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0:00:00 - Morgan
Welcome to Queerly Forward, a podcast that explores queering, our healing through pleasure, holistic well-being and collective liberation. We are your hosts Bex Lips and Morgan Vanderpool, two queer neuro-spicy therapists and community builders, co-creating conversational containers for co-liberation. Let's dive in. 

0:00:27 - Bex
What does it mean to queer our healing? Endless possibilities. What does it mean to queer our healing? Letting wild nature lead? Come with your questions, come with your magic. Come, come, come, come. Let's get free Everybody. So we got some cool questions. The first question is kind of feels like a little bit of like our origin stories. I feel like names are really powerful, whether they're given or chosen. So the first question is what is the story of your name? You? 

0:01:29 - Morgan
want me to go first. 

0:01:30 - Bex
Go for it Yay. 

0:01:34 - Morgan
So this is the story of my name, adapted as I've learned it through my mom and then me getting to explore it as an adult. So my name is Morgan. That was the name that my mom chose for me and I, you know, I guess I could contribute my dad too, while Daniel, you know, sitting here in the present moment with my name, I am so, so grateful that my parents chose a gender inclusive name where I've got to keep my heart name as I've become more and more me. I'm like whoa, my little throat is getting all tight and shit. Oh, my heart's all excited about this. But when you asked this question, I was like thinking back to how I learned, how they picked it, and back in the 80s, before they did the kind of like detailed level of ultrasound where you could like tell the gender based off of somebody's private parts. They did heartbeat and when my heartbeat was tested by my mom's OBGYN, they thought they were having a boy. So I was supposed to be called Maxwell. 

Actually, I'm so grateful that I ended up with the name Morgan and both of my parents came from places that weren't by the sea and they moved to Santa Cruz where I grew up and the origin of my name has lots of different meanings that are all sea based, and so it's like sea, bright of the sea, like the circular nature of the sea, and it all ties back to like the you know kind of the aisles around, like where Welsh and Celtic origins come from. 

So, like my parents have shared quote unquote Irish ancestry, and they wanted to pick a name that like both attributed to like where we were living at the time, and I don't know, though, if my mom was actually like paying attention to like the legend of my name, and so, like, once I dove into my name a little bit as an adult, like it's been pretty cool to learn that, like my name has Celtic roots of the Morgan and she's the goddess of war, death and fate, whoa. So I, you know unbeknownst to that back deep, deep, deep meaning of my name my commitment to studying the impacts of global systems of violence and being of some sort of attending to like the fate of our bodies in relationship with those systems of violence. I'm like, okay, parents, my mom was like it means of the sea, and I was like I think there's a little bit more there. So that's a little bit about my name and I'm really really grateful for it. 

0:04:07 - Bex
That is epic. It suits you. It's a great name, thank you. 

0:04:12 - Morgan
And it's been fun. Like you know, I'm have had a lot of opportunities to live in Spanish speaking communities and being bilingual. But when I say my name, more often than not especially in loud spaces around folks that speaks primarily Spanish my name doesn't register. Very often it comes across as like oh my God, or like some other M name. I'm like no, definitely not, and so I've had to like explain my name by also like pairing it with the rum. I'm like no, come on, captain Morgan. 

And they're like ah, okay, yes, so it's also been a fun thing that has you know the power of the language and it has you know now bled into my drag name, which is Captain Morgasm. So you know it's all good, it's a good full circle. I love that, love that. I would love to know about your name. I don't know your name, story, bring it. 

0:05:05 - Bex
Yeah, my name has some interesting stories, so the name that I've been going by for the last probably eight years is Bex. That's BX, because names with X's are just cool. 

You know, my, my given name at birth is Rebecca. Rebecca Jennifer Lips is my name and apparently I was named after my great grandmother Rose, and I guess in the Jewish tradition or in some Jewish traditions, named after means you just take the first letter of the names. That's epic. So I'm like, yeah, I was named after my great grandma Rose and they're like then why is your name not Rose? And I'm like why are you asking? And I'm like I'm not asking questions, but turns out asking questions is a really big thing in Judaism, so it's actually appropriate, but anyway so. 

But I the only people who have ever called me Rebecca are like my grandma and my middle sister until like five years ago, and I was like can you stop telling me that I've been, I've gotten? I went by Becca for a really long period in my childhood. Actually, it was really funny when I was in kindergarten. One day I walked in and I just decided my name's Becky. Of course you did, and I was Becky for one year and then after, in the first grade, if anyone called me Becky I would like throw daggers at them with my eyes and like do you dare call me Becky? And to this day, if you call me Becky, I will. I ain't no Becky, okay, listen. 

I'm getting the daggers, y'all, I'm not a Becky okay, I swear, but the other piece that I wanted to share is around my last name, which is Lips with Two Peas, and my family's last name used to be Lips Hitch. You know variations on lip shits, you know, but it was. My grandfather changed it during World War II, or it became changed because it was like too long or something, so they like ended up like cutting it to lips, and I don't know where the extra P came from, but it's just like a weird, like interesting thing around, like assimilation, you know wild, and so I feel like a lot of my story is like unassimilating, and that's what like queerness is about for me is just like unentangling myself from the weirdness that was given to me. So I started going by Bex around the time that I moved to Seattle, which is almost 10 years ago, and I was going by that in my friend circles and in activist spaces, and then I was going by my other name in like academic spaces and I had this like weird fracturing of my identity where I was like I'm this person in this space, but I'm this person in this space, and then I have this before who the fuck am I? 

And I was out as non-binary at that time too, and I remember a couple of years ago, I made the decision to come out, quote unquote, as Bex and just start using that name with my family and at my place of work, and I don't know why, like I had such anxiety about it, but it was fine. I was like hey, call me this. And pretty much everyone in my life was like cool, cool, cool, cool, excellent. But basically my name just keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter. The other, the last cool story that I'll share about my name is that I have a pretty iconic rebel tattoo across my arm which actually contains my name it's Rebecca Lips, r-e-b-e-l. So that's like part of that, and then like it's like surrounded by the Aquarius waves. 

0:09:35 - Morgan
I was wondering what the zigzags were. Yeah, yes, yeah. 

0:09:40 - Bex
Yeah, so that's a little bit about my name. I love you. 

0:09:42 - Morgan
Yeah, aw May, ping pong on my last name. 

Oh yeah, I'm gonna transition to the second question yeah, so my last name is Vanderpool and I'm so grateful. I'm a double water sign, so I'm a Pisceson and a cancer rising, and so I've got my first name. That's like very water bound, and my last name is like of the water or like of the pool, from Dutch origin. So I've got, like you know, lots and lots of water. So much water, so much intuition, so much feeling. So just live it out. I'm just gonna keep living it out. Live out my full name. 

Hell yeah, I'm not giving up my last name ever again. Did it once for the user. 

0:10:25 - Bex
Oh yeah, I'm never giving up my last name. It's too good. I'm like, show me a better last name than Lips. Like just come on. Yeah, it's just very. I've really like come to embody it. I fucking love it. I love it. Yeah, we'll kind of speaking on lineage. That kind of brings us into our next question, very much so, which is what ancestors and teachers have brought you to where you are. I can go, yeah. So I mean I definitely wanna call in my, yeah, some of my ancestral lineages. I am Jewish on, oh god, technically on both sides, because Judaism is a. They trace your ancestry matrilineally like through your mother. 

So my mom's mom was raised Jewish, but she wasn't raised Jewish, but because her mom was Jewish, she didn't have to convert when she married my dad. It's the whole thing. Anyway, that's a side note. The shit you learn, yeah, the shit you learn, but yeah. So my great grandparents immigrated to the US in the early 1900s from like what is today like Russia, ukraine, and I guess I wanna call that lineage in around it's resiliency, it's perseverance in the face of persecution, and I think it's. 

I feel like some of my earliest lessons in social justice come from my Jewish lineage. Yeah, which is really special to me. And another important thing that ties into Judaism and queerness for me, as I mentioned this earlier, is Judaism is a religion in which it is not only appropriate but encouraged to ask questions why is this like this? Why is this like this? And there's always this like debate or disagreement, you know, or I'm like why is this like this? Well, it's like this. 

It's very like characteristic of like Jewish culture, but I feel like that really epitomizes like something that's really important for me about like curiosity and just like not taking things for granted and also inventing, or like new ways of being and new ways of thinking. And, yeah, some of the other teachers that I wanna call in are of Buddhist lineages. I started learning a lot from a variety of Eastern teachers and thinkers and very wise people. I wanna call in Tick-Not Han as one of my big teachers, especially the way that he talks about interbeing and the interconnectedness of all things and all phenomena, and another big, like teacher that for me has been impermanence, which is kind of like the fundamental nature of all things. 

They're impermanent. Nothing lasts forever. I it's another one of my favorite tattoos. I says this is impermanent. It was funny, cause people are always like tattoos are permanent. 

0:14:35 - Morgan
And. 

0:14:35 - Bex
I'm like nothing is permanent Anyway. Well, also teachers like Pema Chodron and Reverend Angel Keodo Williams, who co-wrote the book Radical Dharma, which is on race, love and liberation yeah, weaving in that really crucial dialogue to Buddhist theory and practice practice. 

A couple other teachers I wanna give honor to are Adrienne Marie Brown Ooh, not only is she the meme queen a more modern, more recent turn but, yeah, her writings and her activism have had a really profound impact on me. 

Emergent strategy pleasure activism, really Thinking about how we can be in movements for justice sustainably long-term, in a way that infuses joy, in a way that honors our grief, in a way that learns from the patterns that we see in nature. And then I also wanna call in Joanna Macy as one of my teachers as well. She's most well known for a body of work called the work that reconnects and she is an incredible Buddhist scholar, systems theory scholar, among many other things, environmental activist, and she weaves together kind of this understanding, this framework of our world and how it currently functions and what we need to do to be able to take action, to make change, while acknowledging where we are and feeling the grief of where we are and what has been lost, feeling everything that we feel and the lesson that if we feel grief, if we feel pain because of what is happening in the world and the level of ecological destruction, of cultural destruction, that's a sign that we are paying attention and that we are alive and it's not to be pathologized or fixed. 

We have to acknowledge it and feel it in community so that we can move through to the possibility of seeing something different and honoring, through our actions, creating lives that future beings will be able to enjoy. So yeah, those are a few of the lineages and teachers that live in my body, mind, heart. 

0:17:50 - Morgan
Meow, yes, and for all the silent nodding that you all know and get to hear over here, and the shared teachers that we hold. I'm just so grateful for the co-creation of what we've learned from them and what we get to bring to this podcast. So good, so good. No man, this question for me lit up, just like in a mass collection of brilliant beings that I've gotten to co-learn with my entire life. So so incredibly grateful. And as far as like individuals that pop to mind at first and I hope that we can continue to talk about our teachers and we will we will continue to talk about these wonderful humans that have just planted roots and seeds in us, that are continuing to flourish. 

But one of the non-human ones that first popped to mind was, and is, my puppy, loki. I got to live with Loki for nine years of my adulthood. To this day, she is the longest adult relationship that I have had, that I have gotten to co-habitate with, and Loki was a pit boxer mix that she rescued me and I rescued her at a time in our life where I needed deep companionship, and she taught me how to listen on a level of somatic attunement that radically set up a foundation for me to be able to be skilled enough for the body-based colibitory work that I am, dedicating my life to. The nuances that a pit bull can listen to from body to body is wild down to the angle of your ears, the space between your back teeth, the depth of your breath, the angle of your eyes, the movements of your shoulders. They're paying attention to every single hair on your body, trying to take cues on if things are gonna be okay or if they need to pack up with you. 

And she taught me what it meant to listen to that depth through sound, through sight, through smell, as best as I could with my own sensory system to be able to listen for the things that she knows. If I could anticipate them, she didn't need to. If she needed to anticipate them, then her hulk pit would sometimes come out and I didn't want her to have to get there right. So we had this really beautiful way of co-talking that I'm like I got you. I will listen as deeply as you are and be able to communicate with my body that you're okay and I got you, and that bond will forever be embedded in how I move through the world and I'm so, so grateful for her and that her spirit gets to run free completely without limits now, after such a life of like, embodied turmoil for her, so like. 

And she also taught me, in a way that I had an experience before as an individual, what it meant to walk through the world with a body that somebody would very overtly show you that they are threatened by it without taking the time to get to know you. So her walking through the world with a pit body started to get me more attuned to people's natural responses of feeling threatened, but we know, just based off of their, like, biological response. That has also helped me attune to people's defenses and how they play out in relationships in a way that I hadn't gotten to see mirrored back so so overtly. So huge teacher, I also wanna give a shout out to somebody that I've gotten to live with, like the people that have gotten to share home with me. Oh my gosh, you all are so fucking rad, but one of my sole people and one person that I call chosen family. Her name is Grace Towers. She and I met when we were 19 in college and I got to live with her as she was budding in her drag career, and Grace is an incredible Latinx drag activist in the San Francisco area and her tenacity and dedication to creatively cultivating community that is built around authenticity, connection, co-supporting how to show up both on like the stage and the streets for us and for our safety and for our wellness as queer and trans folks, is absolutely exquisite, and the depth of her roots and like the way she's beyond married to her craft is something that I think about Like if I got to dig deep on a day. I'm like be like Grace, be like Grace. So I hope all of you get to see her and meet her at some point in your life. I'm getting all like fluttery. This is wonderful. 

And then like another teacher that came to mind that has modeled what like long-term commitment to activism and systems change, has been somebody that I've been watching since about the same age, like my late teens, is Dolores Huerta, which is one of the co-founders of the United Farm Workers Union and Movement, and I got to meet her in person up here in Washington after decades of like watching her work and one of the things that resonates with me and I keep in my mind very often is just like somebody asked her like what helps you stay in the game this long. And she's like I laugh every day and I dance, and she's like my work and my family are not separate. The picket line is where we all show up together and those like three concepts put together as like a way of life of approaching longevity in collaborating work is something that I lean on very, very often. And how she's moved through the world and she's rocking 93 years of age this year. All things bless, all things bless. 

And then I wanted to bring in a shared teacher that you and I have, aaron Johnson, and, like his crew with Holistic Resistance, calling him Portia Bede, his wife Camila, like y'all are amazing, sister Lilia. Holistic Resistance is a BIPOC founded and co-led by the organization that is committed to the deep healing work to be able to create anti-racist community the grief work that's involved, the trauma restoration that's involved, the like technologies of song and earth building that are necessary for us to heal. And the first time I got to meet Aaron, the way that he looked into the crew that we were learning with, he planted the idea that, like to do anti-racist work, you have to like commit to relationships that are stronger than most marriages, and that has landed so deeply in my bones and the way that he moves authentically from that commitment and everybody in his close sphere moves at that level of commitment. Yeah, baseline teaching, I fucking love it. So thank you to the teachers we've gotten to put names to and those that we didn't get to yet. You'll continue to get woven into this talk. 

0:25:01 - Bex
So our last question how do you share your gifts freely, Sometimes for money? 

0:25:12 - Morgan
That is true Generously. I should say I love you, but also like yeah, what are your gifts and how do you share them? 

0:25:26 - Bex
You know, we do still live in capitalism and we gotta eat. 

0:25:28 - Morgan
We gotta pay rent. This is also true. 

0:25:31 - Bex
I hate it, but it's the reality that we live in. I feel like laughter is a big, big gift that you and I both share. 

0:25:48 - Morgan
I'm a quiet talker but a loud laughter Yep, yep. 

0:25:51 - Bex
I have a very distinctive laugh. I also have, like, very many different kinds of laughs. I have like my cackle, true, true. When I try to like, do it on the spot, it's ridiculous, but you'll hear it. I have many different kinds of laughs, but you can, like I've had people be like yeah, I know you're in a room, like I can hear you on the other side of a building Echo locate, Buy your laughs. There it is. 

0:26:19 - Morgan
Oh, my goodness. 

0:26:21 - Bex
What other gifts do you bring? 

0:26:24 - Morgan
Oh, man, I feel like one of my definitely one of my gifts is movement. 

Movement as a way of celebrating, as a way of being in ceremony, as a way of healing, as a way of playing I don't know if I already said that, you know as a way of creating relationships. 

Dance and movement are both something that I have saved my life so many times. Thank you to my parents for knowing that I've needed to move to be well and getting me into dance classes early, as you did, cause, yeah, being able to gift what my body has learned through dance and movement of all sorts, and the strength that movement has gifted me in being able to know how to trust myself and emulate that in relationships with folks. I love being able to give that. Something that I know that I also have a gift in is being able to verbally articulate some things that sometimes don't feel like they have words, and in being able to do so, make them real enough to pay attention to and engage with and understand when they have been unmentioned, un, what are they? What are the words that I want? Oh, this is funny that this is happening while I'm saying this. 

0:27:47 - Bex
I'm good at words. 

0:27:48 - Morgan
I'm good at words. What are words? Shit, they went away too many. But, yeah, being able to particularly as it shows up in co-creating healing practices with folks, like being able to describe what I'm witnessing in somebody's body or what I think I hear them saying, and being able to mirror that back in a really like succinct and potent way that can catalyze deeper connection and collaboration, like something I fucking love doing. 

0:28:11 - Bex
Hmm, probably makes you an excellent therapist. 

0:28:15 - Morgan
Yeah, I know, yeah, I know, and I also think I have the gift of like being able to create spaces where folks know that they can totally show up. 

Hmm like I show up, you know, as authentically and as right as where I'm at as possible, so that folks know that they can show up in that same way. And it's been one of the key tools and gifts I think that I've been able to bring to, like co-creating collective houses and the teams I've built, and like the friend groups that I've gotten to be a part of. And, yeah, I really love sharing that and I make a mean like oat latte, oat latte. It's the other gift that I like, know that I give myself and the people in my home every day when we wake up I'm gonna need to verify this information I'm happy to share Nice. 

Yeah, I love making food for folks. I would love to hear about your gifts and how you share them. I know you're not gonna get to all of them, and neither did I. I love you. 

0:29:17 - Bex
I got a few. One of my gifts that I have been shifting my relationship to, and in a lot of different ways throughout my life, is the gift of my voice. I have a powerful voice. Yeah, you do, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've been a singer for a really long time and I feel really grateful for, in the past few years, really changing my relationship to singing as more than just like I'm good at this thing to like being a part of the community, singing, movement and connecting people with their own voices and just being together in song with people, just recognizing the power of song, the power of singing for healing, for liberation, for self-expression. I do like lots of weird voices too. I make all kinds of fun sounds. 

0:30:19 - Morgan
All kinds of fun sounds. 

0:30:23 - Bex
But that's a part of just like another piece around, like I am a very expressive being. I love to creatively express myself in so many different ways through my voice, through my body, through other like artistic and creative mediums, through words, and I think that my ability to express myself so freely and authentically, inadvertently and sometimes more specifically, like, gives other people the permission to express themselves as well, and so that's a gift that I love to share. And see other people awaken to their own creative potential. That that shits me up. I love it. 

I love holding space, both just for individuals, like with my full attention, but also group spaces as a facilitator, with a blend of ritual, of reverence, of humor, of irreverence, of absurdity, of laughter and helping people connect through that. My silliness, I feel like, is a really important medicine that I carry, and I got this feedback recently Someone was sharing about my ability to hold really heavy and complex topics with levity and lightness and humor, while also honoring their gravity. I think that's definitely a gift I have is like I honor my deepest grief and I honor the fuck out of my joy. That's some powerful shit. So those are some of the gifts that I love to share. 

0:32:50 - Morgan
Yay, I love celebrating your gifts. 

0:32:52 - Bex
Yay, same Z's. 

0:32:54 - Morgan
It's real. 

0:32:56 - Bex
It's beautiful. 

0:32:57 - Morgan
Yep, we'll chase to all of the stories that we get to tell through our words, through our bodies, through the community. We're weaving with one another and our voices. Hmm, hmm, it's been a pleasure to share time with you today, boo. 

0:33:11 - Bex
Love you. 

0:33:11 - Morgan
I love you. 

0:33:15 - Bex
What does it mean to queer our healing? Endless possibilities. What does it mean to queer our healing? Letting wild nature lead. Come with your questions, come with your magic. Come, come, come, come, come. 

0:33:42 - Morgan
Thanks for listening to Queerly Forward. This podcast has been recorded and produced in collaboration with On Purpose 2. If you have questions, requests for topics or feedback about the show. 

0:33:56 - Bex
Reach for us via email at QueerlyForwardPod at gmailcom, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at Queerly Forward. 

0:34:07 - Morgan
Take care out there, queers. Thank you, thank you. 

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