Reflections on Perception, Fear, and Queerness
happy leo season homies
Hello beloved weirdos
I intended to start this newsletter with a lighthearted opening…
Something about Leo season and api (my cat) being a drama queen. But I find myself moved to talk about grief, and to acknowledge the murder of the brilliant and talented O’Shae Sibley.
I often associate the archetypal energy of Leo with the lion and with courage and bravery, but this week I am thinking about the juxtaposition of courage and fear.
People often reflect my courage back to me, but I don’t always see myself as courageous.
Likely because I am very in touch with my fear, and fear can be such a visceral emotion.
Fear tells us to hide, lie, and suppress. To do whatever we need to do to appease the threat, to avoid feeling discomfort, to slide under the radar, indistinguishable from everyone else.
And simultaneously, there is a human desire to be seen and celebrated. Witnessed in our unique and weird gifts. To let our freak flag fly.
Some of us have no desire to be seen or known, and some of us have no sense of the fear I am describing. I am blessed with a lot of both : I want to be seen and celebrated AND I experience heart-thumping fear around being perceived.
I have always had a complicated relationship with being perceived
It’s a funny thing, this desire to share and be seen in my gifts, while also feeling deep fear of being seen for who I truly am. A fear partially fueled by my own confusion over identity.
Intuitively knowing who I am, and simultaneously feeling the urgent need to alter, hide, or disguise my true self.
The two feelings and desires have lived in my mind as a dense knot, pulling me in opposing directions.
I can still remember witnessing these two desires in myself multiple times in my early 20s. Hearing a clear inner intuitive voice with guiding directions, but feeling like the things this voice was asking me to do were so outlandish that there was no way I could follow through, and wondering how the two would resolve.
Ultimately, I chose to run away. The voice pulling me away from my inner voice ( a combination of the well-meaning but fearful voice of my mother and the quiet, menacing voice of the conservative southern culture I grew up in ) grew softer.
with time, and less judgment, I was able to gently untangle my desires, explore other ways of being, build genuine community, and root in my personal power.
It is so easy to be motivated by fear
Even after I moved to LA and found my people, I continued to hide behind a mask of palatability until 2020.
Motivated by fear, it was easier to observe other people and mold my personality around their every need, than to stand in my truth.
I have come to understand this survival strategy of playing small as a trauma response known as appeasement.
While there are appropriate moments to utilize this survival strategy, living this way long-term can drain us of our health and well-being.
It is crucial that we stand in our truth and live our lives with presence and honesty. The absence of doing so strips our lives of meaning and prevents anyone from really knowing us.
I have spent many years not talking to my family about my gender identity. I am a South Asian person, and the expectation to come out to my family felt very white. I was content to hide and pretend, and my parents let me know over the years that they also preferred it this way.
When I turned 30 I decided I was too old to hide my true self, and so I took a courageous leap of faith and stopped all efforts to obscure my truth. To my surprise, it lifted more than just my gender identity to the surface, and led me and my parents to acknowledge histories of abuse and violence within our family.
In that conversation, we all broke a cycle together. I had always loved and resonated with the term cycle breaker, but it was my first experience of feeling deep energies lift, shift, and release.
Over the next six months I witnessed profound changes in my family, my body, and my spirit.
I have broken more cycles since then.
I thank God for allowing me to be a catalyst for positive change in this world. I am humbled by the devotion of my clients and the life-changing work we are able to do together.
Being able to disrupt harm is a life-changing skill, and it is this skill and these stories that have motivated me to create my course: New Cycles: A course for Self Accountability.
This course is the first in a series of three that will certify people in conflict navigation. I look forward to sharing my skills and gifts with aligned community.
If this is you, please join the waitlist! There are 11 spots left, so if you are seriously interested, I encourage you to join.
Grief is a part of love, not separate from it
I was listening to a great podcast today ( the podcast is vibe check, episode: Life has been lifing lately) , and one of the hosts, Sam Sanders says
Grief is a part of love, not separate from it
Lately, it feels like grief is everywhere. In the past, I don’t know if I had the courage or capacity to face it. Honestly, I still don’t think I do, but I’m leaning in to feeling more of it. Not running on sight. Learning to sit with my grief and breathe it in.
My heart weeps over O’Shae Sibley
According to them magazine:
O’Shea Sibley, a 28-year-old Black gay man and dancer, was killed at a Brooklyn gas station after a group of men confronted Sibley and his friends, who were playing Beyoncé and vogueing, according to the New York Times.
On Saturday evening, Sibley and his friends were dancing at the pump while listening to Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album when they were approached by a group who demanded they stop dancing, the Times reported.
Sibley and a friend, Otis Pena, responded to the aggressors, who had begun to use anti-gay slurs. Pena told the Times that he said, “Stop saying that. There is nothing wrong with being gay.” After some back and forth, one person pulled out a knife and stabbed Sibley while Pena tried to intervene.
“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” one friend who was present, Otis Pena, said in a Facebook video after the incident. “His name was O’Shae and you all killed him. You all murdered him right in front of me.”
Those who knew Sibley remembered his incredible dance prowess. Kemar Jewel, who met Sibley at an LGBTQ+ youth center 13 years ago, described him as “goofy” and “fun-loving” but very serious about his craft, often studying choreography until the early morning hours. “O’Shae was so well versed. He was great at tap, ballet, hip-hop,” Jewel told the Times. “He was an incredible visual learner. I’ve seen him watch someone do something twice and then just do it.” Jewel added that Sibley’s tastes and talents were eclectic and that he studied not only vogueing and hip hop, but also choreographers such as Martha Graham and Lester Horton.
Prior to moving to Brooklyn, Sibley was a member of Phildanco, the prestigious Philadelphia dance company. Aside from using his dance skills to create art, he also used it to advocate for social change.
“He was out at a lot of marches, a lot of protests,” Jewel told the Times. “He was excited to be outside on the front lines, using his body as a way of protest.”
Sibley was one of 11 siblings; his aunt, Tondra Sibley, remembered him dancing along to Missy Elliott videos from a young age.
“It was a senseless crime,” she told the Times. “O’Shae has always been a peacemaker. All he wanted to do was dance.”
On tik tok one of O’Shae’s fellow dancers posted this video of them dancing together.
Here are some videos of protests that occurred in O’Shae’s honor. the joy, the power, the courage cannot be overstated.
The speaker in the above video is the legendary Qween Jean, who the NYPD arrested on June 1st of this year for leading a Trans Revolution riot.
What happened to O’Shae was an act of senseless violence that wounds all of us. As Qween Jean says :
Black Trans Matters
Black Non-Binary Matters
We are here today filled with sorrow, but as we leave today with an understanding, a deeper connection, a commitment to our liberation, a commitment to each other.
O’shae Sibley was one of us.
…
We can no longer remain quiet. If you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us
In the face of violence and oppression that seeks to control and suppress us, violence that activates in the face of dancing, we have to choose each other.
We have to show up for each other, give a fuck about each other. Talk to each other about concerning behaviors, create space for each other, validate and challenge each other.
A beloved community member needs our support.
My friends Samar and Mango are iconic rule breakers that make me feel hopeful for the future. They live their lives in a way that I have always wanted to , but often lack the courage to.
If you don’t know about their work, get on their level!
There are so many moments of living in this cruel oppressive world where I feel trapped and powerless, and then I am reminded of Samar and Mango and I feel my chest open. I am reminded of my choices, and I feel hope stir in my body.
It is so crucial that we breathe life, support, and love into each other. I ask you to please breathe some life into Mango and their mama by donating and sharing their fundraiser with your networks : tinyurl.com/mangomamaluv
THANK U FOR READING
I will be reflecting on reconciling my love for people who have harmed me below the pay wall! Please consider sharing this with your community if you enjoyed reading <3
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Opulence’s Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.