You're a unique looking person...

Gender and identity crafting in a digital era.

(There’s even more revealed for paid subscribers at the end. Join my paid audience to receive card pulls from the upcoming Naked Truth oracle deck as it’s created and to support this endeavor. <333)

Just a few versions of me, am I unique looking enough?

You are a goddess…

Which am I?

“You are a unique looking person.” “You’ve got the geek vibe.” “You are a goddess.” “You are beautiful.” “You look split, half femme, half masc.”

People love to tell you what you are, right? Sometimes it feels really good. Sometimes it can drown out your own simple inner voice who knows who you are!

And with our highly over-communicated age, it’s easy to receive an absurdly discombobulating amount of feedback on how you share yourself with the world.

In the past few days I have heard the above quoted statements, and it’s gotten me percolating on my own identity stuff, and what it means to me. Here’s a little story share with the hopes it gets your own musings going in a helpful way.

I’ve always been a tomboy, loved roughhousing with the boys, getting filthy in nature, testing my physical strength, taking and giving hits in the mosh pit, running the household, plenty of traits culturally seen as “masculine”.

I’ve also always been a sensitive soul, quick to tear up, to nurture someone in pain with a soothing tone and a cuddle, and an artist with a flare for sassy, sparkly, sexy self-expression, plenty of traits culturally known as “feminine.”

When I was younger, I received a LOT of attention when I got dolled up, like in the above pageant era photo circa 2009. It felt good to be a “hot girl” so I leaned into that, maybe a bit more than was healthy sometimes.

It was fun to see just how far I could push myself creatively to present “femme”. But it crafting that photo shoot ready look isn’t natural and it wasn’t how I felt the most me.

Over the years I explored my sexuality and found myself in communities that were far more gender expansive than anything I’d every seen around me as a youth. WOW! People can exist like this? So much was shook up inside me. In some ways I was deeply uncomfortable as the binary system of options I’d been taught began to crumble. Ultimately, I was liberated.

During the pandemic, when lots of us faced some part of ourselves we hadn’t in a while, I explored my gender identity and presentation to a new depth. (See the super short hair and “men’s” white tee look.). I even tested out he/him pronouns just to see how it felt. I came up with a “no” on those. But it was an important season, and I was supported by a few people who really love me for ME, regardless of what identities I’m exploring or ways I’m presenting. I can’t begin to express how healing that kind of love is.

I eventually settled (for now) on the terms non-binary and gender fluid.

What being non-binary means to me

A few of ya’ll have asked to talk about this in recent months, so here goes.

Do you know Ram Dass? One of his main teachings in his writings and guided meditations, is that at our core, when we strip away all of the superficial mumbo jumbo of our lives, our innermost self knows that

all we are is loving awareness.

Around the same time I was taking in that teaching, I began a parenting coaching program that taught me to notice and eliminate nearly everywhere in my life that I used CHARACTER STATEMENTS. This insidious verbiage is everywhere in our culture. I am a procrastinator. I am an artist. I am a Mom. I am a yoga teacher. I am impatient. I am flexible. I am creative. I am smart….yada yada. Some of these may seem innocuous enough, BUT THEY AREN’T.

Because when we state something as THE WAY IT IS, we are in FIXED MINDSET.

This teaching is so groundbreaking and is a core part of the phase 2 of my Whole Body Communicator Program because it is extremely effective approach to change.

Instead of using character statements, we can shift into describing our selves as BEHAVIORS and SKILLS. These things are malleable because new skills beget changed behaviors. When we approach life with this understanding that everything we do is adaptable and changeable we are in GROWTH MINDSET. I can go on and on about how this approach has been game-changer for me but if you wanna know more, you can book a free intro session to Whole Body Communicator . Or sign up for my free, Whole Body Communicator Mini Course.

In the meantime, how the heck does all this tie into gender?

Here goes, if all we are is loving awareness, and almost all of what we say we ARE is just a series of behaviors enacted due to our current set of skills and conditioning, then WTF EVEN IS GENDER????

IMO; Gender is a social construct created to help us easily and quickly put each other in boxes so we don’t have to examine our behaviors or relationships too deeply. That’s my two cents.

So, to answer the big question, to me, being non-binary means EMBODYING this knowledge in my expansive expression of gender.

As Whitman put it, “I contain multitudes.” Rather than stressing about what kind of woman I am or if people can see my toxic masculinity showing, adopting the labels of non-binary and gender fluid helps me feel more free to live in the expansive freedom I am at my core.

Identity crafting gets to be fun and playful. It gets to be; today I wore a flannel and khakis for one job and then lingerie for a dance experience and then absolutely fucking NOTHING for yoga haha!

As an actor, singer, model, I play with expression through wardrobe and “looks” a lot. I’m sure exploring so many characters only added to the feeling that everything external is mutable.

My sex is female, and I don’t have a strong desire to do anything to anatomically change that. But saying “I am a woman”? That feels limiting because of all of the boxes that get robotically checked by people when I say that, and because I strongly associate myself with many roles and traits that were taught to me as belonging to men.

I feel the most free and seen and understood when I am wearing all kinds of different things on any given day or week and people are using they/them pronouns because they love me and they understand I’m loving and living outside the binary.

I believe my daily actions of testing the limits of my expression help to create a more expansive space for the collective, where we can all re-learn how to mindfully ask each other how we identify on all facets of being, and take the time to know each other slowly and deeply, and where anybody gets to be a “hot girl” if they want!

My experience of being a human being has put me in touch with some common narratives of womanhood, and also many experiences sometimes historically associated with being a man.

And the truth is, the binary isn’t doing any of us justice.

If I asked a thousand people around the world to name what it means to be a man or woman, I bet I’d get a thousand different, nuanced and personalized answers.

I’m not advocating for an erasure of gender. Gender can be really fun and empowering when we’re playing with expression in our most liberated ways.

I’m ra-ra-ing for all of our mental expansion to encompass and ever more loving and tolerating and celebrating COEXISTION. (This is not a word, but maybe it should be.)

Creator Corner Collective

Highlighting other creatives and entrepreneurs is an important part of this Substack!

This beautiful human is also living and loving outside the binary and making kick-ass music! Check out Wreckno on Spotify or wherever you stream music if you also love bass like I do!

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I believe we are in a unique moment in time where SO much of our lives and expression is immortalized in pictures and videos. It can be hard to reconcile who we are now with all of the imagery we can be pelted with by our helpful phones reminding us “remember this day 3 years ago?” “Then and now, ten years back” etc…

Authors Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein tackle this in their book, A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.

I recommend as you explore your own identity or reflect on those around you who are expressing, that you take into consideration the layers that go into crafting it both in person and online. It can be fun and liberating, and the darker side of it can be tedious and tormenting.

I’ve spent plenty of moments racked with uncertainty on what to wear, what would really be authentic, what would be safe, how many assumptions people would make about me in any given setting.

Ya know what helps me get outta my own way and feel totally free of all the layers of bullshit? Naked yoga! :D Shocker, I know, hehee.

More creative stuff

You can check out more healing offerings at www.weepingwillowwellness.com

Book a FREE strategy session here to meet with me and discuss joining my 12 week somatic healing program, Whole Body Communicator

Find my music anywhere you stream. Just search Fermata Blaize!

Check out my children’s book The Possum And The Bunny

Check out my podcast episode on the I Heart My Life show

And more to come!

Check out this week’s Naked Truth oracle deck card below