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Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
Welcome or welcome back to Your Art Is A Spell.
Today I am thrilled to welcome a very special
guest, Eli. Known widely as The Gender Doula.
Eli is a visionary in non-clinical full
spectrum transition care, holding a PhD focused on
transgender medicine and history alongside formal
doula training. In this episode, we dive deep into
his practice, unpack what it truly means to hold
sacred space as a gender doula, and explore how
people can use gender exploration as an expansive
liberatory tool. Plus, Eli joins us with an
exciting announcement you will not want to miss.
Settle in, open your hearts, and let's get into
the magic. Well, I am so happy today to have Eli,
The Gender Doula, on the Your Art is a Spell
podcast. It is such a gift and an honor for
you to join us today and to be sharing about
some incredible, incredible news that you have
to share with us. But before we get into that,
I would love for you to just introduce yourself,
share a little bit about who you are and also if
you want to share what being a gender doula means
for you. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so thrilled
to be here. It's always so lovely to talk to you.
And so I'm Eli. I am The Gender Doula. That's my
sort of professional persona name and business I
guess also. And in terms of what being a gender
doula is, I find so I've been doing this work
since January of 2020. So just under 7 years.
And part of the challenge of this work is that
I was sort of simultaneously tasked with doing
this work while also explaining to people what
it was. Because before I started doing it, there
really wasn't anyone who was calling themselves a
gender doula. And so a gender doula, at least the
way that I have defined it and practice it, is a
person who supports folks through questioning,
exploring or transitioning their gender. And
also I support family members, loved ones, lovers,
and also just people who are curious or interested
in gender and maybe don't even necessarily want
to transition or change anything, but they maybe
sense that there are ways that they could express
their gender that would be even more authentic.
And so I, you know, I work with everyone and
and I provide a a full spectrum type of support
for all these different needs and life states.
And that's the practice that I've developed for
myself. It sounds radically inclusive and so open
and so needed too cuz I know so many people in
general like question gender and especially living
within the society that we live in that has such
prescribed rigid gender norms. It makes so much
sense that there is a space that is so needed
where we can have these types of conversations.
And I'm curious like how do you work with folks?
Is it like one-on-one? Do you work with couples?
Like like how does it look like when folks connect
with you and work with you? That's a really good
question. I do work with folks one-on-one. I work
with Sometimes folks will have their parents
or partners come and have a session with me.
Sometimes that's a session where we're all meeting
together. cuz sometimes it's a session where I'm
just meeting with the loved one. I also do
workshops and classes. I have a breath work
circle that I do every month. And I'm trying to
think if there's anything that I'm missing. Well,
I mean, I also have evergreen resources that
folks can download and I have a newsletter.
And in my newsletter once a month, I do a feature
called Ask the Gender Doula. And so anybody can
submit a question and I answer usually four
or five questions a month on whatever topics
people have questions about. And so that's
another way that I support folks and offer
resources. Wonderful. I'm wondering if it feels
okay to share a little bit about your own journey
with gender and how you ended up deciding that
this is like a role that you wanted to inhabit
and support other folks around. Totally. Yeah, it
was very unexpected. So my background is actually
in academia. I well before even academia, I was
sort of in the world of wage work and you know
I did all kinds of like retail and just kind
of scrapping and like you know trying to get
by and at some point I decided I was going to try
to go back to school and at the time I was very
embroiled in my own gender exploration. Um and
it was not going well. I had a lot of imposter
syndrome. I had a lot of just like just really
challenging trauma background and things like
that. And I've always been a person who does well
in school. It that skill set has always worked for
me. And so I went back to school and I decided
that if I couldn't figure out this gender thing,
I might as well like learn about it. And you know,
like on the one hand, you can learn all day about
gender theory and gender everything and it will
not teach you about your gender. And so that is a
thing that I had to learn the hard way. Yeah. But
I did learn a lot, you know, and so I went back to
school. I got my degree in gender studies and LGBT
studies at UCLA. And I had this sort of lifelong
dream. I wanted to become a professor. And so I
really excelled at my undergraduate. and I decided
to go to grad school and I went to Berkeley to
get my PhD in jurisprudence and social policy
um which is the interdisciplinary study of law
and my main research was about trans legal and
medical history and like sort of policy and so by
this time I had transition medically and legally
and I was you know like I I I understood my
gender a lot better but I kind of had this notion
of myself as like I'm going to do research.
I'm going to generate research that really
helps create better policy for trans people.
My goal was then and actually is the same now,
which is to make the world a better place for
trans people. But because I had this skill set
that was very well suited to academics, I figured
that my way of making the world a better place for
trans people was to be a really good academic.
But when I got to grad school and I sort of like
it's that moment where you're sort of learning
how the sausage gets made, you know, and grad
school was very traumatizing and it was really
really hard on me and I was also having some very
very serious health issues because of how hard I
had pushed my body as an undergraduate. And so as
my body is kind of shutting down and I'm going
through this incredibly traumatic experience,
I started to seek different types of like healing
modalities and during that time I heard a podcast
with my tarot teacher and she was talking to a
birth doula named Erica Livingston and Erica was
like, "I believe that we need a doula for every
threshold of life." And so that's when I had this
like thunderclap moment of like, "Oh my god, we
need gender doulas." But I was applying to law
school. I was getting my PhD. I was completely
overwhelmed and I was like that great idea for
not me to do, right? And yet as I waited for my
law school acceptance, as I toiled away at my
second year of PhD, I just kept like getting this
message over and over again about gender doulas.
And it took me most of a year before I finally was
like, "Oh my god, I think that this is a calling."
And when that when I felt like that was confirmed
to me, I pivoted very quickly. And of like I don't
know it like I know from the outside it seemed
very very fast that all of a sudden I went from
being like I'm going to be a professor to like I'm
leaving academia. I'm going to be a gender doula.
From the inside it was like months and months and
months of like very intense suffering to get from
one point to the next. But when I did make that
choice, I determined how I wanted to sort of exit
one sphere and enter the other. So I did finish
my PhD and while I wrote my dissertation, I was
starting my business, but all that was happening
in the context of 2020. So in January 2020,
by that point, I was already doing my first round
of mentorship with the birth doulas so I could
learn the doula skills because I had all this
academic knowledge, but I didn't have the doula
skill set. So I was doing my mentorship for
that. I had anticipated that my practice would be
completely in person, very local to Los Angeles.
And then the first person who contacted me for
services lived across the country and I was like,
"Oh no, I don't have anyone to send this person to
because there was at that time there was one other
person I knew of who was doing this work and they
didn't live close to this person either." So I
pivoted to doing a more virtual experience and
I started building that out and then two months
later the world shut down and I was very grateful
that I'd already started thinking that way. So
that was kind of the origin story of The Gender
Doula. Wow. Thank you so much Eli for sharing all
that. I'm just really moved by how you had that
moment of you know things coming together. you
hearing this message around the need for support
around thresholds and you really hearing that
as like a maybe as the beginning of a calling,
right? And yet I could definitely understand why
it took so long for you to get to the place where
you could leave this well-worn academic path to
stepping into a path of the unknown, right? of you
know really as you said you maybe know one other
gender doula that exists and this calling yeah it
definitely brings up you know what a lot of folks
that I know listen to this podcast contend with
which is sometimes our calling does mean that
we have to forge something into existence or we
have to imagine something that is not there and
I really do feel like um in some ways like that
is where I see the intersection of like magic
and of kind of being creative and being able
to use that imagination or that vision to feel
something into existence before it's and so I just
want to reflect that back and commend you for that
courage. I know it wasn't easy as you said, but to
be able to do that and to follow something before
it was even an idea or before it was even concrete
and then to realize that you were going to be able
to show up to support so many folks cuz I see the
work that you do and how many people that you help
through the many ways that you show up virtually
and in person as well. It's it's incredible. Thank
you so much. Yeah, it's truly such a beautiful,
brilliant, fascinating honor to do the work that
I do. And you know, it's just been it's been very
interesting to build this because again, you know,
it's really been from the ground up. I've known
several people who've done similar work, you know,
people who call themselves gender doulas. And of
course, it's like each of us is doing our version
of it because there's no standard, which is fine.
Like we're building something new. But I will
say actually just before we recorded this, I had
my first class with my inaugural cohort of gender
doulas that I am training. And so I'm very excited
about that. In about a year, we'll have a little
crop of new gender doulas. And I'm very excited
about that. Oh my gosh, that is so heartwarming
to hear. And I think one of the things,
one of the many things I love about you and
your practice is that you bring such a holistic,
joyful, caring, inclusive energy to this work. And
you know, I heard you were saying earlier that you
had studied law and were thinking about like the
medical system. And I just have been really struck
by how much you don't talk about that in the
work that you do. So much of your work is around
like spirituality and meaning making and like
happiness. I feel like that to me is uh bringing
such a different message than what we normally
hear within mainstream media around transitions
or how folks navigate gender. Yeah, thank you for
bringing that up. I think that I'm sure that for
most people each each person has to have their own
journey with this. But I think that if folks could
look at my journey and learn from it, that would
be awesome because for me, I really went about as
hard as a person can go into understanding legal
and medical transition. I literally have a PhD,
right? So I spent like 15 years researching this,
you know, and like really digging and digging and
digging to try to understand why these systems
are the way that they are. Because there was
like a naive version of me that believed that
the way that we manage medical transition, the
way that we approach legal transition, that those
things were that way for a reason. Maybe even a
reasonable reason, you know, like I don't know if
I ever believed it was for a good reason, per se,
but like a reasonable. I was like, "Okay, surely
this stuff is all based on something reasonable."
The thing is, the more you look at it, the less
you can convince yourself of that. And what it
boils down to, like I really like went hard on
understanding at least the current western model
of transness as like sort of a medical or legal
situation, right? Because there's many other
cultures and models and and things like that,
right? And so, but I am a white person from the
United States, a so-called United States, and that
is the context that I have been steeped in. So
that's the context that I studied and what I came
to understand was that there's this history based
in I mean to put it very very simply and quickly
cis men usually cis-het men's understanding of what
gender differences were and gender expansiveness
all of that sort of like locked and loaded into
a medical model and then spat back to us as a
set of standards that we had to adhere to in
order to receive care And that's that's the whole
foundation of it. And so I was like, "Oh, this
sucks." And it's not based on anything reasonable,
right? There's like no intention behind it. It's
actually like really limiting and ignorant. Like
Exactly. It's not based on our real lives at all.
It's based on a misunderstanding of us then being
filtered back through us and then filtered back
from us to them. Right? Because the medical
providers would say, "This is what it means
to be trans." The trans people would be like,
"Okay, guys, I got the list. This is what we have
to tell them to get our hormones." And then they
would tell that back to the medical professionals
to get their hormones or surgeries or whatever.
And then the medical professionals would be like,
"Look how good we are. All of our patients say
the same thing. That's our list that we published
in a book that obviously they all bought or like
somebody bought a copy and circulated it through
the community, right?" Like, right? it. So,
it just created this echo chamber of us doing
what we had to do to survive, which they took to
be evidence of their superiority and accuracy.
All of it was just silly. So, what came to me or
like what I I guess what I came to was like what
are we actually doing? Like if we're exploring
our gender, what's actually happening? You know,
like what's actually going on? Not somebody else's
model, not what we have to do to get our hormones.
not the thing I tell the doctor what's happening
within us between us among us right so my approach
being more based in like one of the things that I
really base a lot of my approach in is desire as a
north star and desire as a threshold right so like
I the threshold for transition is not dysphoria
it's not I don't want to be in this body it's not
I don't like this body or I hate this body or I'm
in the wrong body it's not that that's not the
threshold. The threshold is I want something else.
That's it. And that's true. Dysphoria is present
for some and maybe even for many. I certainly have
experienced that. But it isn't the threshold. It's
not the standard of what makes someone trans or
what motivates transition. Because if we base our
life choices on running away from something that
feels bad, that can only take us so far. Whereas
if we base our choices on moving toward what is
resonant, what feels good, where our desire
takes us, right? I feel like that just takes
us further across every part of life. So when I
sort of landed on that and applied it to gender,
that's where I generated my approach from like
we have to look at where is my desire leading me,
what feels good, what feels resonant, what helps
me feel peaceful or authentic or what have you.
And so I think that's the reason why my approach
is like so different is just from that journey.
I'm like getting chills just hearing everything
you're sharing. It's so profound to, you know,
move away from this really limiting system that
really lacks imagination, lacks connection to the
actual people, the communities that are needing
this type of support and also really limits the
ways that folks can relate to themselves, right?
and what you're bringing in is so generative of
leaning into desire into what you want and
into becoming, right? Or into possibility
like that is so transformative. And I feel
like this leads a little bit into what I'm
hoping that we can maybe spend the rest of the
podcast talking about, which is the wonderful
news that we're going to be sharing about this
new project that you're bringing into the world.
And I'd love for you to introduce what you're
going to be sharing really soon, right? Yeah. So,
I'm going to reach for it. This is my book
that's coming out. Gender Rituals. Yes. I
have my advanced copy. Oh my gosh. I'm assuming
it'll be out by the time this airs cuz it comes
out on August 25th, which is just a few days from
today. Yeah. So, this book, Gender Rituals, I have
been working on it for a couple of years. This
entire book has been so just channeled through
the Transcestors. I have always wanted to publish
a book, actually several books. I always say I
have like five or six like spinning my head at any
given moment. But this book I really felt like,
okay, this is the first book. And part of the
thing actually that inspired that is that I wrote
a blog post on my website talking about gender
rituals. And it was not a complex blog post at
all. It was pretty short. And what I noticed was
on my website analytics every single month it was
the most popular page on my website by far. And I
was like like people want this. They're hungry for
it. They need it. And I was waffling on whether
or not I should try to write the book. And like
I think it was like the day or something that like
that morning I've been asking myself like should I
write this book? an email landed in my inbox from
this person being like, "Hey, I've been meaning
to email you for over a year that like, I used
your blog post to help my friend design a gender
ritual and it was so impactful and amazing." And
I was like, "So, you've been meaning to send this
for over a year and it lands on the day that
I ask, is this the book that I need to write?"
So, that's where we started. And I
started writing a a book proposal,
which I'd never done before. This is my first
book. I've been publishing other people's books,
but I haven't written my own. And so, speaking
of ritual, I went out to Joshua Tree. I went out
with one of my dearest friends in the whole
world, Bonnie. We both had writing projects
we were working on. And every morning, we would
have breakfast together. We would spend the day
writing. We would eat dinner together. We would
sit in the hot tub and watch the sunset, you know,
go to bed, rinse and repeat. And in I think
four days, I wrote like a 30,000 word proposal.
Wow. Just like knocked it out because it just
flowed and that's how this whole book was. It
just flowed. Like don't get me wrong, it was hard
work, but it was definitely the Transcestors were
really like pushing this book out through me and
I felt that as I wrote it. And after I finished
that proposal, I was kind of like sending it
around to people to get edits and you know,
I wasn't 100% sure what my next move was.
And then a trans editor from my publisher
reached out to me and was like, "Hey, I love
your work. Do you have anything that you'd be
interested in publishing?" And I was like,
"Well, I have this little book proposal."
And so I sent it to them and then they were very
interested and they were like, "This is very up
our alley. They gave me advice. They helped me
polish it." And then sort of late last year,
I submitted it for real for real. Sorry, late
2024. And then anyways, we got it all set up
in 2025 for it to come out this month. And so that
has been the journey. It was I mean for publishing
that's very quick. Yeah. And you know, I wrote
my heart out and I'm really proud of it. I got
to read the audio book. So folks order the audio
book, they'll hear it in my voice, which I'm very
proud of. It was my first time doing that as well.
So yeah. Wow. So much magic behind this book.
Yes. So much synchronicity and so many moments of
just getting affirmation and validation from your
community and from the universe that this is
really meant to exist and be in the world. And
curious what has led you to, you know, aside from
it being popular on your blog? Like I'm curious
like what gender rituals mean for you or how you
would even define a gender ritual for folks who
might, you know, be curious about what it means.
Yeah, that's such a good question. So in the book,
the way that I've laid it out is that the first
half of the book is just all about ritual and I'm
a Taurus also Capricorn moon and Mars. So I'm very
earthy and I am not a person who will just spit
out a concept and then let you figure it out.
Like I'm going to give you a concrete example,
you know, like that is how I operate. And so
in the first the whole first half of this book
is like what is ritual and how do you do it and
it's just skills. So really the first half of this
book anybody you know at all could really benefit
from for sure because I talk about like how do you
uh sort of craft a ritual to suit you? How do
you you know make it timing wise, you know,
something that works for you? How do you use these
different skills? What's energetic hygiene? You
know, kind of just like a basic overview of like
these foundational ritual building skills. And
then the second half of the book is just tons and
tons of rituals. that I've written that I invite
people to use as written or to tweak and you know
of course I've given all the instructions on how
to do so in the beginning of the book right
so that's the basic structure and part of the
reason that I set it up that way is because you
know pretty early on in my journey as a gender
doula I realized that ritual was missing from most
people's transitions and that it was really really
vital and so I think if I'm recalling correctly
where This started for me was my first client who
had a lot of anxiety about starting HRT. And I
realized that if we put a ritual around starting
HRT, it helped them move into that process more
smoothly. And so the idea was if you are scared
to start HRT, you can start off by just holding
the hormones in your hand and asking your body,
is this okay? So there's like a consent ritual
that you can do with those hormones. And what
happens is instead of it feeling like this huge
scary thing that you're imposing on yourself,
it starts to feel like a collaboration, which is
what it is, you know, between your agency, your
will, and your body, right? And so that was kind
of where it started. And then also clients who had
anxiety around things like doing shots, you know,
if you put a ritual around it, that helps. If you
have anxiety around surgery, if you put a ritual
around it, that helps. If you are moving into
gender transition and you're like, "Okay, what do
I do with all of the me that existed before this
moment?" That's for ritual, right? And so there
was just endless moments in transition and gender
exploration and all of it that were just needed to
be held in ritual. Like if doula work is the work
of holding someone through a threshold, thresholds
are literally for ritual, right? And we as humans,
you know, have evolved for that to be how we
hold ourselves through these intense moments.
But we live in a culture where that's no longer
honored or or done or or no one's trained in
that. And like again in modern western culture,
obviously there's many many cultures that do have
robust rituals for various thresholds. Um, but
modern western culture, especially white folks,
just have been completely cut off from that.
And, you know, you see the the fruit of that
all over the place. So, I think that understanding
that there's all these points where ritual is so
needed and so profound and that we can do that
with each other or for ourselves. That really
helped me see that this was like a really big
need. And then the popularity of the blog post
just confirmed it. Yeah, thank you for sharing
that. This really makes me, you know, connect,
you know, what you're sharing around thresholds
and the work that you do with folks and, you know,
you witnessing the power of ritual to contain
and hold and help folks, you know, move into
these different stages or phases of their lives.
And yeah, I'm just, you know, sitting with how
you're offering both a container for individuals
and also for people to do this together too. And
I'm wondering if you have any reflections or
thoughts about like community ritual or um you
know maybe if there's a difference or if you or if
you have any thoughts on individual versus doing
ritual with others. Yeah, that's a great question.
There is a section in the book where I talk about
how to make these types of choices on do you want
a ritual to be just you? Do you want it to be you
and one trusted person or a few trusted people?
Do you want it to be held by an officiant? Do you
want it to be done in community? These are all
part of the like how do you customize, you know?
And I think that some of the rituals around gender
can feel so tender and so vulnerable that people
may not be able to even tolerate having someone
else involved other than themselves, you know,
whereas other rituals really benefit from being
communal. One in particular that comes to mind,
there's a ritual in the book, and this is a
ritual I've done in person um a few times,
which is a name and or pronoun change
ritual. And there's a version of this in the
book that's meant to be done alone or like with
one other person, but there's a version that's
meant to be done in community and preferably with
an officiant. And part of that ritual is literally
having your guests speak a phrase out loud to
you in front of everyone. And the phrase is,
I have always appreciated, and then fill in the
blank something about you that they've always
appreciated. So, I've always appreciated how
kind you are to the people that you care about.
And I'm looking forward to seeing how your new
name carries that into the future. Right. So,
you have this formula. Yeah. And each personalizes
it to them and to their relationship with you.
And what this does is it allows you to receive
these very specific reflections of yourself from
your community. And it allows the people in your
community to verbally say your new name out loud
in front of everyone. And that combination is so
supportive both to the person who's changing their
name, but also to the community because it's not
easy to learn a new way to call someone. You know,
you're going to stumble if you're really used to
another name. It's not always simple to switch
over, right? But this allows you to have some
accountability for that process and practice it
and affirm your loved one. And I just think it's
such a beautiful way of using the communal aspect
to really reinforce the process. Yeah. And I also
see it as a way of like, you know, building this
bridge that honors your relationship, your, you
know, past with this person and also is honoring
this present and future, too. And I just really
struck and sitting with how sacred this all is
and how intentional and precious and how different
this feels, you know, with where we are in terms
of like mainstream narratives and culture around
how trans folks are being talked about or how
gender is being talked about. And I'm wondering
what your hope is with your book coming out at
this very specific moment that we're living in
right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. I
think that really, especially as things have
ramped up in terms of the backlash over the
last few years, the more that's happened, the
less I've paid attention to it. And so, I really
decided quite some years back that I don't care
what cis people have to say about gender basically
at all. I certainly don't care what they have to
say about trans people. And so, I just don't pay
attention. Like, I know that things are bad. I
don't need to read every headline to know that,
you know, but I'm here for my people. And so
I don't really make content about any of the
stuff going on and I don't really speak to it
because what I make content about and what I
speak to is how do we resource ourselves? How do
we bolster ourselves? How do we move through this?
Right? Like that's where my focus remains. And
I think that that was a transcestor orienting me towards
this current moment. I think it protects me in
a lot of ways. Yeah. But the book coming out,
exactly when it's coming out, the conclusion of
this book, I talk about trans audacity and how
the world needs it. Yeah. And I talk about how
the book only exists because of trans audacity,
my audacity to write it, my editor's audacity to
solicit it, my publishers's audacity to publish it
despite everything, right? And I think that that's
really where I would ground this this question,
right? like what does it mean for this book to
come out right now? It's like if nothing else,
and I know this book will do so much more than
this, but if nothing else, I hope that the book
will support more trans audacity because trans
audacity is how [ __ ] gets done, right? It's how
things continue to surTHRIVE and move forward and um
how our communities continue to show up for each
other. And yeah, wow. I'm Yeah, I'm really really
really excited. I'm really happy that your book is
going to come out into the world and this is such
a beautiful gift that you're giving to so many
people and I know that this is for trans folks as
you said that this really the work that you do is
really geared towards the trans community and I
also am very keenly aware of how much cis people
gender non-conforming people gender expansive
people really can also use these tools and um this
type of reflection and support as well knowing
that yes So many of us have different narratives
or noise or pain or things that we could explore
around gender too. Absolutely. The first line of
the book is "if you're reading this, it was meant
for you." And that is always true with my work.
I'm consistently shocked by how many people that
I wouldn't assume need any sort of support with
their gender come to me and say, "I need support
with my gender." you know, and so now I' I've just
come to understand it like there no label is going
to tell you whether or not you need support with
gender exploration. Gender exploration really is
for everyone. Every single person benefits. There
is no one who doesn't benefit from it. And gender
exploration doesn't mean that you transition. It
means that you learn even more how to be authentic
in who you are and how to present that self to the
world in a way that feels resonant to you. So, I
hope that this book is one offering toward more
and more folks understanding that piece of it as
well. Yes, definitely. And I'm curious if you're
going to be doing uh like any public events or
any book tours or if there's anything you'd like
to share about this process that feels important
to name now that it's like so close to it coming
out into the world. Yeah, it's very limited on
events for this book right now, but I am doing
a weekend in Portland with SeaGrape Apothecary.
Um, and I'm doing a a group ritual there, which is
a name and pronoun release ritual, which is going
to be so gorgeous. And then I'm also doing a book
release party at Seagrape Apothecary. So, I'm really
excited about that. Oh, that sounds so lovely.
And if you have that information, I would love to
include that in the description of this video or
in the notes of the podcast. Um, and I'm curious,
what are some ways that folks can connect with
you and kind of learn more about you? I know,
as you said, you have evergreen information
out there and also if folks want to connect with
you to work with you one-on-one. Absolutely. So,
my website is thegenderdoula.com and I'm on
Instagram @thegenderdoula. I think the best
thing that you can do is get on my mailing list.
I might be a little biased, but I do have the Ask
the Gender Doula column that comes out monthly,
which is by far the most popular thing that I do,
I think, on that list because it is, you know,
people ask very robust, tender, deep questions,
and I give very robust, tender, deep answers.
And so, it is kind of a way to get a taste of
the support and the care that I hold people with
when we work together one-on-one. I do currently
I think I have a wait list for my one-on-one
work, but folks are welcome to email me and
get on that weight list and I can give them an
estimate for when we could potentially do an
intake and start that process. And like as I said,
I'm currently training the first ever certified
group of gender doulas, which is really exciting.
So, I'm hoping to have students that I can point
people to in the near future. It's a year-long
training, so it'll be a minute, but I'm really
excited about it still. I'm so so happy to know
that you are training a whole new generation of
folks to come out and support the community and I
really am someone who firmly believes that Gaia,
the divine, the universe is constantly gifting
us more and more trans people. And so I'm just
imagining that there are so many folks who are
going to benefit from the work that you're doing
and from this book that you're releasing out into
the world. And I'm really really grateful to you
for your time and for coming on to your art is a
spell. This book is such a potent potent spell and
has so much magic behind it and I cannot wait to
read it and I cannot wait to share about it with
all the wonderful folks that are connected to this
web. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be
here and to talk to you and I just appreciate your
support so much. This book means a lot to me and
it's so beautiful to hear it reflected through
you. Thank you. One of the things I'm really
sitting with after that incredible conversation
with Eli is just how different his vision is
for the trans experience. Normally we hear in
the mainstream media so much about dysphoria,
the medicalization of the trans experience, how
much it is about either suffering or even being
in relation to cis-ness. And I really hear that
for Eli, trans-ness is about creativity. It's a
generative space for us to tune into our desire,
what we are wanting to be or become. This is such
a different, more affirming narrative that really
expands the vision, the imagination for those of
us who are exploring gender, who are curious
about gender, who would like some support or
help with gender. One of the things that I didn't
really name during this conversation, but I ended
up speaking with Eli shortly after we stopped
recording was how grateful I feel to be a licensed
psychotherapist that is able to work with folks
that are gender non-conforming, gender expansive,
and that need letters of support as well as need a
space to connect with someone who understands the
complexity of gender and how many of us do not fit
in to the normative cis binary that's been created
for us to force ourselves into. And that many of
us could use a space to really get clear on what
feels good and affirming, energizing on where our
desire lies and what our desire is sharing with us
about who we are and who we are becoming. Now,
with all that said, I want to encourage you to
get a copy of this book. Connect with Eli. Their
posts on Instagram are such a deep and profound
resource. I see them as medicine. And I want to
invite you to go and connect with him there as
well as his newsletter. And I want to thank you
for taking the time to listen to this podcast
or watching this video on YouTube. Your support
allows us to continue to do the work here. And I
want to invite you if you are listening to your
art is a spell to join us over on Patreon. It is
free to sign up and you also have the option of
becoming a paid member to support this ongoing
project. Now, if you're interested in signing up
for my newsletter, you can go to mutant-magic.com
and subscribe there for free to become a part
of my own newsletter where I share updates. I
send out behindthe-scenes information and I share
ways that we can work together. Now, one of the
last things that I shared in my last video at the
end of the video as a little like Easter egg was
that I have officially started working with people
within the realm of creative consulting. I've been
doing it for some time because I've had countless
people reach out to me asking for this type of
support and I've decided to officially make it
an offering. You can go to my website to find out
more information about that. My artist website is
edgarfabianfrias.org where you can also go to
yourartisaspell.com and you will see a link there
under offerings to get more information about
art consulting. If you've made it all the way to
the end of this episode, I want to thank you for
listening and I want to remind you that your art
is a spell and it will change your life and the
world around us. Thank you so much for listening
to Your Art Is A Spell. Please support your art
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mutants and freaks, queer and trans babes.
We're all here to support each other and I'm
making this podcast to connect us all and to also
offer information that I wish I had known at the
beginning of my own career as a multi-passionate
artist. Sending much love to all of you through
this spell of a podcast. See you next week.