ABOUT ME
it's impossible to know someone
through a bio but here's something
A GIRL WITH A DREAM...
little ballerina
That's where the dream started. Actually, the first time I felt my passion for dance was when I saw a professional ballet performance on television. I was mesmerized. It was love at first sight. And the ball started rolling when I finally was officially allowed to take ballet classes at age 6 or 7. My ballet teacher, Violet, who's also pictured here, on my right side with the glasses, asked me if I wanted to go to the next level. For one year I entered additional Saturday classes in a talent group to prepare me for a big audition for a youth ballet academy one year later. There I was. I got accepted. But I didn't get to go. It was my first heartbreak.
more to come
...
artistic & human positioning
Even though I can't remember a time during which I wasn't an activist, I didn't think I was one for most of that same amount of time. Many years into utilizing my art forms as a way to create awareness on taboo topics, I discovered that there are many ways to be an activist - how to push for social change through education and community, through gatherings in which various voices are heard, through poetry, spoken word, movement, music, and cinema. To educate oneself on anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, how to build community, remembering our roots, and studying matriarchies. To remember our essence.
to repair what was damaged and to revere what we remember
My work is about breaking silences that were never mine to keep. I write about and create from lived experience. Peeling the layers that are revealed to me. And naming the things that want to be heard. My activism isn’t separate from my healing or my art. It is where the personal is the universal. My fight for justice comes from that personal place, extended to many others who experience(d) the same or similar. I've realized that the more I've spoken out, the less alone I am. Silence was always an intentional chokehold of the patriarchy. It has kept us apart. Our stories unite us.
rooted in death & rebirth
Life is cyclical. Incredibly inspired by the chapter on the 'blue bearded man', in Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés's book Women who run with the wolves, that taught me to listen to my intuition. She shares about the power of knowing what needs to live and die as women with wombs and menstrual cycles. The cycle of birth and death is inherently in us who have periods. The more I dove into that process, the more I reached teachings about Womb Wisdom and womb temples. I've visited the temples in Egypt and Mexico to sit by those pyramids designed for womb meditations.
My process of reclaiming my voice and body after spiritual and sexual abuse could not have happened hadn't I started connecting with my womb wisdom and my heart's callings. Combining our three brains (in people with no uterus, we could refer to the hara as the 'belly brain') is essential to feeling aligned.
My story is so public, which taught me that vulnerability is my strength. My empathy my gift. And my softness revolutionary. I was supposed to be hard and soulless at this point, but my path of the rising phoenix allowed me to honor all my parts: my inner warrioress, and my nurturer. They are never separate. They are fully integrated.