Radical Self Love: Julián’s Story
🦋✨🐛
What do we do when we are faced with chaos?
I hope whatever we do, you never lose your divinity. I pray for our safety. What I am about to share is something very personal that I have not discussed outside my closest family circle yet. Due to a recent string of events with family members, It feels imperative to join this conversation now.
Me too,
I am a survivor of sexual violence too. I continue this write up about my body with this statement because I have yet to claim this dark truth. And in the process of claiming all my colors, I have to face all my hues. Those words had yet to be typed into a sentence, and by avoiding them, I was avoiding addressing the pain they were creating in my emotional and spiritual body.
Trauma disassociates us from the parts of Our body that are wounded, and when we don’t tend the wounds of our past, we just keep bleeding.
There are emotional and spiritual violations that come from occupying one’s Body, our most sacred home.
It’s important to remember that fewer than 40 per cent of the women who experience violence seek help of any sort, or that 2020 marked the Deadliest Year on Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People ever recorded, and that by the end of 2021 nearly 85% of trans Black women will experience some form of sexual violence.
Before we move forward, I'd like to salute all survivors. I honor their resilience, and today I join forces to interrupt sexual violence by manifesting the possibility of healing ✨🦋⚔️
When you don't see us, you don't hear us, you don't think we exist.
That’s why visibility is so important, but visibility can also be a threat when we live in a patriarchal society that benefits from silencing survivors. The stigma that survivors are sold by Rape culture only compounds the pain as the years continue. Acts of sexual violence are a traditional practice of patriarchal societies to promote their dominance and infiltrate fear into their colonies. There are emotional and spiritual violations that come from occupying one’s Body, our most sacred home.
After surviving my first attack, my heart began to separate from My body.
Once the fear of it happening again was validated by the tolerance of such acts, I learned to fear, and to distrust. I began to live in survivor mode. And even though I had survived , It never felt safe to show my pain, so I silenced it.
It got exhausting, and this accumulation of emotions began to numb me. I began to doubt my own beauty.
I crafted a character that would fool strangers and keep me safe by being extra likable. All my actions were reflective of the fear of losing my divinity once again, and in a way they lacked honesty. These tactics to keep my safety didn’t always work, and every act of violence would leave me with new lessons, too many red flags to count.
For the longest time I struggled to understand the emotions that would rise from being triggered, and it would be years and lots of heartache before I reached out for professional help.
Pain breaks the Rhythm, and Activism is a lifelong commitment. When the Body feels out of balance, she’s in pain, uninspired to move or to activate herself. That's when we must learn to move intentionally towards healing. Physical exercise was the way I found the support system that has kept me afloat during these weary years. It allowed the creation of a cocoon where I was able to reconnect with Body. It's taken a strong chosen family, and a very patient spouse for me to get to this point. I’m now in a point of my recovery where I refuse to take blame for the actions of my attackers, and I realize that avoiding the subject only makes my pain heavier to carry.
I take a moment to thank every dancer, fighter, and overall movement warrior who has shared their wisdom with me. Their training has enabled my reincarnation. I am a window of their combined guidance to Move with grace, strength, and resilience.
As I Embark on this new journey, I Find the power behind using my body to continue on the road of the unknown.
What do we do when we are faced with chaos and lose our ability to move?
If Chaos is inevitable, and Avoiding conflict is the surest way to create it. Then, I hope whatever you do, you never lose your divinity, nor your ability to see beauty.
“Dear beauty,
The sooner I get to embrace you, the farther we’ll run together. I ask you to keep me safe, as you always have. You, the beauty of my body, are not defined by white male supremacy. The pleasure of enjoying you does not require anybody’s permission but my own. I worship you, I am your Apostol, an apostle of the divinity of my body, a Beauty evangelist. ”
These are the words I like to remember on the days where my perception of my body is anything less than joyful. It helps to move my body, because my body is the most beautiful when she’s in motion.
That’s why I train. I train to remain beautiful. My physical healing process has now become a holistic life long story I’m hoping to write about before I die. So far the biggest lesson I’ve learned is: Claiming back my body is just the beginning.
I am learning to see the world from the eyes of beauty again. Everything I do is with intention.
Fashion is my armor. My body is my home.
I’m working on solidifying my power where it is something to be proud of, and to transform it where it’s not. 🐛✨🦋 todo está en constante movimiento, todo tiene espíritu.
Cleansed, illuminated and transformed by their pain. Just like the butterfly is born from the literal melting of the caterpillar’s body, I present to you:
My naked body, my naked truth.
I am becoming comfortable with being vulnerable. I want to partake in the construction of a community that seeks to find and promote healing. The healing process can be difficult, and it’s nice to not do it alone. I'm at a stage in my life where the people who have a hard time providing safety are walking themselves out.
The people in my crew either will fight with us, or they get out of the way so I can at least fight for myself. Fighting is a form of love. Avoiding conflict is the surest way to create it, so t to my Heterosexual cis gendered friends i ask, what are you doing to promote the safety you owe to trans people?
The work I want to continue doing is work that will guarantee the safety of all women and gender variant people to express their full beauty. I want be a tool to interrupt sexual violence until it really becomes something we only talk about in past tense.
Until then, I will fight to restore the dignity and humanity of all survivors.
I’m a self proclaimed alchemist, a label I claimed during my thesis presentation @parsons.
But I wasn’t one then, nor I am one yet, but I am working to become one with the work DIVINE CHAOS MOVEMENT is here to do.
You can join us too :)
