I like to say I started yoga in the womb, when my mom was pregnant with me. She exposed me to meditation and chanting, and I took on yoga as a physical practice about 13 years ago. Over the course of a few years, it became refuge that was part of me. When the world was busy, it was a place I could go to slow down, be in my body and feel my breath.

Growing up was wild and difficult as I had a bit of an unstable upbringing. I've long suffered from depression and anxiety, and I used to experience a lot of self loathing, dysphoria and dysmorphia. Although my mom raised me to try to be nice to myself, I would hear mixed messages about how, "it's okay to eat food to self-comfort, but I should hate my body a little if I'm fat” and how “being fat is not really okay, or acceptable or worthy of love”.

With yoga, I able to transcend beyond these ideas by realizing that I am inherently worthy, period. I am worthy of love. I belong naturally. I am worthy because I exist. I belong because I exist.

I started to understand that I'm not my mind and I don't have to be attached to it. I got this greater level of faith and trust in myself and in the world and God, that enabled me to work through transitioning, because I didn't know I could be trans.

Yoga has empowered by giving me a greater sense of agency over my body and my lived experience. I can self-determine who I am, and I feel that is inherent to transness. Despite my trauma, or things I've overcome, experienced, or I'm still working through, I can always choose to have that agency to self-determine.

I am who I say I am, regardless of what society thinks I am or who my parents and doctors thought I was. And that is at the heart of yoga.

How can we honor the grief and labor of transitioning?

I was on a five day silent meditation retreat a few months ago, talking about the intersection of healing and social justice or justice. We talked a lot about ancestors, spirit guides, the unseen world and grief.

I don't think the trans community talks about these things enough. I know a lot of people have religious trauma and that's valid. I'm lucky I don't. But one thing in particular that I’m thinking about is the grief of transitioning and how we have to honor that more.

Top surgery was a gift and I don't regret that. But I also have grief around my transition. I don't exactly know what the grief is about. But it's okay if folks are grieving about their transition. I want to support our community and to hold space for grief. Whether your family wasn't supportive or financial means are difficult to access – there’s a lot of labor we put into the process of transitioning, that goes unseen and unrecognized by cis folks who don't experience it.

We're out here just crowdsourcing, thousands of dollars for surgeries. We are creative geniuses, we are so entrepreneurial, and badass. How can we honor that for ourselves? How can we honor the hurt and trauma of how difficult it is to have a medical system, where you have to fundraise for a surgery because they consider it elective? Why do we have to get a cis person to sign off on the fact that ‘yes, I'm trans and this is a necessary surgery’?

I'm beginning to do ancestor work, and I realized that there have been people before who've done this, and we can rely on them. We can call on them for support.

We need to remember that we're doing this for the people who come after us. We're paving ways for people to exist in ways that maybe didn't exist before. Our labor and our ancestors' labor is a privilege and responsibility we have to each other to continue working towards our collective liberation.

I can access joy because I am joy itself

I've been reflecting a lot on top surgery, and I literally think that getting top surgery saved my life. I was just so unhappy with the dysphoria around my chest, and I didn't even realize it for so long. And once I did, it was a crisis, and it was urgent. I had to get these off now.

I couldn't articulate that to anyone, it just had to happen. I didn't even tell people like my dad until afterwards because I didn't know how to talk about it. I've never talked to my dad about my breasts before, so why would I talk to him about them now?

But being able to go shirtless now, and just not having to deal with that part of the body anymore, has been a literal heart-opening experience. I'm just so grateful to have had access to that surgery.

I feel like my transness and my yoga practice are so related. Yoga is an expansive practice that helped me realize that there's so much more beyond our physical bodies, through this concept of how "I am not my body."

I’ve understood that I can access joy because I am joy itself, and that I am love, we are love. My mind can have thoughts and fluctuations, and I can be distracted with different thoughts, but at the end of the day, I can remember that I am not these thoughts. I'm able to access the joy and relief, and I’m able to be present in the moment, even if I'm crying or working through grief. I can hold multiple truths at once.

I'm a very empathic person, sensitive, and at times, I used to get really, really overwhelmed by my emotions, and I didn't know how to just be present, and not get consumed with my emotions. Yoga has helped me realize that I'm not my emotions. It gave me the ability to be the observer – I can watch myself having these experiences, but not be fully in them. I was able to access that agency and found spaciousness, that made me realize, "Oh, my God, I'm not just depression? I can enjoy this moment."

Transness is probably more than a one lifetime thing

If I could travel back in time, I would tell my younger self:

You can be trans and you will survive, and you will be safe and you'll be held in more community than you ever imagined possible. You will find community in literally all corners of the world.

It's okay, if you're afraid. I want to say don't be afraid, don't fear, but you can have your emotions. All your emotions are valid, and you'll be okay. We'll be okay and you're supported.

It's okay if you don't know who you are. It'll take you time to figure that out. It might be your whole life, it might be this whole lifetime. Transness is probably more than a one lifetime thing. It might be more than your life's work, all your lives work. I don't know -- was I trans in a past life?

You're loved, and you're not alone. You've never been alone and you'll never be alone. Ask for help, lean on your community. Even if you don't know who they are, just learn to ask for help. Even when it's scary to receive help, be open to receiving the help. And it will come.