Talia C. Johnson

Welcome to my Patreon page
The work I do includes writing, poetry, spiritual leadership, coaching, mentoring, and other supports. I am actively working in Jewish community, I work with people from many faith traditions.
My work bridges spirituality, mental health, and queerness/transness
Often times this work is not recognized, or people don't like to talk about it
In faith communities we don't talk about being queer, being trans, and everything that goes along with that. In many cases queer people are not affirmed in who they are. Far too often faith communities deny and actively harm queer and trans folk and are pushing for the legal right to discriminate against us.
In mental health spaces queerness/transness is looked at in a pathology lens where the person needs to be cured, or the mental health concerns they have need to be cured before they get medical transition. Even though conversion therapy, reparative therapy are not done as much they're still performed in some places. They are harmful and do lasting damage to the people they purport to help.
A lot of times the stresses that we experience in our queer identities are not adequately acknowledged. Providers want to look at just the depression that somebody is experiencing, or just the anxieties. Or, if one is autistic, I have heard from quite a few people that they've been told by providers that they can't know their gender identity because they're autistic. There are anti-trans practitioners and academics that are making this argument to deny autistic trans people access to medical transition.
This is just wrong.
In addition, mental health often doesn't talk about people's spiritual needs, even when that's an important part of who somebody is.
Then we get to queer spaces where we tend not to trust mental health providers and we don't really talk about mental health all that often.
The distrust is so deep, in part, because of all the gatekeeping and harmful practices used against queer and trans people. Trans people have had, and in many, many places continue to have to prove that we are worthy to receiving medical transition. When accessing mental health services, and physical health services we often have to fight against negative stereotypes of queer and trans people.
So when we need, or would benefit from, mental health help we often don't trust mental health providers and often don't seek the help.
I bridge these worlds and tie them in with spirituality so that it becomes a whole.
I facilitate rituals with/for people around major life events such as embracing a new name, preparing for surgery, marking recovery after surgery, healing, grief, and more. I am leading or co-leading services on a somewhat regular basis. I am actively involved in Jewish community and studying with the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.
In my academic work I'm working towards entering a master of arts programming in Jewish studies where I want to look at specifically Judaism, mental health, and queerness. Exactly what that research is going to look like I haven't totally figured out yet because learning is an ongoing process. We may have a question now, in six months it might change, it might shape a little bit differently etc.
My poetry is often focused on queerness, transness, sometimes related to Jewish spiral of the year, the spiral of our lives. My current project is working with the netivot, the archetypes that we study in the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute training. I plan to have those published by the end of July 2019. More details on this project will be coming in the next few months.
Your Patreon support helps me with my day to expenses, and my day to day living that allows me to work on my writing projects, prepare educational materials, offer support to those who need it, and continue to further my education.
Thank you for listening/reading, and I hope you will support my Patreon.