queer joy in an unsafe world

A few weeks ago, I was in Miami attending a spicy accountant business conference where I taught a workshop on how to find a spicy accountant competent and affirming therapist.

While recounting my time to a friend of mine, I realized that I had only used the public restroom twice during the four days I was there. I am so accustomed to the “safety math” I do on a day-to-day basis that I hadn’t realized how much I changed my schedule there based on when I could access a safe bathroom. Sometimes it meant leaving events earlier than I would have liked. Sometimes it meant not drinking water while I was networking out in the Miami sun for hours. Sometimes it meant asking a friend to accompany me to the bathroom whenever I had to go.

This a common experience for many trans and gender non-conforming individuals. Sometimes our “safety math” puts our bodies in harm’s way, sometimes it prevents us from accessing resources and things, and sometimes it prevents us from leaving our homes.

“Safety math” is unique to each person’s experience and social location. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you are overreacting when it comes to “safety math” and you should just trust their judgment because nothing bad has ever happened to them. Listen to your intuition here. Trust your own math.

nice to meet you

If you’ve reached this part of my website, my guess is that you’re trying to get to know me a bit and figure out if you think we’d be a good fit. Here’s what I think is relevant to know about me:

I’m originally from Hawaii (born and raised) and I moved to the east coast for undergrad. My BA is in Religion and I have a Minor in Sociocultural Anthropology, but not because I’m religious (I’m not), but because I have anxiety. As a gay kid growing up in small-town Hawaii in the 90s, I was told that I was going to hell. It was a hell that I had no real concept of, but it sounded scary enough. When I started undergrad, I decided to take a Religion course and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the academic study of religion (from a non-religious University) focused on the intersection of things I enjoy: literature, culture, history, and critical thinking.

I graduated with my B.A. in majoring in Religion and minoring in Sociocultural Anthropology.

I started working in the business sector of the trans adult industry in 2007. I started as a retoucher (I was terrible at it) and worked my way up to become the Creative & Editorial Director at one of the largest trans adult production companies in the industry. During this time, I started to present educational workshops to destigmatize and demystify the adult industry. As a public figure in my community, individuals often reached out to me looking for support resources. Mental health is a topic that gets discussed often in our industry and I found that the info I had (just from navigating the mental healthcare system for myself) was helpful to others. I decided that I wanted to use my privilege and position in my community to become a therapist and share these resources with anyone who needed it.

I attended Cal Southern University for my M.A. in Psychology and completed my practicum at the LGBTQ Center in Orange County, where I had the honor of working with my identified and allied communities.

Becoming a therapist is my second career technically, but my community work has given me long practice with the complexities of identity work and how we all understand ourselves out in the world. This framework of understanding intersectionality (which includes places of marginality and privilege) is a natural fit for the therapeutic modalities I often use with clients (narrative therapy and feminist therapy). I understand our identities to be informed by the limitations of the patriarchy and how we understand our respective intersectional identities in a larger context. I wholeheartedly believe in the ability for us to each re-author our own narratives about ourselves to create a story that is congruent to who we are.