Motley Crews
we will find each other and practice interdependence!
I just saw a music video featuring rapper Sexxy Redd and Bruno Mars featuring Kpop BLACKPINKs Rosé and Lady Gaga for a song called “Fat, Juicy, and Wet.” This was a motley crew I didn't ever expect to see such a collaboration from! And that is how I think the next 4 years or organizing, resisting, and connecting with one another may feel / be: a motley crew of us holding on together.
It seems odd to “get back to work” at this time, and I remind myself that the “work” I’ve chosen is rooted in rehumanizing ourselves to ourselves and others and that is a lifelong practice! I’m moving at my own pace and teaching the classes I love to teach while updated them as so many laws are changing. One of my first intensive practice spaces, a SAR, is with an amazing collaborator. I want to share more with you about who Jadelynn St Dre, LMFT, MA, CST is and why we do what we do together.
Picture it: 2018 Oakland, CA. I was freshly coming back into the world with newfound grief from the death of my mom 2 years prior and I just met my partner and moved from New Orleans, LA to Oakland to be with them. I met Jadelynn because she was a vocal disrupter holding accountable the training program she had paid a LOT of money to attend and had a horrible SAR experience. Her and a few other emergent sex therapist’s had organized and demanded a new SAR experience, one that was not transphobic, ethnocentric, or misappropriating indigenous experiences. I was hired to offer this SAR in 2019 and it was love at first sight!
I not only love people who make a way for me to do the creative radical work I do, but also who fight for all of us at the same time. That’s Jadelynn. She’s a fighter, an artist, an author, a mama, a wife, a healer, a friend, a lover, a community organizer, a visionary, and so much more those are just my top 10! Her specialization is in transforming trauma especially focusing on survivors of sexual violence. She does mediation and uses a restorative approach that includes validating a variety of forms of communication. She’s published in our book and in many others! And she’s my homegirl who I not only adore but is one of the very few people I choose to learn from because she is brilliant! She asks harder questions, and isn’t scared of the discomfort that comes with growth and creation.
She was the first friend I made when I moved to Oakland. We didn’t have much time to be together in 3D because shortly after we met the pandemic began and we were separated and super aware because she was pregnant with her first child. We did get to celebrate my 41st birthday together where she shared she was pregnant. When we are together in virtual space and we can see one another’s faces, those are the only pictures I have of us together. Most of our relationship since we met has been a long-distance love using zoom, telephone calls, and text messages in between mailing one another gifts just because. I most recently sent Jadelynn this retinal serum that has really helped me navigate more confidently how to apply my black winged eyeliner to my 47 year old lids with the precision I had in my 20s! I’m one of those Gen X’ers who is not giving up their winged liner! It really helped me and it’s affordable even if in Korea they view this brand as “old school.”
Can you just imagine what it feels like to experience a professional development intensive guided by revolutionary love, abundance, integrity, accountability, and care?! Two people who know another future is possible and working together to get there with each of you and finding joy and play along the way. That’s what Jadelynn and I create with intention, and a little bit of magical realism. Join us in February for this space, a few spots remain. You deserve to have this experience.
