much they gender colors and clothes and how
that's kind of a made-up construct um and the other thing is this is really nice to
just create communities and spaces where everyone says their name and pronouns like making that
the norm which is very like gen z pluto and satirical absolutely so happening yeah it's
happening a lot and just not expecting trans people to just say their pronouns and not
having it be like a spotlight on them but having everyone say their name and pronouns
so we're not assuming everyone's gender and it really is a safe space for people to not
feel like singled out and stuff and doing that in community spaces as well as just conversations
and like things like hi I'm Phoenix I use their pronouns and kind of normalizing that
and realizing it's not about being perfect we all have to reprogram our brains and it's
like we all make mistakes like I have messed up people's pronouns and I use they he pronouns
or they them he him pronouns and it's like you're human you can make mistakes and it's
not about making a huge deal about messing it up because that's almost more than just
messing it up it's literally just about correcting yourself it's like if you called someone by
the wrong name you would be like oops and then like say the right name yeah they're
like just you know caring enough to listen and think before you speak and do your best
yes thank you I love that and yeah I think that is a huge a huge thing not only for shadow
work for yourself but we label things so quick we even talked about this well in inner child
reflection like how quick you are to say like wow you did that so well yeah you did perfect
that was so perfect and just how quickly we like like to summarize stuff and like put
it all into one word or one identity box like it makes our brain feel comfortable but you
have to constantly be challenging your brain to not to not do that because it takes you
into automatic patterns which helps your brain relax but I also think it stops so much of
that creative flow so I think shadow work never ends you always have to go back and
you have to look at what you're starting to yeah over box over cling to over attached
to and that's an endless journey that is part of the healing process and I do think it's
super important it's what that's what we're doing we're trying we're having to use labels
at first now in some ways but the goal I think is to continue to just have so much representation
so much like de-stigmatizing that we end up being in a completely different reality where
it's not so pressured but we have to claim certain labels at times to also create more
freedom and I just think it's important to like yeah look at your relationship with every
single thing around you how you interact with it how much you attach to it and this is the
same I think of this in line a lot with like my mental health diagnosis is right like as
much it's been super empowering to have like the titles and the labels behind that but
I also think that with this mental health shift even and everyone like kind of knowing
what they have there's empowerment within that but still we're getting loud about what
that label is and finding community under that label but then the goal is still going
to be to slowly start to remove that label it doesn't ever stop it helps you find community
but I still think the reason we have to use the labels is to help find our people in this
structure in this world and to also advocate against the hierarchy that has been created
against so many labels but I still think the overarching goal is get loud about what you
are and the more that people do that the less we're going to have this such pressure talking
around having to have it so figured out because it is it's a lot of pressure to put on people
to do the educating for everyone and do that it's a lot and you're just a human trying
to live too and it's stressful to have to take the burden of so many things on your
shoulders and I feel like it can feel that way really easily but yeah what I think of
this all the time.
I think about that a lot too because there's something so liberating like me never knowing
what being trans meant having a lot of internalized transphobia taught to me and then like learning
in psychology that it's a very very real thing and having so much compassion for trans people
but not until I really knew that gender fluid was a thing or non-binary is what I was first
introduced to just knowing that that's a thing was such a liberation for me and again a lot
of times I'm like I'm literally just the Cosmos I'm Sardaz I'm a magical being I'm I can
call myself fairy I can call myself Elvin I can you know come up with labels that I
like to use labels or descriptions is almost like archetypes never boxes and that's what
I think how we both use astrology as well.
Yeah I love that.
Just understandings of energy all about like dissolving into the oneness of the cosmos
and I feel like that's really coming up and I feel like that shift's really happening
and you know I just think I just think the world's coming back to it and it's like I've
heard someone describe it as like we have all these different cups of water but really
we'll want to just pour it all into like an ocean and let it all flow and have its different
like it's don't have different cells but you know the vision is you know one with unity.
I love that.
I thank you so much for all your wisdom and all your words and your story which is incredible
every little bit of it and to anyone listening I hope this provided yeah some space some
permission to just create space for all that you are and every little piece of you and
yeah let let all of that shine and we will see you next week for another episode and
Phoenix really quick if you want to share some of your handles how people can support
you too.
Yeah thank you.
So right now my Instagram is healing portals and you can follow me there to get on my email
list I'm about to revamp some other social media stuff so stay tuned for that and I offer
a lot of different healing stuff if you want to reconnect with the magic heal your nervous
system and really just you know release that trauma from your body because you deserve
it.
Thank you all so much for having me.
Yeah thank you.
Bye.