Living While Staying Alive as an Act of Resistance
Nat Vikitsreth, LCSW, DT, CEIM aka Crocodile Lightning (she/her) is a decolonized, licensed clinical and somatic psychotherapist, an international burlesque artist, transgender community organizer, and host of the Come Back to Care Podcast.
The future seems bleak.
Our history is actively being erased. Our existence criminalized. Our arts and healing co-opted. (And that’s just Tuesday.)
“Where do we go from here?” may be running through your mind on repeat.
This bleakness is real, and so this is my love letter to our despair and grief. But it’s also an invitation: an invitation for you and me to hope and heal together so we can stay in the struggle for liberation together a while longer.
Because the antidote to cynicism, heartbreak, and apathy may lie in “where we’ve been.”
Generations of LGBTQIA2S+ organizers have shown us that living and living fully is the best revenge against oppression from white supremacist, colonial, capitalist patriarchy.
The threats against our rights and liberation are real, and so I wholeheartedly honor what you’re doing to cope and survive. Yet, you and I both know that staying alive isn’t the same as living, let alone living fully. So, how do we live fully when we rarely feel safe?
In short, by tapping into our inner resources to step in and out of survival mode. We don’t have to be stuck in survival mode 100% of the time. It’s possible to both-and surviving and living so we can bring our whole fabulous selves to advocating for social change within our communities.
Simply put, when we fight for liberation, what we do to get to bed in one piece is as important as what we do to get out of bed the next morning.
Photography: Genito photo | Headpiece: MZMR | Traditional Thai dancing fingers: Crocodile lightning | Chinese opera robe: Crocodile lightning
And what gets me out of bed every morning are the inner resources I have to draw on. Some of these resources are coping strategies, like when I numb out my rage at all the anti-trans legislation by eating a bowl of ramen or watching five more reels of hamsters eating broccoli. And some of these resources are ancestral, specifically the love and support of my grandmother.
Since my mom and dad always worked day and night, my siblings and I grew up with our grandma in our family home in Bangkok, Thailand. I loved my grandma but I didn’t like her. I didn’t like a lot of people, to be honest…because I didn’t like myself. I was too deep in my head trying to figure out why my gender didn’t match my biological sex as a child. I felt so alone and angry trying to navigate my identity, my existence, and my purpose as a young adult. I was so busy not believing in myself that I believed no one believed in me. I had to hide my femininity until I told my parents in high school that I was transgender.But in the safety of my grandma’s room, I played dress up and did a runway walk for her in the 6th grade. I picked the outfits and she accessorized. Her slinky jersey blouse was the most luxurious thing on my skin. The drug store perfume she carefully spritzed on my wrists was heavenly.
In that room, I felt so free in my body when I closed my eyes and danced. My grandma clapped, heckled lovingly, and cheered me on. I felt so free because I didn’t have to hide my expressions or worry about being masculine or feminine.
I didn’t know at the time that she was witnessing all of who I was. It didn’t matter what I was gender-wise, I remember her loving gaze that told me I was the most beautiful thing in the world in her eyes.
Although remembering my grandmother’s unconditional love for me doesn’t make the anti-trans legislation disappear, drawing upon this inner ancestral resource helps me remember my own dignity which can never be legislated away. With an emotional cup that’s a little fuller and a nervous system that’s a bit more regulated, I can walk into the next school board meeting ready to advocate for and with the trans family I’m working with.
Similarly, drawing upon my inner ancestral resource doesn’t make my rage and heartbreak turn into “love and light.” Remembering my grandmother cheering me on during our private fashion show fills my cup enough for me to alchemize that rage and heartbreak into community organizing, healing, and action.
I can’t help but wonder: what is your inner ancestral resource? Whether from blood or chosen lineages, who gives you strength? An elder in your community? Marsha P. Johnson? Audre Lorde?
Photography: Erica McKeehen | Costume: MZMR
Along with inner ancestral resources, communal resources can be another nourishing balm for even the most tender wounds: grief and loss. As bell hooks wrote "rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion." With my community, messy grief becomes manageable. I felt this so clearly last year as I was mourning the loss of my friend.
I felt a dull pain in my chest from grieving the loss of my beloved trans sister and fellow activist. She, along with too many of our transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) siblings, left us too soon to join the ancestors. The dull pain became heavier and heavier descending from my chest to my stomach as the moment when I had to take the mic and facilitate our community’s grief ceremony approached. I pressed my palms firmly into my lap to release the breath I had been holding. Somehow holding my breath kept the rest of it all - the heartbreak, grief, and rage- in, and holding it in was safer than feeling it all. Gradually exhaling, I noticed the suppleness of my silk trousers on my palms. The silk’s softness gently nudged me to roll my shoulders down and back after a full exhalation. Without the tension between my shoulder blades, I could notice how the ground was rising up to support the bottom of my feet. That dull pain was a little lighter. Then, I heard the chatter around the firepit. I looked up and noticed the TGNC community members passing out pens and papers for the fire ceremony. The heartbreak still lingered but I was no longer feeling it alone. I felt re-centered enough to facilitate our ceremony, holding space for the community to come together and grieve.
While anchoring in communal resources doesn’t make grief feel plush and pleasant, it helps me remember our collective strength and solidarity. When white supremacist, colonial, capitalist patriarchy fails to squeeze the totality of our fabulous humanity into tiny gender binary boxes of male and female, it banishes us to the margins. The oppressors thought they could erase us. However, at the margins, we find one another. From banishment we find belonging. We build our chosen families where we (re)learn how to give and receive love despite hurt, harm, and discomfort. The oppressors thought they could make us invisible at the margins. But we are indivisible when we honor our unique differences as we mobilize towards injustice in community, in solidarity, and in sass.
Tapping into inner resources -- whether they’re ancestral or communal – is one way to sustain our struggles for liberation and re-ignite hope. While it may seem like a “nice and cute” thing to do when the world is literally on fire, taking sips of resources during this long marathon towards liberation is essential for us to stay in the fight. Taking sips of resources (pinky up optional) along the way - instead of drinking from the fire hose when it’s a little too late- keeps burnout at bay.
Living fully while surviving is a tactic. It’s a tactic that begins with reclaiming pleasure, joy, beauty, and dignity from the most ordinary moments, even something as small as noticing the suppleness of the silk on your pants.
If you’re currently enraged, numbed out, or if you can’t let yourself feel anything because it’s too painful to feel, please do what you need to do. Please keep that “armor of protection” (or if you prefer, that “corset or Spanx of protection”) aka your coping behaviors on. Drawing on your inner resources isn’t about controlling your feelings for the sake of being calm or “regulated.” However, whenever you feel safe-ish or connected-ish, please remember that you can take the armor off if you’d like. Perhaps, when your chosen family arrives or you’re hugging your cat, you take the armor off so you can melt into that connection, receive compassion and support, and draw on those resources to fill your emotional cup.
“Girl, I know we’re hungry. But we can always take a moment to powder our nose and touch up on the lip gloss.”
In survival, I savor the smallest moments of safety. I cocoon in the smallest moments of connection, even if it’s just for three breaths. I tell my inner critics lovingly yet firmly that I’m not being lazy; I’m filling my cup with these three breaths…then I can hit resume on survival with a bit more vitality and grace. As one of my trans sex worker colleagues put it “Girl, I know we’re hungry. But we can always take a moment to powder our nose and touch up on the lip gloss.”
How might you reclaim pleasure, joy, beauty, and dignity in your day, even just for three breaths? How might you re-member to come back home to who you are, whatever that looks like to you?
Photography: Erica McKeehen | Vintage feather boa collar: Tiff Little Fingers Vintage | Bra, corset: Crocodile Lightning
For me it’s burlesque. This sensual art gradually teaches (or teases) me that being sensual- regardless of gender- means sensing the body. When my silk ribbons glide between my inner thighs, time slows down. I luxuriate in the feel of the ribbon’s smooth fabric against my skin. Sensations- sight, sound, touch- come alive in the moment on stage. As I give myself permission to feel, I’m lovingly inviting the audience to do the same. Each performance is a ceremony co-created between the audience and me. Each movement on stage is a ritual…a ritual of resistance. Because taking each piece of clothing off is an invitation for the audience to shed layers of social norms that confine and constrain the fullness of our humanity. Bare and in my flesh, it doesn’t matter how many James Baldwin books I’ve read or if you can see through my cis-passing privilege and clock me. Bare and in my flesh, I’m human with blood and ancestral strength coursing through my veins. And our humanity is greater than the sum of socially constructed labels that got assigned to us- Asian, immigrant, trans, able bodied, etc. Bare and in my flesh, you see my humanity as I see your divinity.
Offstage and out of the spotlight- on days that I can get out of bed- I choose self-expression as a ritual of resistance. I adorn my body with colors and textures that feel nourishing (I can’t have my beloved grandmother side-eye me from heaven for rolling up to my laptop in my pjs). I anoint my neck and wrists with perfume. I marvel in the sublime beauty of the eight squirrels I feed every morning. These inner resources fill my cup enough to move through the day’s rage, heartbreak, and cynicism.
“We are divinity defined.”
When we’re rooted in our beloved communities and tapped into our ancestral or other inner resources, life can be a ceremony. Doing the dishes can be a ritual. Saying “I’m here with you” can be an incantation.
Survival and safety both co-exist. In fact, one fuels the other and together they build what Nick Montgomery and carla bergman call “joyful militancy” of “thriving resistance in toxic times.” When we’re resourced, we have the agility we need to weave in and out of survival and safety instead of being stuck in survival all the time. I’ve witnessed this agility in the Black, Indigenous, and youth organizers of color, and in the parents, caregivers, and educators I work with every day.
I know how protected you might feel when you keep your armor of protection on in your survival mode. I also know that just by existing alone your brilliance and beauty enrich the world. So here I am scared and wounded, yet hopeful, inviting you to draw upon your inner resources and anchor yourself in your community. So that when you feel safe-ish, you can take your armor off, unfurl your full humanity, and as my Chinese Medicine teacher said, “offer yourself as a gift to the world.” And when you resume your survival mode and eat another bowl of ramen or watch another hamster reel, that armor will be there for you, right where you left it.
It’s scary to resist the status quo that keeps us small, to dare to both-and surviving and living. Yet, “scared” and “sacred” are only one letter apart. You are sacred.
We got this. You got me. I got you.
To wrap up this unfinished business of living fully while surviving,
may I offer a spell for nurturing hope at the edge of the world?
We are warriors.
We are divinity defined.
For we are made of Earth and born of stars.
As we take each step and our feet kiss the earth gently. We remember again that we are the universe unfolding.
We are the harmony of heaven and earth embodied.
As we take each breath, we remember again the oppression that cuts our soul and dehumanizes our ancestors.
Yet we choose to caress our pain and rage with gratitude.
Yet we choose to burn away shame, stigma, and self-doubt with the divine fire of compassion within our heart.
Because we’re warriors, Boddhisatva, sovereign beings of light.
Because we vow to meet every moment of suffering with compassion and action.
Not because we’re stronger or more superior.
Rather because we know what’s true to our heart.
We are warriors who are rooted in our truths so we can blossom.
We are warriors who create only what’s aligned with the divine beauty in our heart.
We are warriors who know deep in our bones that we are possibilities.
That we are abundance even amid oppression.
We are warriors.
We are divinity defined.
For we are made of Earth and born of stars.
Talent, Thai Dancer Fingers, Chinese Opera Robe, Bra & Corset: Crocodile Lightning @crocodilelightning
Photography: Jesse Genito @genitophoto | Erica McKeehen @ericamckeehen
Costumes and Headpieces: #MzMr @humangalaxy
Fan shaped headpiece: Jezebel's fascination @Jezebelsfascination
Vintage feather boa collar: Tiff Little Fingers Vintage @tiffasaurus.rex