Full Moon issue #7
Hello wonderful people,
Here we are, the last Full Moon of 2024, also known as the Cold Moon where I live, which seems very appropriate today as I look out to snow and fog outside my window and cozy up a little more, grateful for warmth and my home. How are you feeling as 2024 draws to a close? Frantic? Relieved? Surprised? Exhausted? I know I have felt all of this and more over the last few days alone! However you’re feeling, I hope you can welcome yourself, just as you are, and hold your heart gently.
Please read on and, as always, feel free to hit reply and let me know what you think, or what you’d like me to reflect on in future issues. Your questions, comments, and, above all, YOU are always welcome here.
Reflection corner
It’s the end of an era: letting go / holding on / moving on...
This year has been a lot in so many ways, so I don’t even know where to start... It has been a lot of fun, adventure, pain, love, illness, change, heartbreak, lessons learned, more change, more lessons learned, more heartbreak for the world (again and again), and more love for the world (again and again). The truth is that I am still reflecting on what this year has been, and probably will be for a while. I am trying something new over the past few months: not forcing things (when I can) and being more gentle with myself. I honestly haven’t had many other choices since my capacity became dramatically reduced after an episode of unstable angina in October. Don’t worry, I am as ok as anyone can be while aging with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and my angiogram was clear (hurrah), but I have needed to slow down even more, and think about my life differently. So I am taking this approach to reflecting about 2024 as well: I don’t need to rush to review every lesson learned, or to set goals for 2025. I can just let those arise organically, capture them when I can, and keep striving to do my best.
I wonder how you are doing with 2024 ending. What has been new for you? What chapters have been concluded and which have just started? I hope you can give yourself some spaciousness to let your life breathe as this year passes. Personally, one of the major changes in my life has been letting go of my group practice, Edges Wellness Center. Over the past 8+ years, Edges has been the center of my work life and my passion. I saw clients, I supervised interns and pre-licensure clinicians, I gave trainings, I learned how to run a growing business, and I was fortunate enough to do all of this with a dear member of my queer family. However, about a year ago, I knew that things needed to change, and I had a hard conversation with said queer family member and co-proprietor of the group practice. I started to feel overwhelmed by running a business, and constrained by the responsibilities this entails. There were more things I wanted to do with my life. I wanted more time to write, to create resources, and to grow dreams that had been incubating for some time. To cut a long story short, last month I concluded the sale of our business to a local, large non-profit. Edges will remain an independent subsidiary and I hope it will keep growing and serving an increasing number of historically marginalized clients and providers, especially trans, non-binary and gender expansive ones. I am still digesting what this means for my life and I am giving myself a little room to do so. I am also so grateful to my inner compass that let me know what was no longer sustainable in my life and that it was time to let go.
Letting go is never easy, but I have done it so many times in my life that it has become a practice, one that I am incredibly grateful for, as it keeps making my life more aligned, authentic and intentional. I have learned, again and again, that it’s a good thing to know when to let go, and that we can let go of things even when they are good and we love them. In fact, letting go can often allow things (and even people) we love to grow and expand beyond what would have been possible if we had held on too tight. Don’t get me wrong, letting go is not easy or comfortable, but I have learned, over and over, that when I can do so intentionally, I can also hold on to the beauty, the lessons, the love, the joy, the grief, the whole experience, and move on open-heartedly.
Many people have asked me what I will do now, and the truth is that I have many dreams, some planted seeds, and numerous experiments to look forward to in 2025, but no certainty. I don’t have a clear, well-paved and sure road ahead, and I am ok with that, even if sometimes I feel scared and anxious about this change, and that’s ok too. While there is much I am letting go of, both personally and professionally, in 2024, there is also so much I am holding on to while moving on. I am holding on to the lessons learned, as they become clearer, the relationships built, the wildflowers that have grown through the cracks, and I am so grateful for all of it, even the heartache and the hard parts. There would be neither of these if I hadn’t loved, lived, tried and dared, with as open a heart as I could manage.
It’s the end of an era in many ways, for me, as 2024 winds down. I am going back to being a solopreneur, as they call it, and also managing many other changes, including a drastically reduced capacity due to the most intense fatigue I have ever experienced in my life coupled with my ongoing chronic health issues. There are moments when I want to push again some of these changes. I question myself. I question others. I am upset and afraid. These are not my best moments, maybe, but they make me human and they’re part of me, so I try to embrace them too, rather than push them away. In my best moments, I can breathe into the possibility that comes hand in hand with uncertainty, into the hope built into change, into the knowledge that the only constant is indeed and always will be change. To be alive is to change. Only dead things don’t change and are crystallized in time. And so I am grateful for these changes because they mean that I am alive and, as long as I’m alive, amazing and surprising things can happen too, alongside the heartbreaks, the pain, the horrors, the grief, and the endings. I don’t know what the next era will bring but, whatever happens, there will be change, hopefully, and, with it, life.
May this winding down of 2024 be gentle on your hearts and bodyminds, and may we all reunite again in 2025 to navigate more letting go while holding on to this beautiful, heartbreaking, loving, surprising life.
events and projects
On November 20th, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a small group of students and faculty from the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. It was an intimate chat, since I just showed up to address whatever questions people had. If you are interested in hearing me talk about my spiritual life, you can see / listen to the talk on UTS YouTube channel here.
My new AASECT Supervision Group will be a 2 hours group with 4 supervisees in it total and it will run from 12-2pm CST (10am-12pm PST / 1-3pm EST). It’s for people who are seeking to become AASECT approved sex therapists. Below is the complete list for the group dates. The cost is $225 per person for each group session. I have a couple of spots left so, if you are interested, please email me ASAP. Thanks!
2025 dates
January 9th
January 23rd
February 13th
February 27th
March 6th
March 20th
April 3rd
April 17th
The book MJ Barker and I finished co-writing last summer, How To Understand Your Relationships: a practical guide will be published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP) on January 21st, 2025. The anthology I edited (and have 1 piece in) Trans and Disabled will also be published by JKP at that time! I have two more books in the works and some other exciting projects I am brewing, like a Neuroqueering Online Summit organized with Dr Sophia Graham, and a Book Club, so watch this space! I got interviewed by Jessa Zimmerman for the BetterSex podcast on one of my upcoming books, How To Understand Your Relationships, you can give it a listen here, if you like!
Also, have you listened to the latest episodes of my podcast Gender Stories? It’s a wonderful conversation with my dear colleague and friend Anne Mauro, sex therapist and author of the ground-breaking book The Colonization of Black Sexualities The episode is available wherever you listen to podcasts, including on YouTube!
I am in the process of mapping out my commitments for 2025!
Would you like me to do an event at your local, independent bookstore or hire me to speak somewhere? Please contact me directly for bookstore events or media queries, hire me through this speakers bureau, or check out my website for more information on speaking engagements: alexiantaffi.com Thanks!
Let’s support each other!
Remember: we keep each other safe, healthy and creative!
My friend Tay and his partner Mike are still fundraising to meet many of their basic needs. They are two, Black, queer, disabled trans men, trying to build a life together while navigating systemic oppression and particularly hard moments of medical issues and houselessness. Please give to their fundraiser and share as much as able, Tay has been trying to get stability in his life for a long time but being disabled, trans and Black in this country makes it very difficult! Thank you!
If you feel moved to donate to trans-led organizations, given the ongoing rise of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, check out the Transgender Law Center, which has several, amazing projects going, including an Action for Transformation Fund, as well as the Trans Justice Funding Project, which supports trans-led grassroots efforts in the so-called United States and US Territories.
My brilliant friend and teacher, Alessandra Belloni, is doing an end-of-year fundraiser to support her work in devotion to the Black Madonna. If you can support her work, please donate to her end-of-year fundraiser and share as you are able. Also, if you are in or near New York City, she will have an end-of-year concert on December 28th. I know this will be a memorable and fun event! If you are local to NYC and would like to attend, you can get your tickets here!
HEAL Palestine is a nonpolitical, nonprofit humanitarian organization with more than three decades of building programs and projects in Palestine. You can sign up for their newsletter, find out more and/or donate here.
Feminist Book Club is having a fundraiser to help them become a cooperative. Having explored this possibility for the group practice I used to own, I know that this conversion is both time-consuming and expensive. Please contribute to this fundraiser and share as able, thank you.
Please let me know if there is a fundraiser, either personal or for an organization, that you would like me to lift up in this section! Thanks!
Some things I am exploring in my free time
Please note that none of these links are sponsored. If I ever advertise something as an affiliate, I will make it very clear! Thanks!
During one of my recent flights for work, I watched the movie Babes. I love Michelle Buteau and I’ve watched pretty much everything she has been in so choosing this movie was easy. I found myself laughing and sobbing in my seat so much that I watched it again once I got home, so I could share it with my nesting partners. It’s such a funny, unflinching and surreal depiction of birth, pregnancy, and, above all, the love of friendship and chosen family. CN: there is plenty of rude language, sexual content and at one point you might not like the character depicted by Michelle but hang in there and I promise the ending is a feel-good one.
The latest season of Dancing with the Stars has had me glued to the screen every Tuesday night given that there were some incredible competitors in it, such as Ilona Maher. Seriously, if you haven’t watched it and love dance, treat yourself! Ilona dancing to Encanto’s Surface Pressure was one of the highlights for me but then Mark Ballas and Derek Hough made all my bisexual, queer, kinky dreams come true in their performance of Libertango, which literally took my breath away for 2 minutes of the dance! Let’s just say I have new dance goals now. Someone make me famous so I can go on this show before I get too old please!
During a year of ongoing horrors against humanity, the latest season of The Great British Bake Off brought some sweet and gentle family-friendly relief. Prue Leith is my favorite still. You can see why here!
The TV Series L’amica Geniale/ My Brilliant Friend came to an end this year. I loved it even though it was hard to watch at times (CN: intimate partner violence; physical violence; murder; misogyny; transphobia). The children of one of the main characters would have been my age and, even though I wasn’t brought up in Naples but rather in Rome with frequent visits to Sicily, the historical period is so well represented that so much hit home for many different reasons. Not an easy but a worthwhile watch, at least for me.
If you made it this far, thank you! I hope you have found this interesting, useful or enjoyable in some way. If so, feel free to pass this on to a friend or, better yet, pass on the link to subscribe directly! Thank you for being here!
Let’s keep opening our hearts to one another (with consent and when it’s safe enough to do so) and transform our perspectives together!
Alex