Going on a journey!

I was taking Lucy for her morning walk in the forest on Tuesday when she stopped abruptly and carefully reached out her nose to smell something while her entire body was poised to leap away. I peeked around her and saw this little one looking back at me:

The next morning we were out again and again she found a turtle! I wondered if it was the same one but as you can see, it was different! Of course, "slow and steady wins the race" popped into my mind :-)

Well, you know me, I immediately took this as a sign and went off to my favorite animal wisdom site to check out the turtle. Creativity, longevity, protection, safety, patience—move at your own pace as the turtle does. I liked that last one particularly!

If you happen to own your own business and are in the beginning stages, or like me, starting over in a completely new place—you know how difficult it is. I need to allow myself to move at my own pace and not get frustrated that it's not growing in leaps and bounds like it was in June. These are the dog days of summer and with the humidity, the "feels like" temperature is often in the triple digits. Fun.

It shouldn't be a surprise that coaching has slowed to a trickle. But it would be nice if neurofeedback clients would pick up, it's in the air conditioning baby!

While things are slow I figured I'd do some classes. Whew. While these don't seem like hard things to do, they are bringing up stuff to work through. I've had very many words this week. They just continue to pour out of me. I wake up in the middle of the night with words. I wake up in the early morning with more. On and on. I suppose it's because I'm in a massive learning mode. I'm taking 2 different classes right now: the first is Nuances and Complexities of Working with Gender Diverse Youth and their Families and the other is called Craft Your Talk with Johanna Walker. Both are doing what I intended them to do—making me grow, stretch, learn, and change. And with that journey comes discomfort and an outpouring of words :-) I'll be sharing more of them with you as the weeks go by.

I’m starting out with baby steps on this journey to becoming a gender affirming coach. Over the past 10 years or so I’ve done some reading as unknown terms have come up but I admit to not knowing much of anything. Back in 2014 I met a lovely young man at an adoption/attachment training and he told me that he was gay. I was like, "Cool." A bit later he admitted that he was transgender. (People just naturally tell me things :-)) Because I was open and supportive he invited me to lunch with some friends of his. I will never forget that lunch and the interesting people I met that day. They unknowingly sent me down this path of learning. I don't know why, but this little group of gender diverse folks told me they were happy to answer any questions I had. When do you ever get an opportunity like that? We laughed and talked and they were so genuine and kind. Also, I could hear the pain in their stories too and that touched my heart. It's really stuck with me. I found I really wanted to support that population but had no idea how to do that.

But now I'm a Equine Gestalt life coach :-)

The first class a couple of weeks ago was chock full of information and had me researching and wandering down many rabbit holes and one of the fun ones was what’s known as the Gender Unicorn.

I was going along, filling out the interactive form: gender identity, yep, assigned female at birth and agree with that (aka cisgender), my pronouns are she/her and then I came down to “gender expression” hmmm…interesting. I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of a tomboy growing up. I grew up in southern CA in the 70s and early 80s. The big group of neighborhood kids (girls and boys) I hung out with spent all day roller skating, bike riding, playing hide and go seek (particularly in the dark and barefoot, yikes), racing each other in any way possible, climbing trees. I also played with Barbies, toy horses (big surprise), and read a lot. I have a younger brother and would play cars and legos with him and I made him play "house" "school" and "teenagers" with me. When I was 14 we moved to NC. I started experimenting with 1980s makeup (BLUE eyeshadow), dying my hair, dressing in skirts and dresses, dressing up, dressing down. By the time I was 18 and taking college courses I was experimenting with super short hair, combat boots, fatigues, and a black trench coat or skin tight jeans, a crop tee, and pink high top Converse. My poor mom LOL.

In my mid 20s I picked up whitewater kayaking and found true passion. I wanted to be on the river ALL THE TIME. I stopped wearing makeup around that time (why bother, it was just going to get washed off in the river anyway, plus what the hell—why are women expected to but men aren't, gawd) and had long curly hair. I was strong. A guy friend had me flex my bicep once and gaped at me, "Oh my God!" That tickled me. B-Rad and I met whitewater kayaking. In my mid 30s we moved to CO and I started skiing. Meh. No passion and a lot of knee pain. In my early 40s I spent 2 years loving snow boarding with my friend Laura. Nothing big and wild (although Laura could), just greens and a few blues but it was SO MUCH FUN!

So, my gender expression? Mostly feminine, a little masculine. If you know me you'll sometimes hear me say, "I'm channeling my inner 12 year old boy and watching Marvel movies." lol  Back when I was a kayaker my friend Diane told me a story about her young nephew. Diane often volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and helped build houses. When I was married the first time to the Bad Man, she came and helped us remove and install a new roof. She knew stuff. The story goes that Diane was talking about building houses to her young nephew and he looked at her in awe and said, "You're boy AND girl!" God, she and I got the biggest laugh out of that! From that point on I would say that, because it's always been true for me.

Since my early 20s I’ve believed our souls are genderless. I also believe in reincarnation and think that we come to our new bodies however we’d like, male, female, other. Some people are extra one way or another but most people I know have a mix of male and female traits. I always thought everyone was like that maybe not?

Back to the Gender Unicorn: I’m physically attracted to men. I’m emotionally attracted to…another hmmm…everyone? So off I went to look that up to check and see what was meant.

Romantic attraction refers to the desire to engage in romantic behaviors with another person, like dating, having a relationship, getting married, etc.

Emotional attraction refers to the desire to engage in emotionally intimate behaviors with another person, like sharing, confiding, trusting, etc. Good friends can have strong emotional attraction towards each other.

Sexual attraction refers to the desire to engage in physically intimate behaviors with another persons, like kissing, touching, having intercourse, etc.

Right. I’m emotionally attracted to everyone. My first thought was, "Isn't everyone?" But maybe not. I’ve never thought about it in this way before. Learning new stuff! Feel free to reach out if you want to talk more about it!

In my Craft Your Talk class we are learning how to create a 10-15 minute talk that we will give at the end. We had to do some homework. How I see my voice as it is now, writing is my safe space:

And my voice as I want it to be. Does everyone want to secretly talk to the masses but has been scared for 52 years to do it? 

This is definitely NOT my safe space. The other piece of homework last week was to create a 1 minute video of myself "riffing" as my instructor says, on the stem sentence, "I believe..." Good God, I worked myself into a little frenzy doing it and couldn't remember what I was going to say about anything—even though I wrote about it first. There was no just talking about it, free form. I tried quite a few times and my mind would literally go blank.

Sigh. I had to stop for a minute. Wait. I knew what this was. This is a trauma response. Well dammit. Seriously?? STILL?? I don't yet know what about the "riffing" is triggering this FREEZE! response in me—I will go out this weekend and spend time sweating with the horses and see what they have to say about it.

Speaking of sweaty horses, I rinsed them off the other night. They were so miserable and their coats soaked through. They try rolling when they are like that and just end up with the dirt mixing with the sweat and making it all so much worse. So, out came the hose. I think they are starting to enjoy it just a little. Afterwards they just stood around in a stupor and drip dried:

Little Sweetness doesn't sweat through his coat. I don't know why:

It's been storming a fair amount this week, nice to have the rain but of course makes the humidity even more fun! When it's stormy at night we leave Princess House Dog inside, giving the job of chasing away anything scary to our wild a$$ donkey—he's something else when he sees anything he thinks is a predator!

Princess House Dog is happy as a clam on those nights!

"ManChild! Continue petting me please!"

MEMES OF THE WEEK

Children of the 70s and 80s 😜

I had to look twice:

I see 11, you?

GIVEAWAY

Karina Corey won this print! Keep an eye on your email Karina!

You can find originals and prints in my Etsy store!

If you are in my area (Apex, NC and surrounding areas) I'm offering a special deal for you to come try out neurofeedback and/or coaching!

Half off your first neurofeedback session ($35 for 45 minutes instead of $70)

$25 off your first Equine Gestalt Coaching session ($100 for an hour instead of $125)

Half off your first Reiki session ($45 for an hour instead of $90)

Please take me up on these—and yes, you can use all three, in fact I encourage it! Doing neurofeedback or Reiki before a coaching session puts you in a regulated state which the animals love and is ideal for the work. Doing neurofeedback or Reiki after helps you process your session :-) so it works either way. The coaching setting is beautiful with the horses, donkey, and goats and in my air conditioned neurofeedback room you have a view of the pond and the wildlife that surrounds it. We are in a covered barn for coaching so are in the shade and out of any rain or weather. Reiki can be inside or outside in the barn, depending on weather and client wishes.

You can read about neurofeedback here!

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