Spiritual Care For the 2SLGBTQIA+ Community
Spiritual Care covers a wide range of opportunities for connecting more deeply into what it means to be 2SLGBTQIA+ identified. Post-colonization of our lands and innate connection to the sacred, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community was treated as an ‘other’ in spaces and places of religion and spiritual tradition. Demonized. Rejected. Oppressed. I hold space for exploring and re-establishing these roots, beyond the reaches of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonization. This includes opportunities to explore these and many other areas.
- Rituals: for birth, marking a distinct moment of passage into the wholeness of your trans or queer self, committed partnership, the processes of dying and death, and much more; there is space to explore how to reflect on, learn from, and mark these powerful moments and experiences in a way that encompasses your wholeness.
- Unbinding: discovering and disengaging from the cultural and religious messages that keep you bound and separate from the magic of who you are.
- Exploring: diving into what it means to hold a connection with something bigger than you, outside of the bounds or within the bounds of traditional religious structures; sorting how to be in relationship with this, without appropriation and in a way that is deeply rooted and holding.
- Reverence: cultivating deep appreciation and respect for all you bring to this world, and recognizing and centering the sacredness within that.
- Agency: taking the lead to trust in your innate sacredness, interconnection, perceptions, instincts, and skills, and to form your relationship with a higher power/being/divine mystery, inside of or outside of a specific religion or tradition.
- Cultivation: exploring and establishing practices, understanding what ‘going to church’ means to you, engaging with texts, music, art, and poetry that hold alignment and value in your journey.
- Purpose: understanding your offering to this world (as opposed to your sacrifice) and how it moves you within your life and relationships.
- Community: moving through discernment to recognize what a sacred community or spiritual or religious community looks like to you from a 2SLGBTQIA+ lens, and engaging and growing this within your life.
This spiritual care comes in many forms: coaching, spiritual accompaniment, working with you to develop rituals for milestones in your life and identity, opportunities for group connections virtually and in-person (forthcoming), as well as being present for the journey of death and dying, and many other things yet to be named or explored. Spiritual care is critical to our ability to thrive and flourish, and to create the world we want to live.