Episode Nine: Believe your Body, with Laurie Green

Interview with Laurie Green
LISTEN HERE
Transcript below

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Laurie Green is online at:
Website: https://laurie.hotglue.me/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/liminal_resonance/
Streams of [Un]consciousness:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCLvRAK70K91OOgi1KRnPE5Th8bGVMYOD
Affective States 1 on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/elle_geee

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TRANSCRIPT:

Siblings,

I have a treat for you today that I am really excited to share. This is the first interview on the Sensory Siblings podcast, and it's with our very own sibling Laurie Green. Laurie's pronouns are they/them. Laurie is an artist. And has been a long time traveller in The SOLA System, and in this interview we dive into their ideas on art as a relational co-creation of consciousness, what neuroqueer means to them, permission to be in your body, and where they were at the start of their SOLA System journey. And instead of the usual outro you'll hear a short segment of a sonic piece by Laurie which is called Affective States 1. Laurie says about the piece:

"
I made this piece whilst in a state of withdrawal from the outside world. I had cut off nearly all social contact, and was lost deep inside myself trying to find a way out. It contains trauma, and the overwhelming bodily sensations that trauma can bring. It's rough and the sound is fuzzy and distorted, like the world can seem when you're lost and confused. But it also contains some beauty, I think. The endless pulsing static comes to an end, and calm returns. 
"

In the interview we also talk about one of the breakthroughs that Laurie created while in The SOLA System, and what was it that enabled them to bridge the gap between where they were and where they are now. We end the interview with some beautiful words from Laurie to anyone who is now where Laurie was.

In the show notes you'll find links to all of Laurie's online presence. I encourage you to have a listen, and then head over to the discord to share your response. I know you'll gain a lot from this episode, so without further ado, here is Episode 9: Believe your Body, with Laurie Green...

Louisa
So hello, Laurie, welcome to the Sensory Siblings podcast. It's truly an honour to have you on, and I've been witness to parts of your journey of self revelation and self permission into who you are being now. So I can't wait to get into all of this with you. And I just want to say thank you for agreeing to come on the podcast and chat with me and share what I feel like is going to be a bit of an insight, a bit of a blueprint for others, who maybe are where you were a couple of years ago. And to see that, if they are there, that transformation is possible for them as well. And yeah, so thank you.

Laurie
And thank you very much for having me.

Louisa
Who are you today? Right now? This second?

Laurie
I am Laurie - I think I'm always Laurie - I think that's a constant. I think what's contained within Laurie fluctuates on a daily basis, according to the external environment, what's going through my mind what's happening to my body. I see myself as neuroqueer, autistic artist at the moment. And yeah, I think I think that that sums me up at the moment.

Louisa
Nice. And for those who are listening, who maybe don't know what neuroqueer means, or what it means to you, and what it means to be autistic and neuroqueer and an artist, all of which are really difficult to separate. What does that mean to you?

Laurie
I think neuroqueering and neuroqueer is both a state of being, and an action, a verb, and a noun, perhaps. In terms of identifying as neuro queer, I think it it's really a an application of queer theory, on to the wider nervous system, the body as a whole. So referencing people who have used the term in the past, like Nick Walker, who I believe the term originated with, and Remi Yergeau, who was, which is, where I came across the term first; it's this idea, to me, it's this idea of a state of subversion. I think it's a state of subversion of the dominant culture's construction of what it means to be human, and to have a human body. Where [Judith] Butler's gender theory or application of queer theory shows how gender is a performance, I think what neuroqueer - being neuroqueer - is about is understanding and living in a way that shows that being human is also a performance of some kind. And neuroqueering is the practice. To me it's the practice of deconstructing those models of what it means to be human that have been created and constructed over time by a culture that doesn't recognise difference, as beautiful, doesn't recognise difference as something to be celebrated, and of benefit to humanity. It sees it as a disorder, dysfunction, something to be fixed or cured. So neuro queering is a response to that, in that it's a celebration of difference, a celebration of these divergences from the mean, that are actually, as I say, very beautiful, joyful experiences. But the way that they're treated by the dominant models, makes the experience of divergence, difficult or painful. So it's an inversion of that pain, and that difficulty into something constructive, emergent, and joyful.

Louisa
I love that so much. In your Instagram bio, you've written: sensory broadcasts from embodied explorations of neuroqueer, liminal space. Deconstructing, reconstructing, seeking resonances and spirals. And you've also posted on Instagram, about, you know, some of your expressions of this of this practice and this celebration and this inversion of that pain - I'm thinking now of a post where you were really looking at with the way that the human is constructed is also as man, right, and sharing your own experiences of - is it okay if I quote your Instagram? Yeah. So you've written 'BEING A BOY and BECOMING A MAN, (which are all capitalised) are often about NOT BEING A GIRL and NOT BEING A WOMAN. Desires and behaviours are snipped and pruned through adult and peer feedback until the residual constructed man remains. Throughout childhood, my desires and interests were turned into fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, by the social policing of gender'. And you've also shared about wanting a poly pocket when you're a kid. And I'll carry on quoting here: 'trapped by walls of intensity, built by the dominant gender ideology, and forced inward orientation of energy, a feedback loop of constructing man'. And you go on to say: 'I found these permissions elsewhere emanating from the bodies of sensory siblings in the liminal cracks. My loving life partner gave me this Polly Pocket after I shared this memory, I'm in a different feedback loop now. This one starts with the permission to be inside my body fully. The rewards of embodiment, our joy, and love and the behaviour it reinforces our caring, loving, and for a collective consciousness, voluntary outward orientation of energy, peace and calm, slither out of the entrails of man'. And I love this text so much. And I really want to kind of ask you more about this celebration and this kind of inversion of pain. And this inversion of that enforced inward direction of energy, then being transformed into this voluntary, outward orientation of energy, but particularly in terms of what it means to you to be an artist. And that being something that you have really claimed as something that maybe previously felt like it wasn't available. And we'll get into that kind of permission later. But I want to ask you, first of all, what, what pulls you to create? What does it mean to you to be an artist?

Laurie
I think creation, or the drive to create is, it's almost a kind of fundamental aspect of humanity. And my experience of humanity... I think human existence, or the evolution of humanity, has been portrayed as kind of survival of the fittest; a of battle of wills. But I think if you look at it from a different perspective, you can also see it as an experiment in co-creation of consciousness. I think one of the kind of beautiful and joyful aspects of being human is the ability to experience consciousness, and to self direct the co-creation of consciousness. I think being an artist for me is about the co-creation of consciousnesses that are in some way healing, generative, for the people involved in the artistic relation. So the artist who's who's making a piece of work, but then also the people who view the piece of work or imbibe the piece of work in some way, that the art then is in the space between those people in a relational space in between, rather than any kind of physical object created. So as I see art as a mode of healing, a mode of co creation of consciousness, and then, through those processes, part of a feedback loop of collective liberation, through the creation of new consciousnesses, and through the healing of old wounds created by structures and systems that have been designed to dominate and to harm and to oppress.

Louisa
This idea that you are sharing here of art is something that exists within relationships, so within the relation between those who are within that, within that artistic co creation of consciousness. So art is happening in between rather than what feels like often in contemporary art and visual art worlds, that actually art happens in the display and the consumption of something that someone has created away from where they are, and outside of that relationship or outside of the context in which it was created. I'm wondering now also about how has it felt for you to want to enter into that kind of role of being an artist, and being presented with an art world that not only thinks in that way often but also contains barriers or isn't necessarily transparent in the way that it functions and the way the opportunities are made available. Yes, I'm curious about this concept of the self concept of being an artistic that you now have. That being new, and what the barriers were both in the art world in, in your own self concept in your own kind of feeling that you could kind of take that on, and how is that then played out in terms of how come comfortable or willing you felt putting yourself out in the world or your ideas into the public realm, all of which also brings in these non dominant identities or experiences that you also hold.

Laurie
So I think the original barrier to access for me came as a child with my experiences of creating art or wanting to create art, and finding it frustrating within the container offered. The container was largely one that valued the ability to recreate something; some technique or some method or some image or form within a kind of a specified temporal container again, and I don't think that is really how my creativity works. The way I want to experience creation is through the experimentation with ideas and the the creation of things that are not necessarily going to be aesthetically interesting or pleasing to people initially. But that allow me to express some kind of bodily experience. And I think that does lead to aesthetically interesting forms. But I need the space to be able to make mistakes and to get things wrong, and to make things that aren't interesting to me or anyone else. And within the container provided as a child, those would be a bad mark at school, or someone saying 'no, do it a different way'. A negative response, essentially. So the way I was drawn to create was punished. And this led me to, well, as someone who was seeking validation and approval, and my own place in the world, this was discouraging, and put me off making things. And I then fell into a story that was the kind of maybe a more classic male autistic story of being good at certain subjects or being good at subjects at school, being good at exams, and like, going through that kind of process of, of education for the sake of "success" in quotation marks in a sort of societal, societally culturally defined way.

Louisa
And that led you to a range of different jobs and vocations that are very different from now?

Laurie
Yeah, I ended up... I boxed myself in to a kind of mode of existence and a story of of existence, both in terms of my gender, and then also in terms of, as you say, what I was doing with my life. And like the ultimate box in a way; I was stuck as an accountant for for like, three years, and that was working in spreadsheets every day. With numbers that didn't mean anything to me. So I was kind of literally working within these boxes, and metaphorically stuck inside these constructed boxes, these societally constructed boxes, without having any self esteem or self confidence that the creative ideas and the creative feelings that I had would be either possible for me to express or interesting to anyone, because I'd put myself in a box that felt so alien to what my actual experience of life was. I didn't have any relationship with the people who shared that box with me. Like I didn't have any shared experience of existence. I didn't feel like I had, I don't know, I didn't feel like I had a community or access to a community that would appreciate or find useful things that I was thinking about.

Louisa
Looking back, can you identify a way out of that box with any particular moments of self revelation or self permission?

Laurie
I think the first experience was one of unbearable, and extreme pain, mental pain, a buildup of these feelings that were at some point unbearable, and it was a it was a breaking point that was that was either going to lead to a rejection of these boxes, or something, something more serious in terms of my own health. So that breaking point led me to at least divest myself in some degree from the mental attachment that I had to following through the stories that I'd got stuck in. Then once I'd made that initial divestment, then it was really access to art that had healing effects on me. And kind of revelatory realisations. And these weren't individual events. But over the course of years of experiences of artists who expressed similar feelings that I had been feeling... so there was one significant show that I saw by someone who's autistic and non binary, that spoke to me in a way that I'd ever been spoken to by art before and I just spent the whole time the whole show crying, and releasing emotions and feeling things that I hadn't ever really allowed myself to feel before. And that didn't lead to any immediate realisation about autism or anything like that. But it was kind of a step towards listening to my internal experiences rather than privileging external models foisted upon me by others with with their own agendas. And then I think a lot of the realisation came through a lot of the realisation about autism came through initially, the process of me trying to figure out like what was "wrong with me", in quotation marks, sort of self research, self analysis, trying to find the cause of what was going on and trying to fix it. So I was still within this kind of dominant culture, mode of of trying to resume the kind of productive journey that I felt like I was on the kind of economically socially utilitarian route, you know, like reading about psychoanalysis, Kleinian psychoanalysis and, and stuff like this. And it was never really satisfying. It was always like, it felt like someone had observed someone like me, but hadn't really fully understood what was happening. It was actually through the work of autistic writers that I began to actually identify myself as autistic and actually understand my experience as an autistic experience. So this is, these are scientific writers and researchers, like Damien Milton is a key one for me. But then also artists and an author's like Remi Yergeau, who I mentioned, and your work as well - Lossy Ecology; these kinds of interpretations of my experience that felt like a shared experience and that felt like something that I could actually associate with, according to the feelings inside me, rather than the kind of mental model that I had created. According to observations,

Louisa
I want to quote you again from your Instagram, which is a different post. You write: 'It is difficult to translate between my embodied and energetic experience of feeling constantly, and in relation to everything. Fluctuating constellations of bodily responses to all internal and external stimuli. My ecological, systemic experience of affect does not fit into the dominant model of linear universalised emotional labels. For some time, I thought this was a disorder. Alexithymia I was fine, good or bad. Subtleties of the language eluded me, alluding to self depreciating deficits and developmental defects. Now, I think it's a "mismatch of salience" which is from Damien Milton, "a difference in experience and modelling and communication between bodies, which is interjected into autistic mind bodies as our deficit to own and bear. How does one usefully communicate these phenomenological abstract fluctuating constellations of feeling, though? So I wanted to ask you a bit more about this and this notion of affect and also shared affect that you're exploring in your work. And in this sense of our existing within relation, and also something that we've talked about before this sense that to be fully embodied within public space, often doesn't feel available, I'm really keen for you to kind of share some more thoughts about shared effect in your work.

Laurie
So I think affect to me is... affect is a label that you can use to describe the constant experience of fluctuating energetic sensations within our bodies, which have different descriptive axes of feeling associated with them. And they occur in different spatial configurations as well. So there's this kind of constantly fluctuating, energetic configuration inside us, that is a response to both external and internal imagery. And I mean imagery in a broad sense, not specifically visual imagery, symbols, I suppose, perhaps. And these various configurations of feeling - they are associated with emotional labels which are culturally, socially relationally defined outside of our bodies. The language we learn to describe either the state that we're in - as in: they observe us, and they say, 'Oh, you're feeling a certain way'. And they use emotional labels to describe that. And that's reliant on an external interpretation of my internal experience. So there's a disconnect there straightaway. There's also the possibility of observing completely third party interactions, in media or in other relations that you... like within your family or between friends, where you observe someone's external representation of their internal state. And then you would also observe some other third party's interpretation of that external representation. So again, there's a there's a interpretation of internal states, either a primary disconnect, or a secondary disconnect. There's like these levels of disconnection. And then again, you can you can kind of learn the formal definitions of these emotions. But again, there's a disconnect between the description of what an emotion is and the internal bodily experience that elicits those, or that is associated with its emotions. So affect to me, therefore, is the feeling the bodily experience, without that social relational layer of emotions, which are a translation and imperfect translation of of those experiences.

Louisa
Yeah, this is really good, because the mismatch between that internal bodily experience and the available tools for communicating them - and I'm also wondering about your interest in costumes and this idea of regalia and rituals and in the celebration of and this reversal of imposed ideas, that shared effect. Yeah, so how did costumes and rituals and regalia facilitate that in your thinking?

Laurie
I think of the three I think rituals and regalia are really the two that that address the the idea of shared affect and most. Costumes, I see is kind of like the stealthy garb that we can, don as a as a performative aspect of self according to the circumstances required. I see regalia as a symbol of self and collective exultation. So shared affect occurs to me when two or more bodies - and this doesn't have to be human bodies either, I think this can be other other non human, non animal bodies - when this new arrangement of material matter, so, making these arrangements of matter with consciousness in between, in the relational space in between; this kind of new created, co created consciousness, the a ffect that individuals experience are channelled into a kind of collective power, which is then also reflected back into the individuals. So, so to me the ritual can be a process of the channelling of bodily effect into consciousness into power and collective liberation, I suppose. So, ritual is the method by which this kind of loop, this feedback loop can occur.

Louisa
So, we've been talking very abstractly, which I love, but I want to ground it now and in something that you've created recently, which is a series of live broadcasts over Twitch. And yeah, when if I wonder if you could just share what that was?

Laurie
Yeah, so Twitch is a live streaming platform that is largely used for people streaming video games. But it's also a platform that people use for various artistic projects, and just conversation or discussion or a variety of different things, really, but it's a public forum that anyone can can stream on and interact with a chat, I used it to stream nine iterative performances over the course of about a month. So every three days, I did a performance. And I viewed it as an iterative experience, whereby the performance changed each time according to the experience that I'd had the previous time making the performance. And also, anything that had happened in the three days in between the performances. So it was it was responsive and reactive to the reading that I was doing in between the experiences that I'd had in between the relational interactions that I'd had in between. And it was really about making a space for me to express these experiences in a public sphere, a way of learning about myself through performance in a public space.

Louisa
I'll link to those in the show notes. But I want to speak about the significance of those. And that act of giving yourself that framework and that space to do that exploration in a public way. And how that came out of a journey that you were going on within SOLA Siblings as well. I've been able to witness you go on this kind of transformation with how confident and comfortable you felt with being on camera. So some of our our live coaching calls in SOLA Siblings are done over Zoom. And they're recorded, and anyone who's in SOLA Siblings can, if they weren't able to attend, can go and watch them. There's a guideline that everyone who's there can be present in whatever ways worked for them. So there's no obligation to speak or to have your camera on. But something that was happening a few months ago is that the trend started to become the cameras off was the was the norm. So I led a workshop around, you know, this question of visibility being also a question of trust, and also a question of facilitating connection together. But also, up until that point, we hadn't seen you. I'd never seen you visibly. And very quickly from then on, you took that leap of courage and ran with it to the extent that you went, within a matter of months from you know, not having a camera on to then performing publicly on Twitch through recorded video stream. And I want to celebrate you really for taking that journey and you know taking those leaps of choosing yourself, choosing self acceptance, choosing not to be concerned with, you know, the thoughts of what other people's interpretation of you might be, and taking that on as, as something that, that you can own and and that is, you know, can even be part of your self expression. So I'd really like to ask you, have I done justice to that journey? What was your experience of it?

Laurie
I think there's a little bit to add at the beginning as well, probably. I think the state that you found me in, or that I presented myself in to you, of not being on camera, and not speaking, was kind of like the, the, the end point of a process of retreat, I suppose, that I had been going through for several years previously. Really, since I left full time employment, or since I left employment, my experience had been that my anxiety around being present was an accurate anxiety. It was a useful message that my body was telling me, that I was putting myself in situations that were unpleasant, painful, difficult, and traumatising, and damaging to me. And therefore, I started to cut off and to remove myself from those situations. Like I haven't, I think I stopped using telephones, for example. I gradually started seeing people, just in general and interacting with people in general, less and less over over the years. And then the pandemic created a situation where I was able to insulate myself almost completely from the outside world, I came kind of relatedness and didn't interact in nearly any way with the external world. Even my own family, who lived fairly close by, like I was just cut off completely from the social existence. So that process of installation and isolation was a kind of defensive reaction to these psychological traumas I had been experiencing. And they were a response to the anxiety that was an accurate method of determining at the time, what was going to be bad for me, because everything at that point was bad for me because of the context that I placed myself into, or that I'd ended up in. But then after that, that process of revealing myself and becoming more visible, I started to experience the anxiety, and then a great joy, a great feeling of connection, like a reconnection, the reverse, again, of that kind of inward process to that outwards, expansion of self. So it was like a rebounding of reopening myself back up experiencing positive reactions, both internally and externally. Creation of these good relations internally and externally, that meant that I could start to interpret the anxiety in a different way, not as a useful way of seeing what to avoid, but as a method of identifying what might be an interesting experience to experiment with.

Louisa
And I know that, that that kind of pressing of a reset button on, you know, ways that we exist with other people will be something that I think a lot of listeners will identify with, like, you have this kind of sense of, oh, it's it's not something wrong with me. There are other people like me, I've been kind of agreeing with all of the ways that I've been taught to exist with other people that don't work for me that don't fit my body that create anxiety, that create harm, and so a necessity of undoing or withdrawing from the given social contracts and given ways of relating, in order to then reconfigure it. And I also want to ask about because there is, in that reconfiguration, and that kind of unlearning who you aren't and unlearning all of these kind of external ideas about yourself and misinterpretations that other people might have had that you've then internalised, kind of going through this process of unlearning those and then rediscovering or refining or recreating new ways of social belonging and communicating, there is that desire then to be seen. It's like a human need that we will have to be seen to be understood to be real in other people's reality. But there's a gap often between that desire, and the kind of intellectual knowing that that is something that could be possible. And the actions that are required to make that then a possibility. So I'm really curious to ask you, how you bridge that gap? What did you have to unlearn in your thinking? Or what were the thoughts that changed that interpretation of that anxiety into something that could be joyful?

Laurie
I think a phrase that that really stands out in my head is the, the idea that I don't even need to think about what other people are thinking about me. Like, I just don't even need to do that. It's not something I have to do. I think I'd always been, I'd been the opposite, I'd been like, I need to think very carefully about what other people think about me. So having that flip in my head made a huge difference, initially, in terms of the courage to do anything, in terms of revealing myself publicly or, or being seen or heard. I think previously, the kind of guiding principle of social interactions had been how to shape what other people think about me into, into something that means they will like me, or want to have some kind of relationship with me. I think it was really just someone else saying it, just someone else giving me permission, I didn't have to do that. That that was not necessarily the best way, or the only way to engage in a relation with other people. The experience of then turning on my camera, and the spotlight call was, like, it was a it was a kind of revelatory experience, because of the way that anxiety changed into pleasure, I suppose it was so different to any experience I've had before, where anxiety, continued being anxiety or some other form of pain. And the you know, I'd been told by therapists like, the anxiety peaks, and then it follows a graph like the fall, it's a pattern it, it declines over time. And like, that was never really my experience, my experience was always anxiety peaks, and then it stays peaked. So experiencing the reverse of that was, was a kind of shock to my system of understanding how this could actually work and how relations didn't have to be continued anxiety.

Louisa
I remember the call actually, and I think you shared in the chat - I inviting everyone to kind of share what their feeling was, at that moment, and you - and yours was that you felt that you were ready to fight a bear, that you were being invited into something that that required adrenaline and, repositioning that as something that it to be invited in and to be part of the experience of stepping outside of previous modes and habitual ways of being with other people into something new, where you don't actually know what the result is going to be. You don't know how you're going to feel because you've never done it in that way. And shifting the interpretation of that. So the anxiety itself not changing or the the kind of embodied experience of being full of adrenaline didn't itself change. But your thoughts, your interpretation of it changed into: this is something that indicates that I am stepping into more of myself and that I am allowing myself to be seen. I'm giving myself permission. And then having that be embraced by the other people who are there as well with the other siblings. I want to ask now what has been the impact of connecting with other people in SOLA Siblings.

Laurie
The presence of the other siblings and the invitation from you and the other siblings for me to share myself created the kind of welcoming environment that that was in contrast to the hostile environment that I had found myself in previously. So the relational response to my visibility, the positive relational response to my visibility, it helped to make the connection between the desires that I had for relations with other people, and the mental thoughts, the intellectualised thoughts that filtered those desires.

Louisa
So your thinking was aligned with what the desired result was for you. I want to ask about what has been the impact of coaching for you, especially for someone who might be new to the idea that coaching is something that could be relevant to them? So for someone who might have preconceived ideas of what I've what coaching means, what has it meant to you what has been the impact of it to you?

Laurie
So I think I talked earlier about how the containers that I had for artistic creation and my childhood were kind of inappropriate for the way that I thought in the way that I wanted to create. And I think coaching provides a different kind of container for artistic and self expression. I think having someone who, having someone who has a somewhat at least somewhat shared understanding of the experience of living under a somewhat similar model of existence, an internal, somewhat similar internal model, to, to reflect back and to investigate and to challenge, I suppose, the kind of assumptions that I have built into my own model of existence over time, according to, or having adopted from people who didn't share any experience of existence. Didn't share many aspects of internal self model, provided and provides a vessel, like I said, a container for the investigation of what is possible. Encouragement, I think and permission to do things that I didn't think I could do, for really invalid reasons in the past, but someone who's also caring, and again, without a sensation that there's this ulterior motive or an observation and an external observation of my body - that means that that provides this kind of intimacy that I was that I was referring to the the intimacy of being understood, that I've never heard from a therapist, the the intimacy of being treated in a kind of respectful and consensual way, in a partnership, I suppose in a kind of partnership or of co creation, I think, like I wasn't really aware of coaching as a concept. Like I'd always sought therapy from therapists or counsellors before, again, within this context of trying to fix what was wrong with me; you're trying to analyse away what was a disorder or deficit or a maladaptive response to reality. But coaching provided this space for emergence.

Louisa
I've got a couple more questions to finish up. But I really want to just honour you and celebrate you for all of the courage involved in taking those leaps and being visible, but now also the way that you're taking up space and insisting on no longer hiding, no longer retreating, but fully embracing and, you know, being a lighthouse to other people who maybe share those experiences and are seeking, or looking, for some kind of affirmation of their own experiences, in the ways that you are putting yourself out there - are going to have ripple effects. In the same way that when you encountered artworks in which you felt seen and you felt healed, that is going to now be possible for other people. And that is the work that you're doing and I just want to really celebrate you for that, because it's not easy. What would you say to anyone who wants to own all of who they are, wants to take up more of their creative power and to be more visible, but is, in the day to day, feeling stuck, feeling anxious, not knowing where to start. Feeling demotivated. Feeling fearful of being seen... What would you say to them?

Laurie
I think, on a practical level, I think I would say, to believe the messages that you're getting from your body; what it's desiring, and what it's rejecting. Pay attention to that. Try to understand that, and try to notice the social filters that are overlaid on top of those experiences. I would seek a community that will elevate you and celebrate your differences, rather than trying to cure or cover them up. Take in as much information as you can that inspires and excites you; collect the data that makes you feel good. And gently, carefully, experiment with ways of being and ways of acting that feel right. And then I think I would also say, I've mentioned permissions a few times, I think, for me permission to the myself was always something that I saw from the dominant culture and never found, never received those permissions. So I don't know if it will make much difference, but I think I would like to offer my permission, my consent, and my invitation to whoever's listening: You can be yourself, and you don't have to adopt these models that are harmful and oppressive.

Louisa
That was so brilliant. Laurie, thank you so much. It's really truly been a pleasure and an honour. Thank you so much for sharing your story. And, and so vulnerably as well. Where can people find you online who want to stay kind of in the loop with what you're creating and what you're putting out in the world?

Laurie
You can find me on Instagram @liminal_resonance. And I have a website at https://laurie.hotglue.me/. And you can sign up for a mailing list on there.

Louisa
Fantastic, and I'll put all of those in the show notes. And thank you so much for listening, everyone and thank you, Laurie, for being here. It's been truly amazing.

Laurie
Thank you for having me.

END

The outro is Affective States 1, by Laurie Green.