September 23, 2021 • 58 mins
There truly is no better person to discuss spiritual matters with than the delightfully foul-mouthed Reverend Valerie Spencer, therapist, activist and creator of Holistic Empowerment Institute. After an epiphany while meditating on the beach, Valerie decided to “take the God out,” which she explains. Now she specializes in healing that goes beyond physical and mental health. Valerie makes spiritual and relational healing approachable while drawing from a mélange of religious, ethno-spiritual, and academic traditions. Valerie’s awareness of her connection to her anointed trans ancestors is a history lesson not to be missed. //
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of shand
Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. We were
the kaiser of our people. We were the hm of
the land. Both colonial oppresses, yes, they saw us from
what we were. We were a vehicle to stop their progression.
(00:25):
We bore both physical energy and thestical energy, energetic imergy.
We know how to manipulate yours and the level. Hello everyone,
and welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox.
(00:52):
On this podcast, I've invited you to go on a
journey with me towards healing from shame, trauma, attachment shoes,
adverse childhood experiences and more. But I believe there's another
essential element involved in healing that we may be briefly
touched on here that haven't really done a deep dive
(01:12):
into yet, and that spirituality. Now let me be clear,
I am not talking about religion. I am talking about
spirituality now. I love Renee Brown's definition of spirituality. You
know we love Renee Brown. Here. Renee Brown defined spirituality
as recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected
(01:38):
to each other by a power that is greater than
all of us, and that our connection to that power
and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose
into our lives. I believe spirituality is a crucial part
(02:01):
of our healing, and I have the very most perfect
person with whom to have this conversation with you today.
I first met Valerie Spencer in two thousand twelve for
a panel I was moderating for the National Black Justice
Coalition in Washington, d C. Valerie was a panelist. Now,
Valerie Spencer owns every single room she walks into, and
(02:24):
she truly owned that panel. She has a present that
is undeniable, that is anointed, that is everything. She is
just that girl. I was familiar with Valerie Spencer because
I had seen this incredible documentary called Beautiful Daughters that
documents the very first all transgender production of Eve Insler's
(02:47):
The Vagina Monologues. Valerie was in the documentary and she
stole the show. She was incredible and it was clear
to me then that she was a superstar, and over
the years we've become really good friends. Valerie is the
creator of the Holistic Empowerment Institute an organization which addresses
(03:08):
empowerment on a social, cultural, and holistic basis for lgbt
q I plus communities. For over two decades, Valerie Spencer
has worked in social services focusing on health disparities as
they relate to transgender people and others within lgbt q
I plus communities. In two thousand eleven, the California Legislative
(03:28):
lgbt Q Caucus officially recognized her as a state and
national leader in the movement for lgbt q I plus
political and social freedoms. She has worked with the federal government,
health departments, universities, conferences, and community based organizations all over
the country. Please enjoy my conversation with Valerie Spencer. Hello, Hello,
(03:59):
Hello Lari Spencer. Welcome to the podcast. How are you
failing today, my sister, I'm alive, I'm illuminated. I'm prepared
to serve, alive, illuminated and prepared to serve. Amen. Hallelujah.
I miss you. I haven't seen you in so long.
(04:19):
We had a zoom or something, but it it's not
the same, so we need to hang out in real life.
I was thinking about sisterhood and I was thinking about
what that has meant in my life and how I
have such incredible trans women in my life and you're
certainly one of them. Where there's no there's never been
(04:41):
any competition. And when I think about competition, I think
about competition for jobs. Even in the not for profit
world that you've sort of been in for for most
of your life, there's competition and backstabbing. And then for men,
I said, there was a trans woman online talking about
this this man who I who seemed very editory, who
(05:01):
put her in competition with another trans woman, and I
was just like, this is not when I'm living. And
I thought, before we get into the incredible work that
that you're doing with the Holistic Empowerment Institute, can you
talk a little bit about your experience with what that
is in our community. I want the girls, and you know,
(05:22):
I'm talking specifically about trans young trans women now before
anyone else who this might apply to, to not be
in competition with each other and also to be well
and whole. What comes up for you when I say
all that, Well, Typically when people talk about the deficits
(05:43):
in our community, particularly around trans women sharing or competing
the space, we tend to focus on the trans woman herself,
or the trans women themselves, or the community itself. But
the problem is actually not connected with the women at all.
The problem has to do with having to navigate through
(06:08):
and in a culture of society that does not fully celebrate,
embrace or seen the woman that you are right. And
so you've got to rally a cage. You've got to
shake your baby rattle to be seen, to be noticed,
you've got to say to the culture, look at me,
I can walk. You know, all of those things that
(06:29):
children do, all of those things that we all do
as human beings to struggle to be seen. And so
when we fixed and do that completely, and and we're
not just talking about Pride parade signs, and and I
am so pleased with all of the activism that sort
(06:49):
of spawned this trans inclusion um the Gap has changed
its website, So many things have happened, but these are
tertiary at bets. But ulture has to accept the fact
that your sons won't me, Am, your father's won't me,
your uncle Teddy and them they want me? Now, do
(07:10):
they want me more than you? Well that's a conversation
I'm not privy to. However, they won't me, and they
also see my womanhood. Now, you may not see my womanhood,
and he may not get on this pulpit and talk
about my womanhood, and he may not get in the
ballot box or in the legislation office and talk about
my woman But up and here the sanctuary, he validates, celebrates,
(07:36):
and expresses fully his appreciation for this woman's body. Now,
when we're begin to move the culture to the place
where trans women are truly on equal footing with every
other woman, then we can revisit the conversation of sharing
and jockeying for space. But if you notice all women
(07:56):
jockey for space and do strange things to compete for
sexual space, I think perhaps it's just a part of
the blow of womanhood, the blow of being that caregiven,
that nurturing, that woman that really wants to see this
person in her life. We do those things as women,
but it's transporting. Probably the reason why we do them
(08:18):
because the society does not embrace our womanhood not fully.
I wonder what just came up for me is I
wonder if we enough of us as trans women haven't
fully divested of patriarchy. What I believe is that it
is the patriarchy and When I say patriarchy, I mean
institutional sexism, and we don't We don't need men for patriarchy.
(08:40):
Women engage in patriarchy as well, but patriarchy, that patriarchal
system pits women against each other. I like to talk
about systems and structures because it's really important. But in
the face of that, what is my responsibility? What is
what can I do in my life to change my circumstances?
Because they're both both and right. So what do you
(09:02):
think about that? In relationship with patriarchy, Ladies and gentlemen
and family human families understand I am reven bellary spensively.
Sometimes nothing conveys the truth like a little piece of profanity.
So here it comes. I think women have just got
to put some more respect on their pussy. Girl, you
(09:25):
have got to put some more respect on the instrument
that you possess. You're throwing your pussy out here to
the wolves to be too needing and coming home straight
cat it. And we vet these individuals based on the package,
based on the spit of game, the swag, the smell,
the attention. But girl, we got to have a little
(09:46):
bit more. See I'm over fifty. Perhaps that's it. I'm
almost there. Next year i'll be You're gonna love You're
You're gonna love your It's an explosion of goodness. Truss.
Your thighs go eastant list to welcome out. But other
than everything else, you're gonna live you. And I just
think that for me, when I see trans women going
(10:08):
through all this, it makes me want to parent. Mm hmm.
That's the beauty of thing in your fifties. You realize,
I know my thighs can't compete. Stop competing. Let's parent
and pour into And when I see trans women going
through all this, it tells me that somebody, a mother
figure auntie, somebody has not told you the value of
(10:29):
your pussy. Footnote pussy is a colloquial term. Therefore, whatever
I say, it's pussy, it's pussy. Now. The man that
I'm with, when I tell him, eat this pussy, he
knows exactly what I'm And I don't have to do
(10:50):
a thesis on anatomy and trans psychology. If I say
eat this, Listen, I'm talking about my elbow. He's going
straight to that elbow. He knows just what I'm talking well,
And so do you really know the value of your
trans sexuality. Have you been taught that you have your
own sexual power, your own sexual pool and vibrational pool,
(11:13):
and so you don't need to compeople with another woman's
energetic pool. You have your own and it works every time.
Now will he marry you? Perhaps not, But if you
audition a further, that may not be him. Amen. Amen.
What I love about what you're saying is you're you're preaching. Um,
You're preaching a gospel and a different one, but a
(11:35):
very important one, because it's about our inherent, our inherent worth,
the spirituality, the God that we carry within us, the sacredness,
the sacred each of us whole. Because I think about,
you know, when I was younger. I think about a
relationship I was in for four years and two thousand
and two five with an alcoholic who is emotionally abusive.
And I believed at that time in my life, because
(11:59):
I was trans, that that was the best that I
could do, that no one would love me, that I
was not lovable because I'm a black trans woman and
nobody's gonna want me. And this man wants me, and
I've met his mother. So here's where I am in
that narrator You're all right. I may not be able
to find a man who loves me. I may not
(12:20):
be able to find that. And I'm fifty five and
I brushed up against it, but I have yet to
lock arms with it. But the one thing I do
know that I do have agency over is that I
will not be disregarded. I will not be disrespected for
(12:41):
even for the sake of my own ego desire, even
for the sake of my own vanity, even for the
sake of my heart's desire, which is to be loved
and affirmed by a strong man. Valerie, have you always
been there? I haven't. What was the ship? When with
the moment when you were like, Okay, I'm gonna put
(13:02):
some respect on this pussy. I'm not going to allow
what I used to allow. What was the ship? Because
that's what the girls need to hear. How to shift
out of that thinking, out of that mindset, into the
one where we value what we have. Well, first of all,
I know this, You're never gonna send enough pictures to
(13:23):
make this thing work, right. You'll be sending pictures of
your colon, your pinky toe. You're fleeing the inside of
your vagina, the outside of vagina, your prostate, your old
You'll be sending pictures forever. Eventually somebody will tell you
that they want you or they don't. Now that's one thing, yes.
(13:46):
The other thing is I've been skinny, I've been fat,
I've been skinny, I've been a little thicker than I
used to be, and I still poll I'm clear about this.
You know, there are a lot of inconvenient instan well,
not a lot of inconveniences, but there are a couple
of really key inconveniences to being in a trans woman,
(14:06):
and this whole loving relationship piece is one of them,
but one of the blessings of being a trans woman.
I can have a horn in the top of my
head and a fang. I can have gray hair with
one breast that wraps around my whole neck, and I
can walk outside to my sidewalk and whisper sex and
(14:26):
people will come from everywhere. I can always pull some trade.
This is that you are a trans woman. You can
pull sex. Now that may not be your appetite, and
you must get to know I really want love and intimacy.
I need to grieve that because that's not what I'm having.
Or I'm hot and I want some sex. Click. So
when men come to us, now, this is the power
(14:47):
of mine. When men come to us and think that
they're doing us a favor by wanting to have some
sort of sexual relations with us, that's a chop for me.
But we need to put that in its full content,
because here's what I said. Okay, daddy, you're just talking
about being screw buddies. Well, now let me put you
in the queue, because in this culture, I don't have
(15:10):
a husband, but I have several auditions lined up for
screw buddies. I'm sorry, you're number forty eight on the list.
I'll call him three weeks and see whatever. Because this
is not going to be the night in shining Armor.
And once you reach a certain age, a certain level
of maturity, you begin to see that yeah, yeah, and
(15:30):
and this one wants you to hear. Then you begin
to go ahead and grieve that. And it's a grieving,
it's maybe a reality. But on the other side of
that grief is the pussy respect I speak. Yeah, I
think even when I was single, I don't send naked pictures.
There's just things I just don't do. And it's part
(15:51):
and part of that is about the respecting myself. Part
of that is I'm a public figure. We're not doing
that because before I met my boyfriend, I was like,
maybe I'll just you know, have an f WB situation,
you know, like I was, I was auditioning guys. Even
for that, I need a certain level of respect, consistency.
We're meeting in public. There's just there are things that
(16:12):
have to become unacceptable in terms of how you treat me,
because I understand that this is divine. Well, you know,
we're giving trends women so many instructional messages about how
to navigate their body, all to change and switch their body.
But the one thing we're not telling trans women it's
(16:33):
okay to have a standard. Yes, and if he really
wants you, he will meet that standard. Listen, a man
is a man. I'm sorry, I'm full disclosure. I am
highly heteronormative, I am highly gend the specific. I am
a woman under cut and clean. IMA's vanilla as it comes.
(16:53):
So here's my point of view. If a man loves you,
if he truly loves you, he will bite through a
brick wall and get to you. And if somebody says
to him, hey man, that's brick. He will say, passed
me some hot sauce because my woman's on the other
side of the wall. So all these things that we do,
cuting our head off, getting new faces. It's fun if
(17:16):
they make us so good, but if he wants you,
he wants you, and we can't make them, and we
can't make them want us. I was. I was on
a discussion with the girls yesterday. They show us very
early on all the ghosting. It's like, Okay, he's not
that into me. I'm moving on. I can't the inconsistency,
I can't do. The go away, come closer, I can't do.
(17:37):
And I'm in a space now. It's I've been dating
this man for a year. We fell in love in December.
I am madly in love. It's a love that I've
never known before. I feel like Stephane Males, I never
knew that like this people and it's wonderful. And I
think like, I'm like, how in the world did this happened?
And I know I've learned from my other relationships, but
(17:58):
I also energetic ling have shifted. There's an energy that
is shifted where I are at a certain point, I
just don't attract the f boys anymore. They just I
repelled them because they know they're not running that game
on me. You know, I've always been a rather a
rather dignified kind of girl. I mean that's you know,
(18:20):
that's just why, And that in and of itself is
a repellent. Knowing yourself clear about the game that's coming.
You know, people can sort of see that. But I
think with you, Laverne, you have a different relationship with
appreciation than most of us do. Your physicality is appreciated,
(18:41):
your talent is appreciated, and most of us just simply then,
So what's the lesson of that? Valerie? Are the rest
of us curse? But lavern is gonna get it? No,
The lesson is to surround ourselves with people who only
see it, yes, and appreciate us, and not just intimate partners,
but people who see our vision, people who see our talent,
(19:04):
people who see our physical beauty, yes, but people who
dig our logic. Get in a new relationship with yourself
so that you don't see yourself as an outsider trying
to push in. You see yourself as in an appreciating Now,
you are a worthy magnet. I gotta take a teensy
(19:25):
break here, but I'll be fast. That wasn't so bad, now,
wasn't Let's get back to it. In the podcast we
did with Dr Joe just spends that he talks about
(19:47):
creating the future we want for ourselves, um, not from
the known, but from the unknown, and living it in
the present, practicing gratitude for the future thing in this
present moment as if it's already happened. So we can
begin to rehearse in our lives on a daily basis
for that energy that we want to surround ourselves with,
and we can begin to vibrate on that energetic field.
(20:08):
And that feels like really super important and really comes
to the work that you're doing as as a holistic healer,
as a therapist. Is there's so many other things so
you've found at the Holistic Empowerment Institute. Can we start
off by defining what you mean by holistic because we
hear that word all the time and I don't know
(20:29):
if we really know what it means. How do you
define holistic? Well, that's why you're my sister, because you're perfect.
That one question, my sister La learned has been the
reason why h g I has been manifesting for well
over a decade. What is holistic? And and in defining that,
(20:51):
I couldn't find a definition outside of holistic is encompassing
of those sort of environmental piece so finance, family, peers,
relationship and love and safety, housing, medical or physical safety.
But that's not what I meant as holistic. In power,
(21:13):
I meant spiritually integrated. Yes, empowerment. Now what does that mean? Well,
in order to define that, I went on a quest
to define a really good definition of one word healing.
I looked and I wasn't satisfied with most of the
answers that defined healing. So I had to create one
(21:36):
of myself. Yes, and I call healing a psycho spiritual shift.
That just brought up a lot of stuff for me.
What is a psycho spiritual shift? That was you? Just
that was some of the energy of it right there, right,
because it's energetic. Yeah, And so for our people, people
of color, we experienced that psycho spiritual shift all the time.
(21:57):
We seek it out. We usually do that in hurt
settings and religious settings. Right. I call it a touch.
We need a touch, And I call it a psycho
spiritual shift that leads to a new perspective of past
experiences are redefining of self and it also leads to
(22:18):
a whole new way of living and behavior. And so
h G I does that in a number of ways.
Some of them don't look religious. The problem with doing
things that are spiritually inclusive is that people want to
figure out, like where does religion fit and does it
fit because it's not. I don't want to be bothered.
And so I was sitting on the beach and I
(22:38):
was just thinking, you know, God help and spirits spoke
to me and said, take the God out. It's problematic,
it's complicated. Take the God out and and replace the
God with what we are pulling people into what I
call their sacred core. There's a sacred core, teaching them
about the sacred interior. We're moving people out of a
(23:02):
God that's over on Cringshaw somewhere and pulling them into
themselves because that is the relationship. And so we'll be
doing that in a number of voice. The first way
we're doing it, I've wanted to have a love letter
to the trans women in my life and all over
the world. We want trans women to lead from a
(23:24):
full context of themselves, but also to see the community
the transformune to that deleting in the full context of
who they are. So we're taught that trans communities are
disease burdened. I even saw a smoking sensation presentation where
they quoted that trans people's trans women smoke more than
anybody else. They have no data to support it. I said,
(23:49):
I know several queens, and I know maybe two or
three that's smoke. Where y'all finding this? fIF a queen's
who will they be? Right? So we're gonna teach our
people to not see trans women in terms of deficity.
We want trans women to lead trans people from a
place of knowing our people is powerful. Yeah, we want
(24:13):
to know our people outside of the deficit narrative. Who
are you? Who have you been in Africa? Who have
you been in Native America? Who have you been in Brazil?
Who have you been in Asia? Who have you been
in Russia? Practice? Who are you? Glow? Who are you right?
Not just this? I want to change my set. I
don't like my breast, I don't like the shape of
(24:35):
my thing. Who are you? That's not who you are?
Are you suggesting all of who you are as your aesthetics? No,
you have healing in your end, you are trans Your
purpose is to be an intermediary between spirit and human God.
That's who we've served, right, So we want to teach
our people a whole new way, leading with skill sets,
(24:58):
but also this thing, our compassion m hm, to really
build this platform called spiritually integrated holistic empowerment. We're building
the model as we speak, got it, spiritually integrated holistic empowerment.
What does that mean? That means we know how our
people heal. We use both evidence based practices and we
(25:21):
merge them with the sacred. So we'll be using interventions
in behavior health to relieve depression and anxiety, social anxiety
and all those things. We'll be using some of those
evidence based practices, but we also know that a good
pot of greens is very healing. The process of cooking
back is very hell. We also know that rocking and
(25:45):
amone mm hmmm kept her out of prison and kept
you alive. Right, So we'll be bringing to like the
ways that our people heal. Our people heals through the vogue.
Have you ever seen him? Girl? I can't watch it
(26:08):
in person. I don't go, but I can't after leave
because I'm having a religious experience. Yes, ma'am, it's not.
And you think about the vogueing and how that the
connection to vogue in Africa, right, and that that the
rhythms right, Vogueing is an an American art form that
has gone all over the world. It's very exciting you're
thinking about that lineage. I love how connected to to
(26:29):
all of the spirit you are. But when you talked
about rocking and moaning, what was really beautiful for me?
As I love bringing in other things we've talked about
on the podcast, that feels so in the parlance of
the community resiliency modeling from the Trauma Research Institute, that
rocking and humming is a resource that actually stimulates the
vagus nerve and can reset our nervous system and then
(26:52):
begin to facilitate that psycho spiritual shift. Right. That also
is the power of the own, the power of the
ome re centers. That nerve oxygenates the brain, the all
(27:12):
in its full breath, right does that as well. Every
culture has their way of sort of having a reset,
right Nomi Horano, Nomi right, home shanty shanty home, shanty,
shanty o. All of us have those ways of sort
of reoxygenating the brain, re centering the snaps firing in
(27:36):
the brain and coming together. I love those things and
I love finding the connections between the I think we
were Buddhism and a few other things in um the
Baptist Church, and then integrating that with like Trauma Resiliency ORG. Right,
that is the end, that is thematic that is connected
(27:56):
to the body. Welcome to holistic compartment institute. That yeah,
and for me that is really exciting. I have a
holistic doctor here in l a doctor Henry, and she
focuses on the physical part. In my therapist who's a
trauma resiliency therapist sent me to doctor Henry. And what
she illuminated to me I've been with her for um
(28:17):
four or five years now, is that regular Western medicine
basically like they can prescribe drugs or give you surgery.
There's nothing really preventative. And what they do and so
with Dr Henry, we talk about my gut help. We
do acupuncture, we do microcurrent, we do heart rate variability,
we do all these things that like, well, what's going on.
(28:39):
If this is happening, Let's look at your diet, let's
look at your sleep patterns, let's look at all these
things like sort of on a physical level. Now, see,
I want to take it further as the spiritually integrated therapists.
I need to know more. I need to know do
you know who your ancestors are? Who are the relationships
with it? We need to repair, right, We may need
(29:01):
you to do some ancestral repair work. And good god,
I found that to be so useful. Ancestral repair work.
That feat sounds like for people out there, what are
you talking about? That's a little esoteric ancestral repair work
or we're talking seances or so like, can you break
that down for us? Because I find that really fascinating.
So energy does not end, well, speak, he doesn't dissiplate. Yeah,
(29:24):
it always continues. It's not. It is only transformed continuous
that always it transmutes the changes form. So Grandmama may
not be Grandma, but that energy is still pleasant with us. Right,
and we know that the divine doesn't really operate in here.
There's then mouths, a penny, a million. The spirit of
(29:46):
life doesn't really operate in those sort of limitations. So
if you're having a relationship with yourself based on somebody's
information that that was given to you about yourself, we
may need to go and clear some that up, and
we might need to I took one of my clients
to the beach and we had a great talk with grandmama.
(30:06):
I take a lot of my clients to water because
I believe the water doesn't work. And she did. She
begin to right, you were wrong about me not going
to him. I'm gonna be okay. So now we can
begin to build a whole new relationship with that ancestor.
Because in the African tradition, we use our and in
the Latin many traditions Ethano traditions, we use our ancestors
(30:30):
as resource. They are a part of our ammunition. So
when I do both therapy and spiritual council, I'm asking
people about your therapeutic tools, like are you doing your
affirmative work? Are you doing your writing? Are you doing journaling?
Are you breathing? Doing mindful MI six? But I'm also
asking are you engage? Have you engaged your ancestor on this?
(30:52):
Have you spoke some a permitive I do teach a
permitive prayer. What is the affirmative prayer? What an affermitive
prayer is speaking from? So what you're friend talked about
earlier about sort of navigating yourself from a place that
it is already accomplished. That is really scriptural, really call
things that be not as it were. Permitive prayer speaks
(31:14):
from a place of knowing already one's oneness with the
spirit of life. Right, So we're not begging God to
do something. We're stepping into who we are as citizens
of the spirit and speaking our word expecting it to unfold,
because that is the promise and that is the law.
(31:36):
So we're very mindful of the prayer we put out.
Like you know, in my training, we had to as
a spiritual counsel, we had to write our prayers and
have them critiqued. Oh yes, maybe, and they were. Christina
Applegate sat next to me. We were like, dang, I
got beat up critiquing a prayer Jesus Christ and grading
(31:56):
a prayer and grading your science. Mind was no criteria
for um for grading a prayer. So and reading our
prayers your your comfortence this this this line here that
speaks of separation. That is not unifying, That is not you,
That is not affirmative. Okay, well this time this is denials.
(32:16):
We don't use denials. We don't say things like God
I don't want um, so we don't speak, and God,
please don't let them be in a council. Wait wait, wait, wait,
we're not doing denials. We're speaking in front of my
body operates and complete vitality and overwhelming health. That is
my DNA and my birth flight is the law of
the spirit that I'm speaking. We speak that you don't
(32:38):
speak no thing. I'm hot and behind a bush. Don't
let him give me no. No, that's a power less prayer.
Oh so much comes up for me. I think about
negative self talk, which came up for me really strong
during the pandemic, And it's just an old habit and
that what we say can ship a thought, can shift
us into trauma, can after our bodies into shame just
(33:01):
a negative thought or negative self talk. So what is
so beautiful about what you're saying now on a spiritual
level is that um neurobiologically, it also begins to set
up their nervous system for resilience. It's just a the
nervous system for trauma resilience, for shame resilience. Can I
say that another way? Absolutely, you begin to set up
(33:23):
a whole another pattern of habituation in terms of how
to process trauma, how to encode trauma, how to resist trauma?
Asked trauma? Right, when you live your life from a
place of knowing fully who you are, some things just
don't affect you like they affect other people, or how
(33:45):
they used to affect you. Why because you don't see
yourself as this weak, needy, vulnerable, wanting to be loved transperson.
I really think that language for us has become toxic. Right,
This whole wanting to be trans is trying to be trans.
Quit trans will be you. The definition will catch up
(34:08):
to you and wrap itself around you. You don't need
to wrap yourself around the definition of trans. It's gonna
change in ten years anyway. I want to fortify you
so that you see yourself as powerful, as beautiful. That
you know what your skill sets are, that you know
what your talents are, that you know what your triggers are,
(34:29):
but also you know your weapons are not to fire
back at the attack, but to form a worthy shield.
You can't call me a man in a dress, and
that shodow my existence today. I mean, well, first of all,
I have proof that it's not true. I do have
a stunning mirror. However, however, I've been through too much.
(34:55):
I know myself too much. I know the source of
the attack. That's the other piece we don't teach our well,
the source of the attack. Hey, look y'all, that's the
man that was never about you. That was a protective
factor that people do for themselves. That was a trigger
response because many Cistean women, when trans women walk into
(35:15):
a room, we become very self and dieting for sisteent women, right,
for some thank you for that. I don't want to generalize.
You know, she's like that. Why am I like this?
And many people process it through attack instead of just saying, wow,
what a beautiful another form of woman as I am
as well. Right, But when you begin to fortify yourself,
(35:36):
you have a different relationship to abuse and that psycho
spiritual shift, it really does happen, and it changes, It
just changes everything. I always think about what gets in
the way for some of the some of the girls,
I mean a lot of our young trans sisters may
be dealing with like survival, sex, work and just in environment.
Environment is so key. My my boyfriend always says, we're
(35:59):
part of of our environment, and so it's that who
do we surround ourselves? With and we're talking about spiritual fortification.
We have to be surrounded by people and energy. We
that that that is going to reinforce that that force
spiritual fortification. So we may need to let some people go.
We may need to like move out of this home
(36:20):
that is not you know, that's toxic if we can, right,
We may need to get out of this relationship or
let this girlfriend go who doesn't see really see it
for us to find that spiritual fortification and to step
into what we're meant to be. And you know, I
always think about when you talk like that, I think
about my angelus poem for our grandmother said for often
(36:42):
quotes she says that I come as one, but I
stand as ten thousand and you just pulled up my girl.
Now waitman, you talk about my mama. Now hold up.
But that statement that maya made. When I read that,
that came why I love being a transformer, because I
(37:03):
am not just this diagnostic physicality that you see. M hm.
I am so lady Java that beguiled your granddaddy. I
am Christine Jurgensen. That said a whole new conversation about
body physicality. Right, My value goes beyond Valerie Senser. My
(37:25):
value goes beyond this thing called trans. I have been
so useful and fought after throughout cultures. So I'm not
just this queen who was teased and ostracized in south
central Los Angeles. That's the factual merit. The truth of
it is, Oh, honey, I am the Faa. I am
(37:49):
the Burbadash. I am the Hezra, I am the truth spirit.
I am the Shaman. I am the who do priestess.
I am the priestess. I have been on than Santaria
and Budom Catholicism, So we know ourselves differently. We have
been given it's very narrow margin of understanding about ourselves
(38:15):
and the link between that and colonialism. It's so important
to always emphasize and to always talk about that, that
that the way European colonialism colonized so much of the world,
where we were viewed as sacred beings right and indigenous
cultures all over the world, and and and European colonialism
came in and said, what is this, This is not
(38:37):
of Jesus Christ and marginalized us. And I always invite
young trans people to connect with that history and realize
that they are anointed and I feel like that's what
you're talking about now. When when I had a look
on this on this podcast, the local was saying to
trans people always been spiritual leaders. That is what we
are here for. And and you know we can step
(38:58):
into that or not. They're the reason why they saw
us as even as and pagan. There's a reason why
they saw us as out. Of course, we presented certain
gender physicality that they did not understand. But the receipts
were the receipts. And here's what I mean by that.
(39:18):
The receipts were when the trans woman went over their
growth house, that baby don't have their code nor move.
The receipts were when the trans woman showed over at
that dry crop. It was a dry clop. Not six
weeks later they got all kind of corn over there.
The receipts were the receipts. We were the kaiser of
(39:39):
our people. We were the hm of the land. Those
colonial oppresses, yes, they saw us for what we were.
We were a vehicle to stop their progression. We bore
both physical energy, ancestral energy, energetic energy. We knew how
to manipulate the earth and the Let we ship. It's
(40:07):
time for a short break when we come back more
with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right back in.
And when I think about the current sort of anti trans,
(40:31):
like vigorous anti trans push from conservatives, it's like, can
we just allow us to be great? Allow us to
step into the divineness that we are? And I think
we can give ourselves permission. One of the many things
I love about you is that you have not You've
not waiting for anybody to give you permission to like,
(40:51):
to to be great, to be well. I must consess.
I did. I did, now, let me tell you. In
my late thirties, I had a huge resentment because I
just thought, if I just stay bright and cunning and
smiling and nice and upbeat, that Oprah is gonna come
get me. I'm telling you ad At about thirty eight,
(41:13):
it occur to me that Oprah was not coming to
give me. That I was actually gonna have to produce this.
That's why I went back to school, because I thought, Okay,
well she came and got I come get me once
I really got and the other piece of earn. And
I really want your listeners to connect with this, Assess
yourself and be honest, because sometimes the current lanes in,
(41:39):
as bright and shiny and seemingly successful producing as they
may be, they just don't fit for you. I was
somebody just trying to learn how to diagnose and and
Department of Mental Health and all those things that I
was not asking questions like like where are you feeling
this in your body? The somatic questions. Who came to
(42:02):
you last night and talk to you about this? You
know what ancestor have you been to me? And after
a while I had to give my my self permission
to let my freaking flag fly. I just have to
because it felt like work and I can't do work.
I learned that years ago. I just I can't work.
(42:22):
And what I think you mean is that when you're
doing something that you love, when it is aligned with
a purpose that is bigger than you, it doesn't feel
like work. It feels effortless and fun and oh my god,
they sent me money, right, And you know, there are
sometimes in that you may clean a toilet, you may
have to pick up a chair and move it. You
(42:43):
you know, the ease and difficulty of whatever task is.
That's not really irrelevant. The relevance is that I feel
so appreciated and valued. Here, I appreciate and value all
these people. I feel safe. It doesn't feel like work,
but I've had jobs that felt like and it feels
like work, and part of that toxic I want to
(43:05):
listen to such a self free baby, because part of
that toxic work is getting yourself together to get up
every day to go deal with that toxic work. You
need to do some work that's not work. Some of
us just can't do it. And I think I've been
thinking a lot about toxic stress in my life. And
I have lived a very stressful life over the past
few years, and there's a lot of pressure on me
(43:27):
and my job, and I'm just like, how do what
does it look like for me to let that go?
But the toxic stress actually proceeds me being famous Leaver
and Cox. It goes back to childhood stuff. It's historical,
so like trying to make decisions now for my healing,
for me to be more connected to the ancestors, connected
to to love, being in love now, it's really all
(43:49):
about love that when you really are in love or
feel love, it's not even just about romantic love, feeling
love for music, or feeling love for acting, or art
and being creative, that there's something that shifts in my
body that is just so connected. And when things go awride,
I get in my head I'm not I'm not feeling
(44:09):
allowing myself to feel the love in my body, and
I'm not allowing myself to be connected. It's maybe a
connection to my girlfriends, a connection to the love I
have preparing for this podcast. I have love. I have love.
Really doing the work for this podcast has been so
joyous for me, and I feel connected when I do
that connection to another human being, connected to a power,
(44:31):
the energy of the universe, that that is bigger than me,
connected to a purpose, that this same thing is not
just about me looking cute on Instagram it's a glare
or or low wive or whatever, that there is a
purpose attached to it. In connection, then that begins to
shift the energy in my body, that begins to like
(44:53):
to heal, It begins to heal, and that that that
that's the one there it is. Some of them will
dis over if we're honest that self awareness alone did
not quite do it. Academic cognitive critical understanding didn't do it.
We needed something that wasn't religious, and religion has been
(45:14):
really oppressive for our people, specifically LGBT, and actually for
everybody religion all overlooking what's going on global as we
have so hijacked God and may God out to be
this evil motherfucker that's like, you know, my daddy was
like this temp with to have on you. Don't do
(45:36):
it in my way. I'm gonna not to hell out
you where my money at? Is this the energy that
said let that be light? Or was it like it's
turned to goddamn lights on me and I'm programmed to
learn life's lessons by way of mistake and you're gonna
burn me forever for that. That's why God said to me,
take take me out, you know were I want to
(45:59):
offer a frame to what you were saying earlier. However,
I think it also requires safety and honesty because if
I feel safe, if I feel safe, I'll allow myself
to connect with those things or to do those things.
And if I'm honest. Now, that one is a big, big, big, big, big,
(46:19):
big big, because we've got a lot invested in those
narratives and they are multi variant and dynamic, they are
organic and living, and I always like to ask my clients,
what's the truth. We need that. Okay, what's the truth?
We need that? Okay, what's the truth? Be needs that
until we hit a hard layer of I was trying
(46:41):
to buy love. And so if I feel safe, then
I will feel so safe that I'll be honest. And
when I'm honest, a whole bunch of magical things start happening.
First of all, when I'm honest, those ancestors present themselves
to you and say Hi, I'm here with your name
(47:02):
and Marcus bags. Are you ready? They become like spiritual concierge. Right,
the difficulty of life is taken out because we've got
other resources. Right. I don't have a personal assistant, I
do have prayer. So I'm trying to promote people feelings safe.
The other thing that you mentioned leads into this. Those
(47:24):
Instagram posting don't need a purpose what the heck for?
They're fun. They are they are, they are, they are
Laverne being. That's that, And so should anyone look at
that and say, well, what's the meaning behind that? Nothing
(47:45):
on Instagram getting my entire life because my body is fabulous.
I'm in a fabulous place, and I came to check
them up. I can't. I'm the instrument in illumination, get
into it. I am the instrument and illumination. I love
the you. We have to wrap up soon, but I
love that you talked about safety, because none of this
work is possible without safety. The point of trauma resilience
(48:08):
found work is to move out of the fight flight
or freeze. If our nervous systems are in the constant
fight flighter freeze, if we've experienced trauma discrimination. I believe
that our LGBTQ community, particularly transmarine of color, are constantly
in that survival fight flighter freeze where we never feel safe.
And so if we never feel safe, we can't do
(48:29):
any of this work. We can't do any work because
we're in the Olympic brain. We're not in our prefrontal cortex.
We're not in that resilient place. So we have to
get ourselves out of that heightened fight flight or freeze.
I'm in danger that we've been talking about this on
the podcast since we started. It becomes a fog, that
fight flight response that you speak of. It becomes like
(48:49):
a permanent existence fall and so it sounds like illogical
decision make it sounds like a questionable impulse control. It's
just that fall of the trauma in survival, trauma, survival
and affirmation. Too much trauma, not enough survival, complete depletion
(49:12):
of affirmation. This culture does not affirm us unless we
are bionically beautiful. Everybody can look like y'all, and then
it's still contingent because we age because we want to
get fat. You're never gonna a patriarchy, You're never gonna age,
and you know you're never gonna get sat Please stop
anyway before I ask the last question that in the
(49:34):
podcast with I just want to um what I love,
always loved about you is that there is something deeply
connected to the earth, to spirituality, to something that is bigger,
that's just something that is divine, and that that is
deeply necessary for us going forward as trans people. There's
(49:55):
were so visible now in ways that we have never
can never really imagine. But we really desperately need this
spiritual component as we go forward. We really do. We
need deeper capacities to love people who are coming for us.
But we can't do that if we're not loving ourselves.
And what you have given us today is like a
(50:17):
deep understanding of like the ways in which we can
love ourselves that are deeply connected to our ancestors, to
the earth, to the God that that is within us.
And this is crucial right now as we face the
battles of just everyday life. And so this is out
there and it's available, and it's waiting. It's it's right here,
(50:40):
and it is who you are already. So the inheritance
sound is the trends soul. Let let me be clear
before let me get my commercials there. The truth sound
is the you. The inheritance sound is this thing called transgender.
(51:03):
We also, in our loving of ourselves, we have to
examine our relationship to this terminology. M I retired from
being trans. I stepped back in where it pays, you know,
because it's become lucrative in some spaces. But in my
life every day, oh my god, being transgendous too much
work on my word? Right, where's the appreciation? Where's the validation?
(51:25):
It has me living in social anxiety, thinking that people
want to attack me or harmy And that may be true,
but that keeps me from blocking that attack with my
sickening nous, right because I'm so busy focused on Am
I enough trans and invite people to yes, appreciate the
(51:46):
legacy the lineage of being trans. But who are you
A No, that's the harder question to answer. That's the
deeper point of inquiry. Who am I? I'm more than
that Now. I see myself as much more than trans. Therefore,
(52:06):
I see myself as having the availa ability to experience
something beyond the trauma that is trans. But bemind you,
I want to make it seem like I've gotten off
trans trauma free. In my life. The trauma was like
a miss. You didn't know why you didn't get the job,
(52:27):
but you didn't get the job. Right. You were interviewed
by a man. Oh my god, that man was handsome
and he said all the great things that you know
you were gonna get the job. You blamed yourself. You
didn't know it was about him. He liked queens. He's
always like queens. If he hired you, he was gonna
get clocked, so he couldn't have you here. You didn't
know that. There's that's a whole podcast. But that's the
(52:51):
beauty of being a thing. Oh, I know the team.
Some attacks don't attack you like they used to because
you know you know that the attacker. It's like I
know that if I let you into my house, I
know exactly what position you will be getting into within
sixteen men, I know exactly who you are. So I
(53:14):
know who you are, so it doesn't bother still, couldn't
I know what you want? The Reverend Reverend Reverend s Mencer, Girl,
we gotta end this podcast. I love you so much.
I love this spirituality. With the key key we end
the Laverne Cock Show with this question what else is true?
(53:37):
And it's taken from my somatic therapy through the community
resiliency model, and it's the idea of both. And if
there's something challenging in my life, something else is true.
If I'm feeling pain in one part of my body,
there may be a part of my body where it's
neutral and positive. So if I can focus on that
other thing that is true, I can lift the pain
(53:59):
anxiety of this thing that is weighing me down. Reverend
Valerie Spencer, for you today, on this day, what else
is true? For you? I am always supported. I may
can't see the support, I may can't even smell the
support or even have an internal navigation of where it is.
(54:23):
But if I can just get still for a nano
second and remind myself, heyy, you know that you're supported, Bryan.
We feel often alone, We feel that we have to
navigate theseselves by ourselves. I often feel like if I
admit my unknowing, you know, people will see me as
(54:45):
a failure or not enough, and let them see that
I am always supporting. I'm always gonna be okay, even
if I'm penniless and broke, because I'm a queen. I
can make pennies and broke look like the mett gallant. Dear,
I'm a queen, So don't you know, please don't see
your transness as a deficit. That's your battery, that's your power,
(55:10):
that's your songs. Valerie Spencer, I love you so much
or ever you look good. Thank you. Okay, bye, y'all.
Y'all gonna make me ms Joey read in the CBC. Okay,
be well, Lebern call me here. I will call you
(55:32):
be well. Be well. M M. That was good, right.
I love me some. Valerie Spencer. She's a key, key,
but she's so spiritually grounded and she always has been.
(55:53):
And the phrase that just knocked me on my on
my booty, I go spiritual shift the way Valorie talked
about it reminds me of sort of getting the spirit,
you know, when the preachers preaching and some some truth
comes over you. If the spirit hits you, when you
get the Holy Ghost, that's what a psycho spiritual shifts
(56:14):
or feels like. But then like taking it out of
the context of of church and and also thinking that
we all have a sacred core, that her work is
about inviting us to tap into our sacred core, and
it's it's inside of us, but it is also connected
to ancestors, it's connected to an energy that's bigger than us.
(56:35):
I think it feels like she's talking about the quantum
field the way Dr drum Joe dispense I talked about,
Like you know, she's talking about the spirits and how
they can speak to us and live within us. I'm like, Okay,
this is like a quantum model that she's talking about,
but she's using spiritual language to talk about it. I love.
So it is all related that there's just different approaches
(56:56):
that we can take to get where we need to get.
But I think ultimately stepping into the divine within us
doing all the trauma work that we've been inviting through
the course of this podcast, so that we can feel safe,
so that we can be in our resilience zone, the
sacred core, and allow that to manifest itself through our
(57:17):
entire being. Is a beautiful, beautiful image, a beautiful, beautiful
invitation and gift that Valerie Spencer has given us today.
(57:38):
Thank you for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review,
and subscribe and share with everyone you know. Join me
next week for my conversation with Madame iris If, my
voice coach and opera teacher for over twenty five years.
Opera is a passion for both of us, and in
our conversation we go into the dean died insane fandom
(58:02):
that is being an opera queen, and we have a
tremendous amount of fun. Whether you're an opera fan or not,
is the conversation not to be missed. You can find
me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on
Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, Stand
(58:22):
Up Up. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of
Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the i Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of shand
Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. We were
the kaiser of our people. We were the hm of
the land. Both colonial oppresses, yes, they saw us from
what we were. We were a vehicle to stop their progression.
(00:25):
We bore both physical energy and thestical energy, energetic imergy.
We know how to manipulate yours and the level. Hello everyone,
and welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox.
(00:52):
On this podcast, I've invited you to go on a
journey with me towards healing from shame, trauma, attachment shoes,
adverse childhood experiences and more. But I believe there's another
essential element involved in healing that we may be briefly
touched on here that haven't really done a deep dive
(01:12):
into yet, and that spirituality. Now let me be clear,
I am not talking about religion. I am talking about
spirituality now. I love Renee Brown's definition of spirituality. You
know we love Renee Brown. Here. Renee Brown defined spirituality
as recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected
(01:38):
to each other by a power that is greater than
all of us, and that our connection to that power
and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose
into our lives. I believe spirituality is a crucial part
(02:01):
of our healing, and I have the very most perfect
person with whom to have this conversation with you today.
I first met Valerie Spencer in two thousand twelve for
a panel I was moderating for the National Black Justice
Coalition in Washington, d C. Valerie was a panelist. Now,
Valerie Spencer owns every single room she walks into, and
(02:24):
she truly owned that panel. She has a present that
is undeniable, that is anointed, that is everything. She is
just that girl. I was familiar with Valerie Spencer because
I had seen this incredible documentary called Beautiful Daughters that
documents the very first all transgender production of Eve Insler's
(02:47):
The Vagina Monologues. Valerie was in the documentary and she
stole the show. She was incredible and it was clear
to me then that she was a superstar, and over
the years we've become really good friends. Valerie is the
creator of the Holistic Empowerment Institute an organization which addresses
(03:08):
empowerment on a social, cultural, and holistic basis for lgbt
q I plus communities. For over two decades, Valerie Spencer
has worked in social services focusing on health disparities as
they relate to transgender people and others within lgbt q
I plus communities. In two thousand eleven, the California Legislative
(03:28):
lgbt Q Caucus officially recognized her as a state and
national leader in the movement for lgbt q I plus
political and social freedoms. She has worked with the federal government,
health departments, universities, conferences, and community based organizations all over
the country. Please enjoy my conversation with Valerie Spencer. Hello, Hello,
(03:59):
Hello Lari Spencer. Welcome to the podcast. How are you
failing today, my sister, I'm alive, I'm illuminated. I'm prepared
to serve, alive, illuminated and prepared to serve. Amen. Hallelujah.
I miss you. I haven't seen you in so long.
(04:19):
We had a zoom or something, but it it's not
the same, so we need to hang out in real life.
I was thinking about sisterhood and I was thinking about
what that has meant in my life and how I
have such incredible trans women in my life and you're
certainly one of them. Where there's no there's never been
(04:41):
any competition. And when I think about competition, I think
about competition for jobs. Even in the not for profit
world that you've sort of been in for for most
of your life, there's competition and backstabbing. And then for men,
I said, there was a trans woman online talking about
this this man who I who seemed very editory, who
(05:01):
put her in competition with another trans woman, and I
was just like, this is not when I'm living. And
I thought, before we get into the incredible work that
that you're doing with the Holistic Empowerment Institute, can you
talk a little bit about your experience with what that
is in our community. I want the girls, and you know,
(05:22):
I'm talking specifically about trans young trans women now before
anyone else who this might apply to, to not be
in competition with each other and also to be well
and whole. What comes up for you when I say
all that, Well, Typically when people talk about the deficits
(05:43):
in our community, particularly around trans women sharing or competing
the space, we tend to focus on the trans woman herself,
or the trans women themselves, or the community itself. But
the problem is actually not connected with the women at all.
The problem has to do with having to navigate through
(06:08):
and in a culture of society that does not fully celebrate,
embrace or seen the woman that you are right. And
so you've got to rally a cage. You've got to
shake your baby rattle to be seen, to be noticed,
you've got to say to the culture, look at me,
I can walk. You know, all of those things that
(06:29):
children do, all of those things that we all do
as human beings to struggle to be seen. And so
when we fixed and do that completely, and and we're
not just talking about Pride parade signs, and and I
am so pleased with all of the activism that sort
(06:49):
of spawned this trans inclusion um the Gap has changed
its website, So many things have happened, but these are
tertiary at bets. But ulture has to accept the fact
that your sons won't me, Am, your father's won't me,
your uncle Teddy and them they want me? Now, do
(07:10):
they want me more than you? Well that's a conversation
I'm not privy to. However, they won't me, and they
also see my womanhood. Now, you may not see my womanhood,
and he may not get on this pulpit and talk
about my womanhood, and he may not get in the
ballot box or in the legislation office and talk about
my woman But up and here the sanctuary, he validates, celebrates,
(07:36):
and expresses fully his appreciation for this woman's body. Now,
when we're begin to move the culture to the place
where trans women are truly on equal footing with every
other woman, then we can revisit the conversation of sharing
and jockeying for space. But if you notice all women
(07:56):
jockey for space and do strange things to compete for
sexual space, I think perhaps it's just a part of
the blow of womanhood, the blow of being that caregiven,
that nurturing, that woman that really wants to see this
person in her life. We do those things as women,
but it's transporting. Probably the reason why we do them
(08:18):
because the society does not embrace our womanhood not fully.
I wonder what just came up for me is I
wonder if we enough of us as trans women haven't
fully divested of patriarchy. What I believe is that it
is the patriarchy and When I say patriarchy, I mean
institutional sexism, and we don't We don't need men for patriarchy.
(08:40):
Women engage in patriarchy as well, but patriarchy, that patriarchal
system pits women against each other. I like to talk
about systems and structures because it's really important. But in
the face of that, what is my responsibility? What is
what can I do in my life to change my circumstances?
Because they're both both and right. So what do you
(09:02):
think about that? In relationship with patriarchy, Ladies and gentlemen
and family human families understand I am reven bellary spensively.
Sometimes nothing conveys the truth like a little piece of profanity.
So here it comes. I think women have just got
to put some more respect on their pussy. Girl, you
(09:25):
have got to put some more respect on the instrument
that you possess. You're throwing your pussy out here to
the wolves to be too needing and coming home straight
cat it. And we vet these individuals based on the package,
based on the spit of game, the swag, the smell,
the attention. But girl, we got to have a little
(09:46):
bit more. See I'm over fifty. Perhaps that's it. I'm
almost there. Next year i'll be You're gonna love You're
You're gonna love your It's an explosion of goodness. Truss.
Your thighs go eastant list to welcome out. But other
than everything else, you're gonna live you. And I just
think that for me, when I see trans women going
(10:08):
through all this, it makes me want to parent. Mm hmm.
That's the beauty of thing in your fifties. You realize,
I know my thighs can't compete. Stop competing. Let's parent
and pour into And when I see trans women going
through all this, it tells me that somebody, a mother
figure auntie, somebody has not told you the value of
(10:29):
your pussy. Footnote pussy is a colloquial term. Therefore, whatever
I say, it's pussy, it's pussy. Now. The man that
I'm with, when I tell him, eat this pussy, he
knows exactly what I'm And I don't have to do
(10:50):
a thesis on anatomy and trans psychology. If I say
eat this, Listen, I'm talking about my elbow. He's going
straight to that elbow. He knows just what I'm talking well,
And so do you really know the value of your
trans sexuality. Have you been taught that you have your
own sexual power, your own sexual pool and vibrational pool,
(11:13):
and so you don't need to compeople with another woman's
energetic pool. You have your own and it works every time.
Now will he marry you? Perhaps not, But if you
audition a further, that may not be him. Amen. Amen.
What I love about what you're saying is you're you're preaching. Um,
You're preaching a gospel and a different one, but a
(11:35):
very important one, because it's about our inherent, our inherent worth,
the spirituality, the God that we carry within us, the sacredness,
the sacred each of us whole. Because I think about,
you know, when I was younger. I think about a
relationship I was in for four years and two thousand
and two five with an alcoholic who is emotionally abusive.
And I believed at that time in my life, because
(11:59):
I was trans, that that was the best that I
could do, that no one would love me, that I
was not lovable because I'm a black trans woman and
nobody's gonna want me. And this man wants me, and
I've met his mother. So here's where I am in
that narrator You're all right. I may not be able
to find a man who loves me. I may not
(12:20):
be able to find that. And I'm fifty five and
I brushed up against it, but I have yet to
lock arms with it. But the one thing I do
know that I do have agency over is that I
will not be disregarded. I will not be disrespected for
(12:41):
even for the sake of my own ego desire, even
for the sake of my own vanity, even for the
sake of my heart's desire, which is to be loved
and affirmed by a strong man. Valerie, have you always
been there? I haven't. What was the ship? When with
the moment when you were like, Okay, I'm gonna put
(13:02):
some respect on this pussy. I'm not going to allow
what I used to allow. What was the ship? Because
that's what the girls need to hear. How to shift
out of that thinking, out of that mindset, into the
one where we value what we have. Well, first of all,
I know this, You're never gonna send enough pictures to
(13:23):
make this thing work, right. You'll be sending pictures of
your colon, your pinky toe. You're fleeing the inside of
your vagina, the outside of vagina, your prostate, your old
You'll be sending pictures forever. Eventually somebody will tell you
that they want you or they don't. Now that's one thing, yes.
(13:46):
The other thing is I've been skinny, I've been fat,
I've been skinny, I've been a little thicker than I
used to be, and I still poll I'm clear about this.
You know, there are a lot of inconvenient instan well,
not a lot of inconveniences, but there are a couple
of really key inconveniences to being in a trans woman,
(14:06):
and this whole loving relationship piece is one of them,
but one of the blessings of being a trans woman.
I can have a horn in the top of my
head and a fang. I can have gray hair with
one breast that wraps around my whole neck, and I
can walk outside to my sidewalk and whisper sex and
(14:26):
people will come from everywhere. I can always pull some trade.
This is that you are a trans woman. You can
pull sex. Now that may not be your appetite, and
you must get to know I really want love and intimacy.
I need to grieve that because that's not what I'm having.
Or I'm hot and I want some sex. Click. So
when men come to us, now, this is the power
(14:47):
of mine. When men come to us and think that
they're doing us a favor by wanting to have some
sort of sexual relations with us, that's a chop for me.
But we need to put that in its full content,
because here's what I said. Okay, daddy, you're just talking
about being screw buddies. Well, now let me put you
in the queue, because in this culture, I don't have
(15:10):
a husband, but I have several auditions lined up for
screw buddies. I'm sorry, you're number forty eight on the list.
I'll call him three weeks and see whatever. Because this
is not going to be the night in shining Armor.
And once you reach a certain age, a certain level
of maturity, you begin to see that yeah, yeah, and
(15:30):
and this one wants you to hear. Then you begin
to go ahead and grieve that. And it's a grieving,
it's maybe a reality. But on the other side of
that grief is the pussy respect I speak. Yeah, I
think even when I was single, I don't send naked pictures.
There's just things I just don't do. And it's part
(15:51):
and part of that is about the respecting myself. Part
of that is I'm a public figure. We're not doing
that because before I met my boyfriend, I was like,
maybe I'll just you know, have an f WB situation,
you know, like I was, I was auditioning guys. Even
for that, I need a certain level of respect, consistency.
We're meeting in public. There's just there are things that
(16:12):
have to become unacceptable in terms of how you treat me,
because I understand that this is divine. Well, you know,
we're giving trends women so many instructional messages about how
to navigate their body, all to change and switch their body.
But the one thing we're not telling trans women it's
(16:33):
okay to have a standard. Yes, and if he really
wants you, he will meet that standard. Listen, a man
is a man. I'm sorry, I'm full disclosure. I am
highly heteronormative, I am highly gend the specific. I am
a woman under cut and clean. IMA's vanilla as it comes.
(16:53):
So here's my point of view. If a man loves you,
if he truly loves you, he will bite through a
brick wall and get to you. And if somebody says
to him, hey man, that's brick. He will say, passed
me some hot sauce because my woman's on the other
side of the wall. So all these things that we do,
cuting our head off, getting new faces. It's fun if
(17:16):
they make us so good, but if he wants you,
he wants you, and we can't make them, and we
can't make them want us. I was. I was on
a discussion with the girls yesterday. They show us very
early on all the ghosting. It's like, Okay, he's not
that into me. I'm moving on. I can't the inconsistency,
I can't do. The go away, come closer, I can't do.
(17:37):
And I'm in a space now. It's I've been dating
this man for a year. We fell in love in December.
I am madly in love. It's a love that I've
never known before. I feel like Stephane Males, I never
knew that like this people and it's wonderful. And I
think like, I'm like, how in the world did this happened?
And I know I've learned from my other relationships, but
(17:58):
I also energetic ling have shifted. There's an energy that
is shifted where I are at a certain point, I
just don't attract the f boys anymore. They just I
repelled them because they know they're not running that game
on me. You know, I've always been a rather a
rather dignified kind of girl. I mean that's you know,
(18:20):
that's just why, And that in and of itself is
a repellent. Knowing yourself clear about the game that's coming.
You know, people can sort of see that. But I
think with you, Laverne, you have a different relationship with
appreciation than most of us do. Your physicality is appreciated,
(18:41):
your talent is appreciated, and most of us just simply then,
So what's the lesson of that? Valerie? Are the rest
of us curse? But lavern is gonna get it? No,
The lesson is to surround ourselves with people who only
see it, yes, and appreciate us, and not just intimate partners,
but people who see our vision, people who see our talent,
(19:04):
people who see our physical beauty, yes, but people who
dig our logic. Get in a new relationship with yourself
so that you don't see yourself as an outsider trying
to push in. You see yourself as in an appreciating Now,
you are a worthy magnet. I gotta take a teensy
(19:25):
break here, but I'll be fast. That wasn't so bad, now,
wasn't Let's get back to it. In the podcast we
did with Dr Joe just spends that he talks about
(19:47):
creating the future we want for ourselves, um, not from
the known, but from the unknown, and living it in
the present, practicing gratitude for the future thing in this
present moment as if it's already happened. So we can
begin to rehearse in our lives on a daily basis
for that energy that we want to surround ourselves with,
and we can begin to vibrate on that energetic field.
(20:08):
And that feels like really super important and really comes
to the work that you're doing as as a holistic healer,
as a therapist. Is there's so many other things so
you've found at the Holistic Empowerment Institute. Can we start
off by defining what you mean by holistic because we
hear that word all the time and I don't know
(20:29):
if we really know what it means. How do you
define holistic? Well, that's why you're my sister, because you're perfect.
That one question, my sister La learned has been the
reason why h g I has been manifesting for well
over a decade. What is holistic? And and in defining that,
(20:51):
I couldn't find a definition outside of holistic is encompassing
of those sort of environmental piece so finance, family, peers,
relationship and love and safety, housing, medical or physical safety.
But that's not what I meant as holistic. In power,
(21:13):
I meant spiritually integrated. Yes, empowerment. Now what does that mean? Well,
in order to define that, I went on a quest
to define a really good definition of one word healing.
I looked and I wasn't satisfied with most of the
answers that defined healing. So I had to create one
(21:36):
of myself. Yes, and I call healing a psycho spiritual shift.
That just brought up a lot of stuff for me.
What is a psycho spiritual shift? That was you? Just
that was some of the energy of it right there, right,
because it's energetic. Yeah, And so for our people, people
of color, we experienced that psycho spiritual shift all the time.
(21:57):
We seek it out. We usually do that in hurt
settings and religious settings. Right. I call it a touch.
We need a touch, And I call it a psycho
spiritual shift that leads to a new perspective of past
experiences are redefining of self and it also leads to
(22:18):
a whole new way of living and behavior. And so
h G I does that in a number of ways.
Some of them don't look religious. The problem with doing
things that are spiritually inclusive is that people want to
figure out, like where does religion fit and does it
fit because it's not. I don't want to be bothered.
And so I was sitting on the beach and I
(22:38):
was just thinking, you know, God help and spirits spoke
to me and said, take the God out. It's problematic,
it's complicated. Take the God out and and replace the
God with what we are pulling people into what I
call their sacred core. There's a sacred core, teaching them
about the sacred interior. We're moving people out of a
(23:02):
God that's over on Cringshaw somewhere and pulling them into
themselves because that is the relationship. And so we'll be
doing that in a number of voice. The first way
we're doing it, I've wanted to have a love letter
to the trans women in my life and all over
the world. We want trans women to lead from a
(23:24):
full context of themselves, but also to see the community
the transformune to that deleting in the full context of
who they are. So we're taught that trans communities are
disease burdened. I even saw a smoking sensation presentation where
they quoted that trans people's trans women smoke more than
anybody else. They have no data to support it. I said,
(23:49):
I know several queens, and I know maybe two or
three that's smoke. Where y'all finding this? fIF a queen's
who will they be? Right? So we're gonna teach our
people to not see trans women in terms of deficity.
We want trans women to lead trans people from a
place of knowing our people is powerful. Yeah, we want
(24:13):
to know our people outside of the deficit narrative. Who
are you? Who have you been in Africa? Who have
you been in Native America? Who have you been in Brazil?
Who have you been in Asia? Who have you been
in Russia? Practice? Who are you? Glow? Who are you right?
Not just this? I want to change my set. I
don't like my breast, I don't like the shape of
(24:35):
my thing. Who are you? That's not who you are?
Are you suggesting all of who you are as your aesthetics? No,
you have healing in your end, you are trans Your
purpose is to be an intermediary between spirit and human God.
That's who we've served, right, So we want to teach
our people a whole new way, leading with skill sets,
(24:58):
but also this thing, our compassion m hm, to really
build this platform called spiritually integrated holistic empowerment. We're building
the model as we speak, got it, spiritually integrated holistic empowerment.
What does that mean? That means we know how our
people heal. We use both evidence based practices and we
(25:21):
merge them with the sacred. So we'll be using interventions
in behavior health to relieve depression and anxiety, social anxiety
and all those things. We'll be using some of those
evidence based practices, but we also know that a good
pot of greens is very healing. The process of cooking
back is very hell. We also know that rocking and
(25:45):
amone mm hmmm kept her out of prison and kept
you alive. Right, So we'll be bringing to like the
ways that our people heal. Our people heals through the vogue.
Have you ever seen him? Girl? I can't watch it
(26:08):
in person. I don't go, but I can't after leave
because I'm having a religious experience. Yes, ma'am, it's not.
And you think about the vogueing and how that the
connection to vogue in Africa, right, and that that the
rhythms right, Vogueing is an an American art form that
has gone all over the world. It's very exciting you're
thinking about that lineage. I love how connected to to
(26:29):
all of the spirit you are. But when you talked
about rocking and moaning, what was really beautiful for me?
As I love bringing in other things we've talked about
on the podcast, that feels so in the parlance of
the community resiliency modeling from the Trauma Research Institute, that
rocking and humming is a resource that actually stimulates the
vagus nerve and can reset our nervous system and then
(26:52):
begin to facilitate that psycho spiritual shift. Right. That also
is the power of the own, the power of the
ome re centers. That nerve oxygenates the brain, the all
(27:12):
in its full breath, right does that as well. Every
culture has their way of sort of having a reset,
right Nomi Horano, Nomi right, home shanty shanty home, shanty,
shanty o. All of us have those ways of sort
of reoxygenating the brain, re centering the snaps firing in
(27:36):
the brain and coming together. I love those things and
I love finding the connections between the I think we
were Buddhism and a few other things in um the
Baptist Church, and then integrating that with like Trauma Resiliency ORG. Right,
that is the end, that is thematic that is connected
(27:56):
to the body. Welcome to holistic compartment institute. That yeah,
and for me that is really exciting. I have a
holistic doctor here in l a doctor Henry, and she
focuses on the physical part. In my therapist who's a
trauma resiliency therapist sent me to doctor Henry. And what
she illuminated to me I've been with her for um
(28:17):
four or five years now, is that regular Western medicine
basically like they can prescribe drugs or give you surgery.
There's nothing really preventative. And what they do and so
with Dr Henry, we talk about my gut help. We
do acupuncture, we do microcurrent, we do heart rate variability,
we do all these things that like, well, what's going on.
(28:39):
If this is happening, Let's look at your diet, let's
look at your sleep patterns, let's look at all these
things like sort of on a physical level. Now, see,
I want to take it further as the spiritually integrated therapists.
I need to know more. I need to know do
you know who your ancestors are? Who are the relationships
with it? We need to repair, right, We may need
(29:01):
you to do some ancestral repair work. And good god,
I found that to be so useful. Ancestral repair work.
That feat sounds like for people out there, what are
you talking about? That's a little esoteric ancestral repair work
or we're talking seances or so like, can you break
that down for us? Because I find that really fascinating.
So energy does not end, well, speak, he doesn't dissiplate. Yeah,
(29:24):
it always continues. It's not. It is only transformed continuous
that always it transmutes the changes form. So Grandmama may
not be Grandma, but that energy is still pleasant with us. Right,
and we know that the divine doesn't really operate in here.
There's then mouths, a penny, a million. The spirit of
(29:46):
life doesn't really operate in those sort of limitations. So
if you're having a relationship with yourself based on somebody's
information that that was given to you about yourself, we
may need to go and clear some that up, and
we might need to I took one of my clients
to the beach and we had a great talk with grandmama.
(30:06):
I take a lot of my clients to water because
I believe the water doesn't work. And she did. She
begin to right, you were wrong about me not going
to him. I'm gonna be okay. So now we can
begin to build a whole new relationship with that ancestor.
Because in the African tradition, we use our and in
the Latin many traditions Ethano traditions, we use our ancestors
(30:30):
as resource. They are a part of our ammunition. So
when I do both therapy and spiritual council, I'm asking
people about your therapeutic tools, like are you doing your
affirmative work? Are you doing your writing? Are you doing journaling?
Are you breathing? Doing mindful MI six? But I'm also
asking are you engage? Have you engaged your ancestor on this?
(30:52):
Have you spoke some a permitive I do teach a
permitive prayer. What is the affirmative prayer? What an affermitive
prayer is speaking from? So what you're friend talked about
earlier about sort of navigating yourself from a place that
it is already accomplished. That is really scriptural, really call
things that be not as it were. Permitive prayer speaks
(31:14):
from a place of knowing already one's oneness with the
spirit of life. Right, So we're not begging God to
do something. We're stepping into who we are as citizens
of the spirit and speaking our word expecting it to unfold,
because that is the promise and that is the law.
(31:36):
So we're very mindful of the prayer we put out.
Like you know, in my training, we had to as
a spiritual counsel, we had to write our prayers and
have them critiqued. Oh yes, maybe, and they were. Christina
Applegate sat next to me. We were like, dang, I
got beat up critiquing a prayer Jesus Christ and grading
(31:56):
a prayer and grading your science. Mind was no criteria
for um for grading a prayer. So and reading our
prayers your your comfortence this this this line here that
speaks of separation. That is not unifying, That is not you,
That is not affirmative. Okay, well this time this is denials.
(32:16):
We don't use denials. We don't say things like God
I don't want um, so we don't speak, and God,
please don't let them be in a council. Wait wait, wait, wait,
we're not doing denials. We're speaking in front of my
body operates and complete vitality and overwhelming health. That is
my DNA and my birth flight is the law of
the spirit that I'm speaking. We speak that you don't
(32:38):
speak no thing. I'm hot and behind a bush. Don't
let him give me no. No, that's a power less prayer.
Oh so much comes up for me. I think about
negative self talk, which came up for me really strong
during the pandemic, And it's just an old habit and
that what we say can ship a thought, can shift
us into trauma, can after our bodies into shame just
(33:01):
a negative thought or negative self talk. So what is
so beautiful about what you're saying now on a spiritual
level is that um neurobiologically, it also begins to set
up their nervous system for resilience. It's just a the
nervous system for trauma resilience, for shame resilience. Can I
say that another way? Absolutely, you begin to set up
(33:23):
a whole another pattern of habituation in terms of how
to process trauma, how to encode trauma, how to resist trauma?
Asked trauma? Right, when you live your life from a
place of knowing fully who you are, some things just
don't affect you like they affect other people, or how
(33:45):
they used to affect you. Why because you don't see
yourself as this weak, needy, vulnerable, wanting to be loved transperson.
I really think that language for us has become toxic. Right,
This whole wanting to be trans is trying to be trans.
Quit trans will be you. The definition will catch up
(34:08):
to you and wrap itself around you. You don't need
to wrap yourself around the definition of trans. It's gonna
change in ten years anyway. I want to fortify you
so that you see yourself as powerful, as beautiful. That
you know what your skill sets are, that you know
what your talents are, that you know what your triggers are,
(34:29):
but also you know your weapons are not to fire
back at the attack, but to form a worthy shield.
You can't call me a man in a dress, and
that shodow my existence today. I mean, well, first of all,
I have proof that it's not true. I do have
a stunning mirror. However, however, I've been through too much.
(34:55):
I know myself too much. I know the source of
the attack. That's the other piece we don't teach our well,
the source of the attack. Hey, look y'all, that's the
man that was never about you. That was a protective
factor that people do for themselves. That was a trigger
response because many Cistean women, when trans women walk into
(35:15):
a room, we become very self and dieting for sisteent women, right,
for some thank you for that. I don't want to generalize.
You know, she's like that. Why am I like this?
And many people process it through attack instead of just saying, wow,
what a beautiful another form of woman as I am
as well. Right, But when you begin to fortify yourself,
(35:36):
you have a different relationship to abuse and that psycho
spiritual shift, it really does happen, and it changes, It
just changes everything. I always think about what gets in
the way for some of the some of the girls,
I mean a lot of our young trans sisters may
be dealing with like survival, sex, work and just in environment.
Environment is so key. My my boyfriend always says, we're
(35:59):
part of of our environment, and so it's that who
do we surround ourselves? With and we're talking about spiritual fortification.
We have to be surrounded by people and energy. We
that that that is going to reinforce that that force
spiritual fortification. So we may need to let some people go.
We may need to like move out of this home
(36:20):
that is not you know, that's toxic if we can, right,
We may need to get out of this relationship or
let this girlfriend go who doesn't see really see it
for us to find that spiritual fortification and to step
into what we're meant to be. And you know, I
always think about when you talk like that, I think
about my angelus poem for our grandmother said for often
(36:42):
quotes she says that I come as one, but I
stand as ten thousand and you just pulled up my girl.
Now waitman, you talk about my mama. Now hold up.
But that statement that maya made. When I read that,
that came why I love being a transformer, because I
(37:03):
am not just this diagnostic physicality that you see. M hm.
I am so lady Java that beguiled your granddaddy. I
am Christine Jurgensen. That said a whole new conversation about
body physicality. Right, My value goes beyond Valerie Senser. My
(37:25):
value goes beyond this thing called trans. I have been
so useful and fought after throughout cultures. So I'm not
just this queen who was teased and ostracized in south
central Los Angeles. That's the factual merit. The truth of
it is, Oh, honey, I am the Faa. I am
(37:49):
the Burbadash. I am the Hezra, I am the truth spirit.
I am the Shaman. I am the who do priestess.
I am the priestess. I have been on than Santaria
and Budom Catholicism, So we know ourselves differently. We have
been given it's very narrow margin of understanding about ourselves
(38:15):
and the link between that and colonialism. It's so important
to always emphasize and to always talk about that, that
that the way European colonialism colonized so much of the world,
where we were viewed as sacred beings right and indigenous
cultures all over the world, and and and European colonialism
came in and said, what is this, This is not
(38:37):
of Jesus Christ and marginalized us. And I always invite
young trans people to connect with that history and realize
that they are anointed and I feel like that's what
you're talking about now. When when I had a look
on this on this podcast, the local was saying to
trans people always been spiritual leaders. That is what we
are here for. And and you know we can step
(38:58):
into that or not. They're the reason why they saw
us as even as and pagan. There's a reason why
they saw us as out. Of course, we presented certain
gender physicality that they did not understand. But the receipts
were the receipts. And here's what I mean by that.
(39:18):
The receipts were when the trans woman went over their
growth house, that baby don't have their code nor move.
The receipts were when the trans woman showed over at
that dry crop. It was a dry clop. Not six
weeks later they got all kind of corn over there.
The receipts were the receipts. We were the kaiser of
(39:39):
our people. We were the hm of the land. Those
colonial oppresses, yes, they saw us for what we were.
We were a vehicle to stop their progression. We bore
both physical energy, ancestral energy, energetic energy. We knew how
to manipulate the earth and the Let we ship. It's
(40:07):
time for a short break when we come back more
with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right back in.
And when I think about the current sort of anti trans,
(40:31):
like vigorous anti trans push from conservatives, it's like, can
we just allow us to be great? Allow us to
step into the divineness that we are? And I think
we can give ourselves permission. One of the many things
I love about you is that you have not You've
not waiting for anybody to give you permission to like,
(40:51):
to to be great, to be well. I must consess.
I did. I did, now, let me tell you. In
my late thirties, I had a huge resentment because I
just thought, if I just stay bright and cunning and
smiling and nice and upbeat, that Oprah is gonna come
get me. I'm telling you ad At about thirty eight,
(41:13):
it occur to me that Oprah was not coming to
give me. That I was actually gonna have to produce this.
That's why I went back to school, because I thought, Okay,
well she came and got I come get me once
I really got and the other piece of earn. And
I really want your listeners to connect with this, Assess
yourself and be honest, because sometimes the current lanes in,
(41:39):
as bright and shiny and seemingly successful producing as they
may be, they just don't fit for you. I was
somebody just trying to learn how to diagnose and and
Department of Mental Health and all those things that I
was not asking questions like like where are you feeling
this in your body? The somatic questions. Who came to
(42:02):
you last night and talk to you about this? You
know what ancestor have you been to me? And after
a while I had to give my my self permission
to let my freaking flag fly. I just have to
because it felt like work and I can't do work.
I learned that years ago. I just I can't work.
(42:22):
And what I think you mean is that when you're
doing something that you love, when it is aligned with
a purpose that is bigger than you, it doesn't feel
like work. It feels effortless and fun and oh my god,
they sent me money, right, And you know, there are
sometimes in that you may clean a toilet, you may
have to pick up a chair and move it. You
(42:43):
you know, the ease and difficulty of whatever task is.
That's not really irrelevant. The relevance is that I feel
so appreciated and valued. Here, I appreciate and value all
these people. I feel safe. It doesn't feel like work,
but I've had jobs that felt like and it feels
like work, and part of that toxic I want to
(43:05):
listen to such a self free baby, because part of
that toxic work is getting yourself together to get up
every day to go deal with that toxic work. You
need to do some work that's not work. Some of
us just can't do it. And I think I've been
thinking a lot about toxic stress in my life. And
I have lived a very stressful life over the past
few years, and there's a lot of pressure on me
(43:27):
and my job, and I'm just like, how do what
does it look like for me to let that go?
But the toxic stress actually proceeds me being famous Leaver
and Cox. It goes back to childhood stuff. It's historical,
so like trying to make decisions now for my healing,
for me to be more connected to the ancestors, connected
to to love, being in love now, it's really all
(43:49):
about love that when you really are in love or
feel love, it's not even just about romantic love, feeling
love for music, or feeling love for acting, or art
and being creative, that there's something that shifts in my
body that is just so connected. And when things go awride,
I get in my head I'm not I'm not feeling
(44:09):
allowing myself to feel the love in my body, and
I'm not allowing myself to be connected. It's maybe a
connection to my girlfriends, a connection to the love I
have preparing for this podcast. I have love. I have love.
Really doing the work for this podcast has been so
joyous for me, and I feel connected when I do
that connection to another human being, connected to a power,
(44:31):
the energy of the universe, that that is bigger than me,
connected to a purpose, that this same thing is not
just about me looking cute on Instagram it's a glare
or or low wive or whatever, that there is a
purpose attached to it. In connection, then that begins to
shift the energy in my body, that begins to like
(44:53):
to heal, It begins to heal, and that that that
that's the one there it is. Some of them will
dis over if we're honest that self awareness alone did
not quite do it. Academic cognitive critical understanding didn't do it.
We needed something that wasn't religious, and religion has been
(45:14):
really oppressive for our people, specifically LGBT, and actually for
everybody religion all overlooking what's going on global as we
have so hijacked God and may God out to be
this evil motherfucker that's like, you know, my daddy was
like this temp with to have on you. Don't do
(45:36):
it in my way. I'm gonna not to hell out
you where my money at? Is this the energy that
said let that be light? Or was it like it's
turned to goddamn lights on me and I'm programmed to
learn life's lessons by way of mistake and you're gonna
burn me forever for that. That's why God said to me,
take take me out, you know were I want to
(45:59):
offer a frame to what you were saying earlier. However,
I think it also requires safety and honesty because if
I feel safe, if I feel safe, I'll allow myself
to connect with those things or to do those things.
And if I'm honest. Now, that one is a big, big, big, big, big,
(46:19):
big big, because we've got a lot invested in those
narratives and they are multi variant and dynamic, they are
organic and living, and I always like to ask my clients,
what's the truth. We need that. Okay, what's the truth?
We need that? Okay, what's the truth? Be needs that
until we hit a hard layer of I was trying
(46:41):
to buy love. And so if I feel safe, then
I will feel so safe that I'll be honest. And
when I'm honest, a whole bunch of magical things start happening.
First of all, when I'm honest, those ancestors present themselves
to you and say Hi, I'm here with your name
(47:02):
and Marcus bags. Are you ready? They become like spiritual concierge. Right,
the difficulty of life is taken out because we've got
other resources. Right. I don't have a personal assistant, I
do have prayer. So I'm trying to promote people feelings safe.
The other thing that you mentioned leads into this. Those
(47:24):
Instagram posting don't need a purpose what the heck for?
They're fun. They are they are, they are, they are
Laverne being. That's that, And so should anyone look at
that and say, well, what's the meaning behind that? Nothing
(47:45):
on Instagram getting my entire life because my body is fabulous.
I'm in a fabulous place, and I came to check
them up. I can't. I'm the instrument in illumination, get
into it. I am the instrument and illumination. I love
the you. We have to wrap up soon, but I
love that you talked about safety, because none of this
work is possible without safety. The point of trauma resilience
(48:08):
found work is to move out of the fight flight
or freeze. If our nervous systems are in the constant
fight flighter freeze, if we've experienced trauma discrimination. I believe
that our LGBTQ community, particularly transmarine of color, are constantly
in that survival fight flighter freeze where we never feel safe.
And so if we never feel safe, we can't do
(48:29):
any of this work. We can't do any work because
we're in the Olympic brain. We're not in our prefrontal cortex.
We're not in that resilient place. So we have to
get ourselves out of that heightened fight flight or freeze.
I'm in danger that we've been talking about this on
the podcast since we started. It becomes a fog, that
fight flight response that you speak of. It becomes like
(48:49):
a permanent existence fall and so it sounds like illogical
decision make it sounds like a questionable impulse control. It's
just that fall of the trauma in survival, trauma, survival
and affirmation. Too much trauma, not enough survival, complete depletion
(49:12):
of affirmation. This culture does not affirm us unless we
are bionically beautiful. Everybody can look like y'all, and then
it's still contingent because we age because we want to
get fat. You're never gonna a patriarchy, You're never gonna age,
and you know you're never gonna get sat Please stop
anyway before I ask the last question that in the
(49:34):
podcast with I just want to um what I love,
always loved about you is that there is something deeply
connected to the earth, to spirituality, to something that is bigger,
that's just something that is divine, and that that is
deeply necessary for us going forward as trans people. There's
(49:55):
were so visible now in ways that we have never
can never really imagine. But we really desperately need this
spiritual component as we go forward. We really do. We
need deeper capacities to love people who are coming for us.
But we can't do that if we're not loving ourselves.
And what you have given us today is like a
(50:17):
deep understanding of like the ways in which we can
love ourselves that are deeply connected to our ancestors, to
the earth, to the God that that is within us.
And this is crucial right now as we face the
battles of just everyday life. And so this is out
there and it's available, and it's waiting. It's it's right here,
(50:40):
and it is who you are already. So the inheritance
sound is the trends soul. Let let me be clear
before let me get my commercials there. The truth sound
is the you. The inheritance sound is this thing called transgender.
(51:03):
We also, in our loving of ourselves, we have to
examine our relationship to this terminology. M I retired from
being trans. I stepped back in where it pays, you know,
because it's become lucrative in some spaces. But in my
life every day, oh my god, being transgendous too much
work on my word? Right, where's the appreciation? Where's the validation?
(51:25):
It has me living in social anxiety, thinking that people
want to attack me or harmy And that may be true,
but that keeps me from blocking that attack with my
sickening nous, right because I'm so busy focused on Am
I enough trans and invite people to yes, appreciate the
(51:46):
legacy the lineage of being trans. But who are you
A No, that's the harder question to answer. That's the
deeper point of inquiry. Who am I? I'm more than
that Now. I see myself as much more than trans. Therefore,
(52:06):
I see myself as having the availa ability to experience
something beyond the trauma that is trans. But bemind you,
I want to make it seem like I've gotten off
trans trauma free. In my life. The trauma was like
a miss. You didn't know why you didn't get the job,
(52:27):
but you didn't get the job. Right. You were interviewed
by a man. Oh my god, that man was handsome
and he said all the great things that you know
you were gonna get the job. You blamed yourself. You
didn't know it was about him. He liked queens. He's
always like queens. If he hired you, he was gonna
get clocked, so he couldn't have you here. You didn't
know that. There's that's a whole podcast. But that's the
(52:51):
beauty of being a thing. Oh, I know the team.
Some attacks don't attack you like they used to because
you know you know that the attacker. It's like I
know that if I let you into my house, I
know exactly what position you will be getting into within
sixteen men, I know exactly who you are. So I
(53:14):
know who you are, so it doesn't bother still, couldn't
I know what you want? The Reverend Reverend Reverend s Mencer, Girl,
we gotta end this podcast. I love you so much.
I love this spirituality. With the key key we end
the Laverne Cock Show with this question what else is true?
(53:37):
And it's taken from my somatic therapy through the community
resiliency model, and it's the idea of both. And if
there's something challenging in my life, something else is true.
If I'm feeling pain in one part of my body,
there may be a part of my body where it's
neutral and positive. So if I can focus on that
other thing that is true, I can lift the pain
(53:59):
anxiety of this thing that is weighing me down. Reverend
Valerie Spencer, for you today, on this day, what else
is true? For you? I am always supported. I may
can't see the support, I may can't even smell the
support or even have an internal navigation of where it is.
(54:23):
But if I can just get still for a nano
second and remind myself, heyy, you know that you're supported, Bryan.
We feel often alone, We feel that we have to
navigate theseselves by ourselves. I often feel like if I
admit my unknowing, you know, people will see me as
(54:45):
a failure or not enough, and let them see that
I am always supporting. I'm always gonna be okay, even
if I'm penniless and broke, because I'm a queen. I
can make pennies and broke look like the mett gallant. Dear,
I'm a queen, So don't you know, please don't see
your transness as a deficit. That's your battery, that's your power,
(55:10):
that's your songs. Valerie Spencer, I love you so much
or ever you look good. Thank you. Okay, bye, y'all.
Y'all gonna make me ms Joey read in the CBC. Okay,
be well, Lebern call me here. I will call you
(55:32):
be well. Be well. M M. That was good, right.
I love me some. Valerie Spencer. She's a key, key,
but she's so spiritually grounded and she always has been.
(55:53):
And the phrase that just knocked me on my on
my booty, I go spiritual shift the way Valorie talked
about it reminds me of sort of getting the spirit,
you know, when the preachers preaching and some some truth
comes over you. If the spirit hits you, when you
get the Holy Ghost, that's what a psycho spiritual shifts
(56:14):
or feels like. But then like taking it out of
the context of of church and and also thinking that
we all have a sacred core, that her work is
about inviting us to tap into our sacred core, and
it's it's inside of us, but it is also connected
to ancestors, it's connected to an energy that's bigger than us.
(56:35):
I think it feels like she's talking about the quantum
field the way Dr drum Joe dispense I talked about,
Like you know, she's talking about the spirits and how
they can speak to us and live within us. I'm like, Okay,
this is like a quantum model that she's talking about,
but she's using spiritual language to talk about it. I love.
So it is all related that there's just different approaches
(56:56):
that we can take to get where we need to get.
But I think ultimately stepping into the divine within us
doing all the trauma work that we've been inviting through
the course of this podcast, so that we can feel safe,
so that we can be in our resilience zone, the
sacred core, and allow that to manifest itself through our
(57:17):
entire being. Is a beautiful, beautiful image, a beautiful, beautiful
invitation and gift that Valerie Spencer has given us today.
(57:38):
Thank you for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review,
and subscribe and share with everyone you know. Join me
next week for my conversation with Madame iris If, my
voice coach and opera teacher for over twenty five years.
Opera is a passion for both of us, and in
our conversation we go into the dean died insane fandom
(58:02):
that is being an opera queen, and we have a
tremendous amount of fun. Whether you're an opera fan or not,
is the conversation not to be missed. You can find
me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on
Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, Stand
(58:22):
Up Up. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of
Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the i Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Host
Laverne Cox
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