Crip wisdom, gender and self-care for social justice

In this episode, the amazing Naomi Ortiz discusses her contribution to the new anthology "Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People", edited by Alice Wong.  This anthology includes 16 essays by 17 disabled writers, activists, & artists. As Alice twitted "This is crip wisdom for the people"! Naomi Ortiz is a facilitator, writer, poet, and visual artist who cracks apart common beliefs and spills out beauty. Naomi is a nationally known writer, speaker and trainer on self-care, disability justice, and living in multiple worlds (intersectionality). She is a Disabled, Mestiza (Latina/Indigenous/White), raised in Latinx culture, living in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. Naomi’s book, Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice invites readers to delve into what self-care means in their lives by exploring the relationships between body, mind, spirit, heart, and place to integrate self-care to survive and thrive. Caring about the world should not burn us out. Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice shows us how to balance activism with self-care. "Every page of this spiritual book is a gift, full of poignant stories, poetic metaphors, insightful questions, and practical suggestions to sustain ourselves as activists over the long-term." - Lisa Hoffman, International Human Rights activist. To find out more about Naomi, you can visit: www.NaomiOrtiz.com, follow her on Twitter @ThinkFreestyle and on Instagram @NaomiOrtizWriterArtist
To find out more about and order the anthology edited by Alice Wong, please visit: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/resist/

Transcript

Singer: 0:03

There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you about. Adventures dangerous and queer. Some you can guess and some I've only hinted at, so please lend me your ear.

Narrator: 0:30

Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's your story? Hello and welcome to gender stories with your host, Dr Alex Iantaffi.

Alex: 0:41

Hello and welcome to another episode of Gender Stories. I'm absolutely delighted to be interviewing Naomi Ortiz for this episode. She's the facilitator, writer, poet, and visual artist who cracks apart common beliefs and spills out beauty. And Naomi's a nationally known writer, speaker and trainer on self care, disability justice, and living in multiple worlds. So we're gonna be talking a lot about intersectionality, which is one of my favorite topics. I'm incredibly excited about them. She's a disabled Mestiza(Latina/Indigenous/White) raised in Latinx culture living in the US/Mexico Borderlands. I'm interviewing Naomi because there is an amazing anthology edited by Alice Wong that's coming out this month in October 2018, called"Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People", crip wisdom for the people, and I've had the absolute privilege and pleasure to read an advance review copy and wow Gender Stories listeners, I wish I could interview every single author. Maybe that could be my project for 2019 of this ontology because there are so many wonderful essays and I was particularly drawn to Naomi's essay because she also has another book out called"Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice", two of my favorite topics alongside intersectionality and her book,"Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" invites readers to delve into what self care means in their lives by exploring the relationship between body, mind, spirit, heart and place to integrate self care, to survive and thrive. I know that's something I struggle with and I wonder how many of you also struggle with that. So I'm super excited about having conversations about gender and self care, social justice and disability with Naomi today. And how do we get to care about the world without burning us out? And also how do we get to kind of keep cultivating resistance and hope during this time. So welcome Naomi. Thank you. Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed. Anything that I've forgotten that I should say about you before we get started?

Naomi: 2:51

No, I think that's incredible and yes, thanks. So happy to be here.

Alex: 2:56

Okay. So this is... I'm just so excited, I'm always... One of my favorite parts of doing this podcast is all the amazing people I get to talk to. So tell me a little bit, I read your essay and I absolutely loved it, but tell me a little bit about the focus for your essay, why you chose to write, why you chose to write for it election that was really about resistance and hope at this specific time.

Naomi: 3:24

Yes. So I wrote about self care and hope because uh, to me I was just observing in activist communities a lot of speeding up and feeling fractured in terms of needing to respond. I mean we're responding to a lot before the election and before, you know, um, things like healthcare, were under threat and with the evolution of those things becoming much more urgent, uh, you know, I was really wondering how, if self care could still be part of the conversation for one. I mean, it has to be. I hope it also, um, you know, it's a question. I mean, it's one of the first things that get sacrificed and you know, do self care and hope connect? That was my other question. Where does, how do I generate hope within my body and how does self care actually, uh, contribute to like there being space in my body for hope, does it? So that was really what my essay was around.

Alex: 4:32

Yeah. And absolutely I and I could, I so agree with so much of what you said, but also when I was reading it, I could feel those echoes in my own body of like, yes, I've, I've seen the sense of urgency and this, you know, and also I'm a therapist and see so many people burnout and especially folks with marginalized identities and disabled folks pushing ourselves beyond what we can do because there is so much work to be done and so and it's and the impact of that at the time when already we're having all this kind of stress on our collective body, not just our individual body in a way that's, that's what I love about this anthology as just collective body of wisdom, a crip wisdom as Alice calls it in the title and she has this other amazing Disability Visibility Project, which if you're all interested in finding out more about. I very much encourage you to check it out. It's called Disability Visibility Project. Lots of really great interviews and I'm interested in how you feel that gender and disability and your passion for social justice and your passion for kind of self care all come together kind of this kind of weird cauldron of intersections, let's call it come together in your life as well as your writing maybe.

Naomi: 6:03

Yeah. So I think, um, you know, I was thinking a lot about what I understand about gender and I feel like, and I'm so this is where I'm like new and excited to talk to you too. Um, because I, I couldn't think about gender unless I was thinking about gender norms, like how, you know, we're supposed to show up in society or how society teaches us, our families teach us what gender is. So I didn't know if I could ask you if I was missing something with gender,

Alex: 6:40

Flip those tables, ask away! I mean, yes, that's a tricky thing, right? That is such an interesting question because um, at the moment in the UK, especially I have a lot of friends and colleagues and kind of trans community. We're getting this backlash about, Oh, when when trans and/or non-binary people are talking about gender, they're reinforcing gender norms or you know, almost as if those gender norms don't exist in society. Right? And that's just the pure existence of trans and/or non-binary people make them true, you know. And um, and so that's been really interesting to see some of those kinds of arguments go around and getting turned around in a fascinating way and yeah, gender this weird kind of biopsychosocial experience. So yes, it's kind of hard to think about. So that's those gender norms in our culture and so we, and they're so dependent on kind of the time and the place we were born in our family and now they interacted with us norms, right? But then most of us, I would say have some sense of how we relate to those norms, right? Do we fit in, do we not fit in with those norms. Um, and then, and then there's our bodies that have been gendered by culture and that will, do, they fit in or not for them. And so it becomes this really complicated. It's so much more complicated than that tiny word, gender I would give away. Right. Which is why I'm endlessly fascinated with this topic and have been since I was in elementary school. Yeah. So it's fascinating to talk to people and be like, what do you, how do you feel that gender plays a role in your life? Like how does this show up? Yeah,

Naomi: 8:23

Well I've been having conversations with friends and queer community around gender and mostly because I was preparing for this podcast and like, okay, so how does this actually like how many think about this more and I really want to sound like, or I want a thoughtful answer. I want to give a thoughtful answer and this and the more and more I talked about it in terms of um, you know, like gender norms, like how we talk about gender and expectations of gender. It was like the more and more I didn't know if I could even get to that question about like how gender has impacted me without going through the doorway and the lens of disability first. I'm sure that's why it makes everything so complicated. Right? Like, and you know, race, like I'm very, I'm light skinned, but you know, I have family from both sides of the line and like, you know, even expectations of gender and that is so intense. So, but speaking because you asked about disability, you know, I think that disabled folks really disrupt gender roles mostly because I think our bodies are perceived as other and you know, we, whether it's a physical disability, a sensory disability, all the different types of disabilities which are very diverse out there. I really think that, um, when we interact with people, uh, we like disrupt what people assume is okay for like body language and the way we talk and even sometimes our tone of voice or what we're actually saying doesn't compute. And so it's like we're otherized and I think that otherization happens with gender too. It's like people can't get that far. It's like they get stuck. Like, oh, this doesn't make sense. You don't make sense to me. I can't get past this. So I think the disruption piece is a really big part of um, what I observe a lot. Um, and you know, I think because we disrupt so much we're often seen outside of community and especially when we're trying to connect and organize or even just, you know, go hang out with our friends and like listen to some music. I mean, that becomes a disruptive challenge. We disrupt us entering into that space. Um, so we often exist very much outside of community, uh, and outside of any community cultural communities. Um, you know, like the towns we live in, we live outside of that and I mean, unless people found crip community and then of course that's complicated and has its own layers of stuff. But, you know, um, for me it was like a really long journey to kind of get to a place of acceptance of being outside of community. And in some ways there's some freedom to that. Like there's some freedom to define while how do I want to show up in the world if I'm already like disrupting things and people are already, are already in reaction to me. Like in some ways it gives me a little more choice to push the edges if I want to. Uh, and um, I, I really was interested in like stepping back and kind of looking at the big picture of what I saw happening in communities and it was often that because people were part of community, they were socially invested in showing up and participating and being part of things and being part of things in the right way, whatever way that was defined. And so things like self care, we're really just not part of the conversation because it wasn't actually part of the community. And so for me to step back and be in, that is how I connected to self care and just observing that was, it's just fascinating to me how it is a choice sometimes if we do self care to step outside of community and to potentially risk, uh, relationships and such, you know, becoming less intense or less dynamic because we're not as present because we're taking care of ourselves. We take that space. Um, so those to me are some of the ways that they connect. And I think, uh, I don't know if you'd like me to go into the different types of self care?

Alex: 12:57

You can if you want to! I'm just like listening and taking it all in and having about 500 thoughts a minute so I can either jump in there or you can either go into the different types of self care or we can pause in it. I definitely have followup questions. What would you prefer?

Naomi: 13:14

Well, I can tell the self care, um, the types of self care because I actually interviewed for the other books. So the anthology is incredible and I actually would really like to speak to the crip wisdom, the con, the concept of crip wisdom. Um, but the book that I just came out with, sustaining spirit, um, I interviewed a bunch of different activists on self care and so, you know, it's like in our, in media, a lot of times we see self care is kind of defined as like exercise, eating right, bubble bath, having a glass of wine, you know, it's the pampering, which is totally self care. I mean that's actually legit, but it's like one type. It's one type of self care. It's not like all of self care. So to me, I was defining that type of self care is body self care, so there's also spiritual self care, which includes religious practices, meditation, being in nature, there's nourishing self care which includes creative expression, gathering inspiration, their self care with the mind, which is learning, feeling valued, skill building. There's transformative experiences which I think are actually, it's especially important for people who do social justice work, which is around spiritual deepening, building intuition and doing deep emotional work. There's emotional self care which includes self expression, feeling feelings and accessing relationships. And then there's the self care being aware of our own reality, which is really the changing perspective piece, which requires a lot of skills I think, you know, for us to practice a lot and fail a lot.

Alex: 14:54

Some wisdom right there. Yes, that's true.

Naomi: 15:00

So those were the types of self care that, uh, to me it was like, if this can be a foundation for the work I do personally, you know, I could respond from a deeper and more centered place and then therefore, like it would impact other people to also hopefully respond from a deeper, more centered place. I know at least when people are patient with me and have like, um, come at me with kindness a lot of times I'm able to respond in a much better way even if I'm really angry. And so it was, to me it was like, this is, to me the evolutions of communities. I would love to see. It's like how do we bring in self care to actually create communities that are stronger?

Alex: 15:43

Yeah. I love all of that. And you said that, um, you know, to me I feel so much wisdom around self care. And then you said, you know, exactly this concept of crip wisdom that is so important and that is so core to the anthology. So I wonder if that would be a good segue right now. And there's other stuff I want to go back to around gender and disability and um, and self care and social justice, but this piece about crip wisdom and what does it mean and what does it have to offer outside of crip community? Which hopefully, I think will get read outside of crip community as a person with disabilities I love reading it and I would love for non disabled folks also read it, if that makes sense.

Naomi: 16:34

Right? Yes. I think disability community is often overlooked as a source of wisdom and you know, it's because whenever, like I was saying, whenever we enter a community cultural, the cities we live in, we enter in a way where we're disrupting that norm and we're asking for access in order to participate. So as disruptors, nondisabled people are just constantly in reaction with us versus engaging with us. So you know, for example, it's like in the city I live in, um, you know, community activist might reach out to talk about access at like a festival that they're putting together, which is great. I mean I'm, I guess it's nice to be known that I would know those, that information, but to me that's not actually what I'm passionate about. Like I'm really actually passionate about poetry and deep work and self care and I'm not seen as a resource in those others areas because people can only connected with me and only associate with me in terms of what they're kind of afraid of or to have discomfort around which is disability. And so I think wisdom is overshadowed by the literal of activist showing up into spaces and Alice who was incredible. She provides such space for Crip crip wisdom through her podcast and a web presence you were talking about with her reaching out to disabled folks. This anthology is incredible. I mean we're in the position of literally having to fight for our ability to stay alive oftentimes in a variety of systems, but also sometimes when the families and the cultural communities we live in and so yes, it's like there is a lot of vulnerability that comes with that and a lot of trauma that comes with that and a lot of wisdom because somehow we have to figure it out somehow. We have to. We have to live. Whether it's, you know, the answers that's going to be like the most useful for the longest run. That's like another question, um, or whether it's a coping mechanism in the moment. But I think what's so cool about this anthology is like Alice reached out to several folks who had really done some deep, deep thinking about this. And so most of the chapters talk about hope and resistance and how to, how hope can exist in these times. And I think it's incredible.

Alex: 18:57

Absolutely. And I think it's interesting, um, that phrase like how can, can resist them this time. Right. And we've had those times before and I think that's the wisdom that a lot of marginalized folks have to have to offer during this historical time. Whether it's, I'm here and what is currently called the US or kind of another lens where this also, you know, there's been such a rise of fascism and totalitarian- I can never say that word. Basically totalitarian regimes, let's call them, uh, to use them or something like that, I think is the word that I'm trying to pronounce. And the only the globe in lots of different places, right. And there is something that disabled folks and transgender and non-binary folks and black and brown folks and indigenous folks know about resistance and hope. And that's one of the things that I really loved about the anthology is that it is really those intersections, you know, in so many different ways are there in the different essays, right? Is um, it's crip wisdom, but it's also all those ntersections. It's intersection wisdom, right? It's crip intersectional wisdom.

Naomi: 20:11

I'm so grateful you're like clarifying that because when I talked about crip, I automatically think that it's like super diyverse because we're everywhere in every cultural community part of like a lot of lot of folks. So I thank you for. Yes. And I think that's most, I think most of the folks in the anthology are part of multiple communities, which is, I mean, unbelievably beautiful to write from that place.

Alex: 20:35

Yeah. And it's also challenging, right? It's like when we were talking, kind of circling back to the beginning of this conversation, of like the way I enter gender is through, I'm paraphrasing maybe, but you said something about this doorway of disability and I was like, yes, absolutely right. It's can we even think about gender from a non intersection perspective, right? And why does the aspect of our lives at some the foreground for whatever reason, in whichever moment, right ability like the way you put it about the, the othering, you know, that happens, that belonging, not belonging. And that um, that came to mind when I was listening to that, um, is this idea that yes, once people see you as a disabled person, it's almost like all of those other things that apply to other people kind of fall away or come in the background, right or not as visible and you know, and there's a lot of really amazing, um, literature over the years around the infantilization of disabled folks. Right? For example, when it comes to sexuality, but also the degendering in lots of ways of disabled folks. Right? So how can we kind of tease all those parts away? Like, I agree that I was like, yes, I agree with you. When I think about crip wisdom, I'm like, it's definitely intersection in, in a similar way in which a lot of um, a kind of more marginalized communities almost have to be intersectional by need and necessity, right. Otherwise we, it's that need for survival that help us find each other larger social justice movement. So rooms, right? Oh yes. I'm kind of curious to kind of circle back to thinking out that crucible of intersectional wisdom and thinking about that intersection of kind of gender and race and living. You're literally living in a border land. I'm leaving at the borders, um, geographically, but also leaving out the board. There's culturally and then. No, I don't know. That's where my mind is going. Am I making any sense? And does anything coming up for you in this direction in which my mind is going right now?

Naomi: 22:55

Yeah, I think about it a lot because I live here and I'm sure a lot of your listeners live in borderlands too, you know, whether it's like real borderlands, borderlands in community or family. Um, yes, I mean I think there is a loneliness in the borderlands because it's not one place and it's not another defined place. It's somewhere in the middle between the two. And so sometimes the beautiful parts of that is sometimes there's some intermixing and Kinda the best of both worlds. And also the, the worst of both worlds can exist in and borderlands areas. I'm also more kind of militant attention to and policing of borderlands. I mean, and that's very much in, in real space. Uh, you know, I drive through checkpoints, uh, moving through this side of the border, um, every day, uh, that's just part of our reality. And um, I think to me one of the things that I really like writing about and have kind of cultivated in living here is there is also, to me what I call spaciousness in borderlands, meaning like there's a little more, um, fluidity, possibility, uh, like you're able to kind of push a little further in other ways. It's not as crowded, uh, because, um, I'd say like kind of the metaphorical, a borderlands, you know, people don't like being here. It's like we like to have some clarity about like where we fit, where we don't fit, so there's some spaciousness which I think is actually really incredible that allows us to pause and take in a what we're experiencing and potentially kind of redefine how we re enter, whether it's like one side of the line or the other, um, one world or the other, you know, I think that that spaciousness is really valuable to me.

Alex: 25:08

I love that idea of kind of redefining our reenter. As somebody who's lived as an immigrant, more like a larger part of my life. Then actually being indigenous to place, uh, I, I lived where I was born for 22 years and then I lived as an immigrant in for 25 years. There's something about how am I going to be. I'm never gonna belong to, um, you know, this Dakota/Anishinaabe land currently known as Minneapolis, Minnesota in which I live completely. I can have a deep relationship. I can have deep commitment. I can even marry the land and the river and have deep devotion and relationship to the land and the people. Um, and this is not where I came from, right? And I still have this relationship to my ancestral land and I live in between within myself and in my house where there's like two languages spoken and now three different cultures between all the people live in the house, right? And, and, and all these different pieces. And this idea of them, um, how am I going to be in relationship to those things? Right? And so I'm really curious about whether you taught about how in your life, um, how, you know, and then in a way I'm thinking about like how disabled folks also have this choice. Then how do I get to be in relationship with gender, right? For example, as somebody who presents more masculine, often there is an expectation that, uh, because of, and we have a masculinity and gender norms and the kind of dominant culture, they'll be strong. That I won't show my feelings in a certain way, right? Which might also be different from expectations of when I go visit my family in Italy. Uh, and even then different regional expectations. Um, and so I get to negotiate how do I want to be in relationship to those expectations with my disabled body that, that cannot perform certain expectations. Right. And so there's this almost this spaciousness but also ongoing negotiation, um, and then you know, this kind of outsider insider thing that happens and this, this, um, so yeah, how, how are you dancing that dance? So I have a sense in my body of I'm dancing that dance and lots of different ways and I'm very aware about my dance changes depending on where I am, like literally like how I negotiate stays and relationship and my body, like in Sicily you're in Rome or like here where I live, like how would that change us and how that's changed over time and now that's being such a fluid ever shifting dance. So yes, I was curious about your dance, but like disability and gender and age and race, ethnicity and self care and kind of all of those things we'll be talking about if you want to share anything about that.

Naomi: 28:10

Yeah, that's such a good question. The first word that comes to my head is tension, like living in a lot of tension all the time. Sort of like a, you know, it's like you're alert, you're like, okay, this is happening. And it's exhausting, you know, it's like kind of stretched like all the time, you know, I think that there's also these different. One of the things I feel like I've really had to do, and I'll take this from like a self care perspective because I actually like write some about this. It's like for me to prepare to be in space with people, I actually have to prepare to be in space with people which is like exhausting and so on. I feel like some days I, semi resent it. Like, seriously, it takes a lot of energy just to like exist in this world. Jesus, you know, and you know, it's like if I want to enter in, let's say with my family or you know, cultural space as a disabled person, especially in Latino culture or Latinex culture, there's such intensive, um, expectations and like scripts of how you're supposed to be disabled in that space. Um, and it is very much like, oh, you can be here, but you're not going to necessarily be included, like people aren't going to make an effort to talk to you to interact with you, but like you being there as fine, which is often different in like to me, um, I would say dominant culture spaces, white spaces where it's like, I don't know if it's okay for you to be here but you're here and so, you know, maybe I'll interact with you or I might be more open to having a conversation with you. It's one, it's been just a years of trial and error of like what the hell is happening when I'm in this space and understanding that on some level. And then it's like, okay, how do I then prepare myself, my heart, my spirit when I enter into spaces to hopefully be okay. You know? And oftentimes it's like I can't control other people. I can't control these like social norms or how people come at me and that sucks. Like I'm really excited for the day where I might be benevolent dictator of the world change everything. You know? It's like if I can only shift myself and my own experience, it's like, how do I, okay, I engage with people. Maybe I find somebody who I'm really interested in talking to or who's willing to like have a conversation that you know is around a topic I'm interested in or if I'm not, it's like, okay, well how can I take some space in the small mind? Can I go outside, can I look at the stars? Can I like, go sit next to a plant and just interact with this plant and be like, Oh, look at these beautiful leaves or flowers or thorns that are on this plant. Like for me, it's like broadening my world to not just be people but to also include place and other things that can be available to be comfortable incomfort with instead of intention with. So it's like entering spaces of, okay, this is going to be tension and there's also going to be things that I can be in comfort with that probably aren't going to be human. So that's, that's how I would answer that. I guess.

Alex: 31:39

I love that answer that. Yeah. I was like getting teary listening to you talk about this and really kind of really noticing how much that resonates for me of like that paradox of holding both tension and comfort when we'll live in this kind of liminal spaces and I think that is a lot of what is to be found in crip wisdom them as well is that paradox of being able to be present in both and, and I think the ability to be present to resistance and hope because of the ability of being present to despair and pain also. Right? Like, and just kind of embracing it all in kind of what do we pay attention. Like I love what you said about how do I prepare my heart to address certain spaces, right. That intentionality of that. Um, and the Labor of that, like you said, it's exhausting.

Naomi: 32:29

Oh yes. That's, that Labor is real. That's something we never talked to each other about. I mean, you and I could seriously have a conversation about doing that Labor, right? Yes. Have you had a conversation with a friend about that? I don't know if I have only with,only disabled folks right. It's like all

Alex: 32:47

And that almost talks about access, intimacy and kind of a few months ago I was with a newer friend who also has disabilities and we got super excited talking about access intimacy that can be like bonding and immediate when somebody sees like without having to explain or talk even just like your access need in the space and the response to that and is aware of that and is connected that and it's just all the labor, right? Because it is so much labor that so many people are not aware of all the time. Yes. And, and then of course the lip, yes. And then how that works. So some terms of intersections and I don't leave a lake suddenly.

Naomi: 33:31

I'm sure your listeners right now are like, yes. Like let me raise my hand. Collective conversation about all the labor.

Alex: 33:42

Oh well I could just keep talking and talking about this topics and also want to be really respectful of the free labor of love that is to be interviewed for this podcast. So I'm gonna just ask you if there's anything we haven't talked about that you were really super keen to mention or talk about them over looked or anything like that. or

Naomi: 34:07

I just want it to be very clear. So we've been talking some about the anthology, theat Alice Wong collected a bunch of amazing writers and it's called resistance in hope and that talks about perspective in tools people have found for kind of onslaught of distress is basically kind of what I would name it and also how to find hope and, and, uh, just comfort maybe even in, in this, in this place. And then the second book we're talking about was the book that I came out with this year called"Sustaining Spirit: Self care for Social Justice, which to me is my offering to the world to support folks to explore self care deeper and all the different types of self care and to develop support systems that aren't just people, um, in terms of a thriving hopefully. Because that's my ultimate goal is like I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. Which that's kind of gimmicky, but it's so true. It's like also like please let that be my life. Um, so those were the only things that I, I was just wanting to make very clear because the anthology is incredible and I'm really excited about sharing the book with the world.

Alex: 35:20

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, I'm going to kind of make sure I reiterate that once more, that there is an amazing anthology coming out October 2018 called"Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People" crip wisdom for the people that's edited by Alice Wong. We've also mentioned kind of, um, Alice's Disability Visibility Project. They're kind of, you can find that on Patreon. There's a website, disabilityvisibilityproject.com. You can follow the project on twitter at@disvisability. Um, I really encourage you to check that out. And then we've also talked about Naomi Ortiz's books,"Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" and if you want to kind of, um, book Naomi for a speaking Gig or a workshop or just kinda want to find out more about her amazing work you can look at her website, which is naomiortiz.com. And you can follow her on twitter at@thinkfreestyle and find her on Instagram at@NaomiOrtizWriterArtist, if I missed any ways in which our listeners can find you and find your book. And also, um, you know, find all that are wonderful things we've been talking about.

Naomi: 36:36

No, I think your career is so great. And I, one of the things I'm excited about doing actually, it's potentially not potentially this is happening, um, some online book groups where I want to do basically kind of like workshops around the book with folks online using zoom or whatever. Uh, so gap. So you can find info on that on my website too.

Alex: 36:56

Good. I, I'm going to go and look that up because I definitely want to join that. This, that's an amazing way to kind of go through the book and the. Yeah, the timing is just being exquisite because my writing partner and Meg-John Barker and I are also working on a self care workbook, um, because they'd done a self care zine and then our publisher liked this. So it's like how amazing it is that we get to talk about self care over time. So I'm going to be in that book club probably.

Naomi: 37:22

That's incredible. I'm excited to hear about that.

Alex: 37:25

I was like, well, we could talk for a long time. I've been feeling well for now. I'm kind of, we're gonna close this episode, but listeners I really encourage you to check out the anthology and Naomi's book, and of course, if you want to find out more about gender as ever, you can also check out my book,"How to Understand Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are", and thank you so much for listening. And until next time, please take beautiful care of yourself. Thank you.