Transcript: GABES TORRES on Journeying Together /326
Ayana Young This episode of For The Wild is brought to you Anima Mundi Herbals. Anima Mundi was founded by Costa Rican herbalist Adriana Ayales with the intention of bringing some of the finest plant medicines, medicinal mushrooms, vegan collagen boosters, and high-potency elixirs. Anima Mundi is made in the United States with certified organic, wild-crafted, and sustainably harvested plants and herbs that are sourced from small-scale farms around the world. Their products contain zero fillers, binders, or flow agents. We’re proud to receive the support of this woman and BIPOC-owned business that creates magic from plant allies. Our personal pick for this time of year is Anima Mundi’s Relax Tonic for Nervous System Support. During times of intensity, a couple of drops of this tonic immediately soothes the mind and body. To learn more visit Anima Mundi Herbals.com. Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today I'm speaking with Gabes Torres.
Gabes Torres And that was just moving to me, to see how much our neural architecture and our psychobiological architecture is so heavily formed by connection
Ayana Young Gabes Torres was born and raised in the countryside of the Philippines. She is a psychotherapist, organizer, and artist with her work focusing on the interplay of mental health, the arts, spirituality, and justice-oriented practice. She has an MA in Theology & Culture, and Counseling Psychology; both graduate degrees were accomplished in Seattle, the city where she organized with abolitionist and anti-imperialist groups at a local, grassroots level. In her clinical practice, Gabes pays attention to healing from racial and migration trauma, while decolonizing the therapeutic space from White Western modalities. Gabes writes for Yes! Magazine, an independent publisher of solutions journalism with stories that uncover environmental, economic, and social justice intersections. She is also a poet and singer-songwriter. She independently produced 3 albums of original music, and her first one was launched when she was 17. She has toured in Southeast Asia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. Gabes thank you so much for joining us this early morning. It's a really wonderful way to start the day, and I just feel really at ease, being able to talk to you.
Gabes Torres Thank you for having me. And I'm glad that you feel at ease.
Ayana Young Yeah, I really respect your work and it's been expansive and also calming for me to just meditate on what healing might be. And I was thinking that's how we could start off the conversation. You know, so often, I think, we focus on healing in either a framework of perfection, as if there's a point we can look to and say, we are healed, or we look at it, it's potentially a lifelong burden with no end, and I'm not sure that either understanding fully captures the breadth and depth of what healing may be. So I just love to hear more about how you've grown to understand healing.
Gabes Torres Hmm, thank you. So I feel like healing has more to do with presence than it does with the absence of illness or symptoms. And while I can understand the need to address symptoms, like I know for myself that whenever I get sick in every sense, like physical or otherwise, I want to get rid of the discomfort. I want to ease or alleviate the presenting physical concerns. But I feel like what ends up happening if we focus more on the absence of said symptoms and physical manifestations or whatnot, I feel like we miss out on the root. And I feel like there's a difference. In that case, there's a difference between searching for a cure and I suppose the most common metaphor that we hear is looking for a band aid, then getting to the root cause of why the symptom is present in the first place. And I feel like ever since coming to the so called United States, there's just an over focus on that. On symptom, than of story, I talk about this a lot in teaching contexts and mentorship contexts where I feel like a western tradition of how it is to look at healing and medicine, is limited, in that sense. Limited in just the presentation, just the individual, like ever since having higher education in the so called United States, like, I feel like there's so many hyper individualized modalities of what it means to get sick, and therefore impose upon the individual that it is their sole responsibility to get better. So I think about how the reasons for needing to heal has so much to do with social, or social-political, systemic context.
So as a therapist who sees majority, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, those who are also at the intersection of being neurodivergent, being disabled, and also being queer and trans, like, part of the reason why they may see me, is that I want to pay attention to context, to the systemic forces that are at hand, that's causing them pain in the first place. And within supposed circles and contexts of healing, and especially in the West, there's a lack of imagination around that, that mental illness and disorders have more to do with one singular experience, perhaps even like their singular family. But what I've noticed is that if we trace the disease in an individual, it's always going to be connected to the society at large. For instance, if I have a client who has chronic pain, and we unpack that, and if we trace that, I noticed that it has to do with their immigrant experience, let's say, for example, has more to do with the separation that they had from their family, and how that impacts them in a bodily sense, because from my sensibilities, my collectivist and contextual sensibilities, the mind and the body are not severed, and the hyper individualized West, has always split them, because of the roots and history of Gnosticism, and just how disembodied the culture is generally. And with that, I see how, because the experience of illness, of disorders, and I'm using these terms, because it makes more sense in you know, in the world of psychology, if the experience of illness, sickness, and disorders are, you know, in a systemic collectivist context, that context must mean that healing must also be facilitated or experienced in a collectivist, larger context and more interconnected context. And I can imagine how that would be more challenging or uncomfortable, because if healing were collective or interconnected, then it would require or invite some of our vulnerability, which a lot of us are not used to. I know for myself, even though I'm raised in a collectivist context, it's still pretty scary to consider that I'd rather go about my healing in some degree of isolation, because it feels less costly. But as I get into this work, it makes more sense. And even though it feels costly, I would rather journey with. I think that's what I would say for now.
Ayana Young There's so much there pinging in my mind, but there was something that is reminding me of an article you wrote, "Reclaiming Abundance Under Capitalism", where you write "It is with sustained mutual exchange where abundance unfurls and flourishes." So I'd love to dive in a bit deeper of how are flourishing and healing relational, which really was spurred by so much of what you were just saying with this idea of collectivist healing.
Gabes Torres Yeah. So this reminds me of how, okay, so before I got into psychology, I was actually a theology major and I grew up in a Filipino-Protestant home and I didn't have a lot of education around church history, and during that time, I was intrigued because I wanted to develop my faith, I wanted to, I suppose like, be, I would use the terms like be a more efficient or present servant of God, what have you. So I was searching for God, I searched for God in theological study, in undergrad and also part of grad school, and one of the things that I ironically encountered is, you know, that theology is the study of God. But what was interesting is, as I studied theology, it felt like I studied more about man or about humankind than I did of God. Meaning I studied more the interpretations of God, the wars in the name of God, the dogma, the decrees, the intense violent conflict and fragmentation of the Christian church. In my search of God, I learned more about man, and I'm very specific about using the term man because it's a very patriarchal, at least in white evangelicalism, a very patriarchal tradition. And then I got into psychology. And I'm very fortunate to be to have studied psychology in a context where we focus, like the school that I went to focused a lot on intersectionality, focused more on justice oriented work, focused more on somatics, meaning the connection between mind and body, as I got into psychology, that's where I feel like I found God or found the Divine or found Creator. Because as I got to know the brain and the body, the connection between both, I saw that we are wired for connection. And what I mean by that is that as I studied more about psychology, I saw how much our survival is so dependent upon the the gaze, and the presence of another, that our psychobiological formation and our health is so dependent upon the connection of another like for instance, in attachment theory, it's a theory that says that, however way your parent or caregiver has given you attention, love, and attunement would then influence heavily on the way that you engage with intimacy later.
It is with theories like this that I also saw how depending on your connection with your parents or with your caregiver during your formative years, it will also result in how you are in your immune system later. For instance, there have been studies where if a child or an infant is neglected, even though their so-called basic needs are met, like for instance, if they have shelter, food, water, clothing, etc. But the attention and attunement of an adult isn't there, could still result in lower mortality rates, could result in them developing autoimmune diseases later. And you know how it is, like when we hear about basic needs, we often think about food, shelter, water, clothing, etc. Like the so-called physical needs. But then as I learned about psychology, I saw how much, what if connection, and an attunement, and some degree of intimacy is also a basic need. And that was just moving to me to see how much our neural architecture and our psychobiological architecture is so heavily formed by connection. That's when I saw, or witnessed, or felt the Creator, or whoever it is, or whoever it is, or whoever, beings who formed and shaped us as a species, or as an ecosystem, that we are wired for relationship, that we're wired for connection. And yet we live in a society that aims and strategies towards life, severing us from one another, through the capitalist project, through the colonial project, by way of telling us or imposing or educating us that in order to survive, we have to be over productive, we have to be competitive in the field. Which could result in us being separate, being more isolated.
And as I'm talking about this, I'm just realizing how simple it could feel that we are wired for connection. And yet, it's so difficult, even though it's so simple, like I'm feeling there are parts of me, which are very likely influenced by trauma responses and by trauma as well, that resists the idea that for me to, to be well or to be, "healthy", or to heal has so much to do with my relationships, has so much to do with my connections. And I don't just mean my connections with fellow human species, but also beyond human species, like what is it like to have the rest of the members of the ecosystem? As for my attachment figures? What is it like to attune with them and to connect with them and how much my health and well being? And my healing has so much to do with how I'm connected?
Ayana Young Oh, absolutely. I think that has been showing itself to us this connection between our healing and the healing of the Earth, or the unwellness of us individually. And the unwellness of everything around us, I don't think many people might be conscious of that, because of our cultural conditioning and just the way that we're being told what we are or aren't why that is. But I completely agree with that. And yeah, it kind of brings me to this thought around collective grief and the relationships to oppression and something that you write in "How to Decolonize Mental Health Treatment for BIPOC" for Yes! Magazine, you write, "The mental health industry is no stranger to a culture of punishment and policing, while also replicating environments of incarceration, from that of the prison industrial complex." And so, my question for you is, how might we, or how might understanding care collectively, socially and politically impact the way we understand mental health, and what happens when the issue is with society and not with the individual?
Gabes Torres If we go about healing in that way, then society and the state would have to, like if we lead with that, they would have to have a sense of responsibility, in having to undo the very sources of why mental health conditions or mental health disorders exist in the first place. So it makes sense why the mental health industrial complex would lead with the individual than they would with the society, because it would mean that they would have to be accountable. And this is kind of interesting to come from a practitioner of this field perhaps even, you know, threatening to the mental health industry, but I suppose, like as a way to respect the mental health world, I would have to address its lack of integrity and address the fact that the mental health industry is still an industry and as long as an industry exists, they exist to profit. I say this because I'm also complicit to it, specifically with the mental health industry if profits off of other people's trauma, other people's tears, like the reason why I'm able to pay my bills is because another person is hurting, another client is hurting. I feel like the way that we have to engage with healing, or with treatment plans, with wellness plans rather, has to be holistic and I keep talking about like it has to be interconnected, because it means that the the reasons for our grief and our grief itself is also interconnected, especially in our time right now where our exposure to violence, our exposure to harm has increased due to social media due to the internet, our access to such information. And I wrote in this article how vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress exists just by witnessing a violent act, a harmful act, influences our neural networks, and it influences it in a way as though we were there, we were at the actual scene. So this is why whenever I talk to people about their traumatic response to an event that they weren't even physically in, this is what I would tell them, that just by witnessing something, even through the screen, this impacts you. And so if this awareness weren't known or distributed, people just end up gaslighting themselves or diminishing the impact, even though the impact is valid and is vast.
So I feel like now more than ever, we have to, we as in the people, maybe more than people than the state, than the industry itself have to reckon with that. Just the reality of our, just the level of our connectedness. And I just want to say too, how difficult that is, how difficult it is to try to heal in that kind of context, to try to get better in a society that contradicts our relations, that insists that the more vulnerable and connected we are, that that actually weakens us or that it disrupts our path towards success or security. So I just want to recognize how it's one thing to say it, it it's another thing to believe it and to do or practice from a sense of interconnectedness, to practice and believe from a belief system that trusts that your freedom has so much to do with my freedom, that your flourishing, impacts my flourishing, that is radical, that's a radical belief. And it's radical, especially in the context of a society that believes in the disposability of marginalized folks, of folks who have done different scales of harm. It's a radical thought, it's a radical practice.
Ayana Young There are a few things that you said in your response that made me think of what are other forms of connection and healing that are perhaps outside the system that people can maybe more easily have access to? Or feels more radical in the ways that you're speaking to, you know, I'm just feeling the importance of recognizing that there's not just one solution or maybe even any solutions to transformation and understanding trauma. And going back to the article "How to Decolonize Mental Health Treatment for BIPOC", you wrote, "It's possible that the compass guiding us towards our healing points us back to ourselves and our relationships, the relationships with our communities, natural world, our roots and our ancestors." And of course, that's so much have you been speaking to and also in that article you do talk about how therapy can be helpful. And it's not the only way. And so, yeah, I'm wanting to hear you expand on that. And maybe also we could speak to how our bodies teach us to heal and to self soothe?
Gabes Torres Yeah, what I love about the message of abundance, the essence of abundance, is that it teaches me that we already have all we need in order to heal. And that means that our body self heals, especially in the proper conditions in which it heals. That we already have the, again, like our ecosystems, our relationships in order to heal, and what the state insists is that the scarcity mentality that we need more, the state insists on a culture of more, and, you know, beyond what we already have. And in a way, it'll also make sense that people have a scarcity mindset, because this system does privatize and pollute a lot of the already existing natural resources that we all naturally already have. So it also makes sense, but essentially, again, we lead with the framework of abundance, where we already have all we need to heal. And so in my practice, and my teachings, I try to emphasize that and with that, how do we access the parts of our body, the parts of our soul, the parts of our relationship? How do we enhance these parts that have healing properties? So if I think about, let's say, embodiment work, one of the things that I would let my client or my community consider are like something as simple as releasing, it could be in the form of dance, it could be in the form of song, it can be in the form of a meditative breathing practice. We hold so much in our bodies, our bodies are incredibly intelligent, we have such a high capacity to absorb the experiences around us, even absorb the experiences of generations before us. Especially as I learned about the intergenerational transmission of trauma, that we've inherited stories, we've inherited trauma from ancestors that we know and don't know. And so what is it like to release a lot of what's not ours, even the things that are ours, but that we don't want to be aligned in the path ahead. And so even though it sounds so simple, I would invite my community, even myself to find embodiment practices, for me, and I feel quite privileged to have access to this, but I would have a massage like once every two weeks, it's soothing to me.
I also take some time to bask before my ancestor's altar. That to me is an embodiment practice because it's meditative in a way where I could just gaze upon my altar gaze upon the the photographs of my ancestors, gaze at the the elements, the sacred elements that are on the altar, it allows me to feel my connection with, with my ancestors, and remind me of our interconnectedness that way. And remind me that I did not just receive or inherit the trauma but also the medicine, try to highlight that in an intergenerational experiences where we've not only inherited the pain, the survival mechanisms, but we've also inherited the joy, the laughter, the beauty, the the capacity for closeness, the creativity, and whenever I'm embodied, whenever I'm present with my body, I have a higher capacity to access that ancestral wisdom, when I'm with my breath and when I'm grounded, I have a higher capacity to be present with these, with these ideas and with these stories. So that's one, like embodiment practices. Like I also think about beauty, as medicine, maybe for folks who are in spiritual spaces, y'all hear this a lot, but I really think that beauty is medicine. So I think about beauty in the context of doing creative work, of telling your story of listening to other people's stories, there is a generative power to storytelling and to creativity, where if I witness somebody else's story, or somebody else's creativity, I feel compelled to tell my story, I feel compelled to create, I think that's so beautiful, because the more distinct the artist is, the more distinct and unique that I feel called to create as well. And that also reminds me of my own, of our own sense of interconnectedness in that way. Where, how is it that somebody else's particularities and their story, invite me to seek my own particularities, my own uniqueness, my own sacredness as a bear witness to that of another? I think that there's a healing component to that, because, again, it invites more presence. It also invites more embodiment, like I think about the creative process and how it connects mind and body. And it also connects me to some sense of spirituality. Again, if we're looking at holistic healing, we consider the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects.
So often in western medicine and psychology, the spiritual is neglected. In fact, when you address anything that's spiritual, it's even labeled as psychotic. And so in non-western, perhaps even in Indigenous practices, when it comes to healing, what is it like to invite the spiritual into your healing? And that to me makes sense because in my colonial history, my spirituality was invaded upon, was colonized. Christianity was weaponized, my ancestors' Indigenous practices and traditions were labeled as primitive, as savage, as inferior. And so it must mean that part of my healing also has to do with healing my spiritual being, healing my connections with the cosmos, with my ancestors, with realms beyond the material realm. So yeah, so that comes to mind spirituality, beauty, even poetry. I find poetry to be quite healing for me and some clients of mine would bring poetry in sessions, and that might seem unconventional, but it actually invites more, invites more meaning to our sessions. It helps us make the unconscious conscious by bringing up metaphor and imagery. What does this rhyme mean to you? What does this metaphor mean to you, and it invites us to more understanding, more self understanding. So a lot of this might sound unconventional, but I think that it's in the emergent and distinct from the status quo methods or techniques where we find a lot of ourselves and we find who we could be as a community.
Ayana Young Another thing that I've seen you write about, which could be one of these embodiment practices is the importance of cultural tradition in the ways of food as an example, and I really love this, I've been noticing that when I really want to chill out, I'll watch food videos. And there's something about it that feels so human and brings me into ease and a type of healing where I can focus on something nourishing, and it's something that I have to do anyways every day. And so, yeah, I just love that food is such a significant example of the ways that the things that offer connection and respite are often a tangled into the webs of white supremacy and capitalism. And at the same time, though, I think there can be simple ways to reassert cultural and traditional values here that go beyond our current system. So I would just love to hear more from you about our relationship to reconnecting with food.
Gabes Torres Yeah, there's been a lot of literature, specifically social political, literature and material on food now, which is great, like we're starting to address more about the unethical production and distribution of food, food colonization, also we have increased conversations around eating disorders and the relationship between body shame and also food. And we can appreciate this and learn from it. And it's critical to be aware of these intersections and these realities, and there also came a time when, this is in the article, but I, one night, I realized that I've I've only engaged with food from how it's been colonized, how much there's been a lot of issues, like more negative issues around it. And one night, some friends and I gathered, we did this Filipino eating tradition called kamayan, which means to use one's hands or by hand, it's Filipino tradition, where the table that you use to eat has like steamed or sterilized banana leaves on it, and you've got a lot of rice, you've got a lot of protein and produce, mostly grilled food, fruits and salted egg, etc. And we don't have any separate plating, we all share one big meal that we all share together, and we get to use our hands. So that is automatically a form of embodiment is when we involve the senses a lot more, not just the sense of taste, but also of touch. And during that evening, that's when I realized that, oh, I kind of lost track of how food is also medicine. Obviously, we do think about food as medicine, that's where we get our nutrients, our sustenance. But what if it's also a social and also spiritual type of medicine, where it is with the presence of my loved ones, it is, in the context of preserving ancestral tradition, it is within the context of eating the food of my people, that I feel more myself where I feel more at home, where I don't have to worry about how the state targets me, or surveils me, where we could just be us in the moment. And so, in this article, and even right now with my life and my relationships, I want to go about food, approach food, have a different relationship with food in a more intentional way. Like recently, I just started to eat, and again, like this is so subjective, like I try to eat without playing something in the background, because before I would have I don't know, like music or a movie or a show or a podcast episode on. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does kind of shift my attention from what I partake in, to kind of like scattering my attention to other places I suppose. But this time around, I'm shifting my engagement with food by way of really noticing the flavor, the texture. Another way of looking at it as mindful eating is when I take my time with the flavors, the substance, the grains, and all that I eat. And I feel like that is again like that might feel simple, as a simple healing practice, but it also feels like I'm divesting capitalism, because capitalism insists that we rush, that we, you know, just eat food so that we're sustained enough to get back to work and that food is only meant as fuel, to be able to be a machine. But I want to divest that, you know, I want to not just regard food as a fuel, like I'm grateful for how much food does give me more energy allows me to have energy to go about my day to connect with you to connect with myself. But it's more than just fuel. It's also a portal, you know, this is what my editor says, a portal to connecting with my ancestors, with my loved ones, with myself, and with the present moment.
Ayana Young There's another topic that I really wanted to explore with you, which is around how to find what we want and desire and eros beyond what we've been told we should desire. Because so much societal conditioning tears at so much of our identity, and often tells us that our desires are somehow wrong, or should be something we're ashamed of. And I'm really interested in how we break out of this cycle and listen to the voice of what our desires really are. And when I say desires, I'm also speaking about desires that are accountable to the Earth, accountable to ourselves, to our communities, to our relationships.
Gabes Torres Yeah, thank you. I love this topic. And I love talking about this about desire, specifically in the context of the diaspora, which I believe are of course connected to a lot more universal themes and experiences. So when we engage with desire, even pleasure, or the erotic and I pay homage to Audre Lorde, to Roland Barthes, to Esther Perel, and a lot of queer writers of color when it comes to the topic of desire and longing and pleasure. It feels like stepping into this desires is dangerous to the state, Audre Lorde talks a lot about this, and how threatening it is to the state, because when we take ownership and responsibility for our desire, it must mean that we are in our body, we are with our senses, we realize our sense of humanity. I mentioned briefly earlier how I love talking about freedom and healing in a way where we're not only discussing and engaging with what we could be free from, which is, you know, different kinds of oppression, and violence and trauma. But I'm also concerned about what we could be free for or free towards, you know, in the moments where we don't have to think about this state and state violence, we got to be able to have the imagination, the language, the vulnerability to access, okay, what am I about, you know, what is it that makes me come alive? And eros has, of course, when we think about eros, we think about sex and senses and sensuality, of course, it has so much to do with that. But it also has to do with a sense of aliveness, because we can have all the sex that we want and still not feel alive, you know? And so what is it that makes us aligned with our sense of purpose? And I don't also just mean aliveness in a sense that, you know, it's just this constant state of being happy. It's not about just being happy.
ALOK, and you've had ALOK here before on this podcast, they talked about lucidity, and I'm paraphrasing, but I think they were referring to the ability to experience the fullness of every emotion and every state. And I think that's also what I'd like to associate with desire and my hope, in my work, in what I write is that we're more okay and more comfortable in taking ownership of that desire, of accessing what makes us come alive. And I feel like with specifically my experience, or maybe the diasporic experience, having to endure different types of of dispossession and severance from land, from ancestors, from culture, from language, and needing to adapt in new spaces or foreign, I suppose like contexts, and having to be in between a lot, having to translate a lot, it can be difficult to access that desire, because we have to, or I have to be less visible, I have to be more flexible, I have to adjust all the time, I have to mimic or imitate what's considered normal around me that I have to compromise some of my culture in order to fit in, in those contexts, it can be difficult to access, desire. And so with that, yeah, what is it like to address you know, what is it that I'm trying to free myself from? What are the cultural pressures, the pressure to be more white, more white American, that I'm trying to free myself from? And then what am I freeing myself towards? Or where am I freeing myself towards which in a way feels like a return of sorts, like a return to roots, a return to, to one's own motherland, maybe not physically, but the stories that come before me.
I feel like in the context of accountability with the land, oh my gosh, like, I feel like there's so many of us who are able to access and desire and aliveness through nature, through what the trees and the streams of water, through other species give us because I feel like the more that I observe beyond human species, it feels like they're living accordingly to their kind, and humans are not. Humans try to not be human by, again, like being complicit to the capitalist project and in a way we have to be in order to survive, unfortunately, this the setup, but whenever I see just fish being fish, and being together, trying to find food together, no homework, no work, I'm reminded of how you know, is it possible that we just have to access what we already have right now again, like accessing the natural abundance that we already have, and somehow, beyond human species, naturally show that to me? And in the context of accountability, how do I, in my work, in my subjective experience in my own skills and strengths? How do I maintain that abundance for them, for these species, for the land? What does it mean just being them? And to add on to that, like, I feel like accountability towards the natural world will always be land back, will always be returning the land and the stewardship of the land to Indigenous peoples and so I feel like that has to be accomplished at a local level, at a grassroots local level, dependent on where you're at, and again, like dependent on where your strengths are at, and to organize and to practice justice oriented, climate justice oriented practice and land back justice oriented practice, to lead with awe in that, to lead with wonder, to lead with astonishment, astonishment of the beauty before us and wanting that beauty to be sustained, to be protected. Yeah, I feel like that's important to me.
Ayana Young I feel that this eros or desire and love can connect us or lead us to new worlds? And I'm really, yeah, I think it's funny, because in a lot of ways, what we see in dominant culture of how to get out of the predicament we're in is more of the same, like more extraction, more industry, different economies, different money systems, but really, it's just reinventing the same wheel. And I think so much of what you've spoken about are, I don't want to say the solutions, because I really don't like that word, but they are the ways we can explore ourselves out of this really challenging and in a lot of ways, sad time, lonely, lonely time. And so yeah, I just love speaking with that, and thinking about your article "What Capitalism Has To Do With Falling In Love" and I really love that title, and I love thinking about, you know, how we move beyond extraction? And how love and desire and connectedness leads us to new worlds, and how do we grow and listen to them and show up for our love? You know, you write "Love is multifaceted. Love is messy and messy isn't marketable. It takes courage to confront that each of us loves in complex and untidy ways and that means we won't always get things right. The good news is that being a lover doesn't mean being perfect. It's about showing up." And, yeah, maybe we could just speak to showing up for love and explore that a bit.
Gabes Torres Mm hmm. I love that. Thank you. I forgot that I wrote those words. Thank you for reminding me of those words. I feel like being a lover is one of the selves that I want to access more. I wish that we asked each other that more in a you know, day to day or maybe on a weekly basis like how are you a lover today? And I feel like if I'm asked that I am reminded of the things that I already have and that I'm already that I can be grateful for I feel like the at the heart of being a lover is gratitude is awe, and being in this world right now an over consumptive, over indulgent, extractivist, as you say, and I agree with that, world, there's something about awe and gratitude that makes me want to give. And maybe in certain moments to also give up on things that get in the way of our connection, of our intimacy, of what's possible with our connection. And so I'm back here in the Philippines, I'm in closer proximity with the ocean, and I'm getting into surfing, and there's a aliveness to it, a connection with the water, with the waves, with the balance and motion. And because of that, awe, because of that astonishment, and that tapped in electrifying energy, I try as best as I can for that not to be interrupted. And with the gratitude towards the waves, how then do I practice and have sustained practice that would protect the ocean? So that's what I mean earlier, that when we organize, when we unionize, when we defy capitalist and white supremacist, ableist, etcetera, like notions, ideologies and structures of the state, like how do we lead with astonishment? How do we lead with the gratitude that we have over the things, the beings, the subjects of our astonishment? And it does start with asking, like, you know, how are you a lover today? Like, what is it that you're in awe of, you know, who is the subject or what is the subject of your affections, when was the last moment that made you feel like you want to lean in, that made you feel safe enough to want to lean in, to be intrigued, to embrace, to kiss, to listen, and I will always connect, like, as long as I'm living in this lifetime, I will always connect lover hood with with social justice work or justice oriented practice. Like I feel like I can't disentangle these two parts of my life. Like a lot of why I do what I do has so much to do with wanting to express this gratitude, this awe, this wonder, or this intrigue towards more wonder and possibility. I feel like I'm drifting from your question. I just like really riffing. And I think I'm also expanding what it also means to fall in love too . It's more than just the, you know, monogamous, romantic partnership. But I think about what it's like to fall in love with friends to fall in love with, again, like beyond human species, to fall in love with stories, even to fall in love with parts of yourself. That kind of brings me back to my humanity and to feel more humanized or rehumanized is automatically defiant against capitalism that functions in a way that wants us to be machines. And so yeah, I feel like it makes me wonder like, what is it like for you, or for anybody who's listening to intersect loverhood with your practices, with the ways that y'all divest capitalism and oppression?
Ayana Young Gabes, thank you so much for going in so many directions with us. And it's been a really sweet conversation that has left me feeling warm and also more and more ready to show up to continue and do the work internally, externally, individually, collectively, all the ways that we've spoken to so thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Gabes Torres Thank you so much for having me, appreciate it too.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Amaara, Blue Doll, and Annie Sumi. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.