Episode 1: The Phoenix, Fertile Essence, and Queer Liberation

Josie talks about their journey to queerness, reclaiming their Latinx heritage, uncovering their authentic self through their Fertile Essence, and their mission to recenter queer, trans, and non-binary folks in reproductive healthcare. Welcome to the Intersectional Fertility Podcast.

[ID: Josie is standing in front of a mural with their hands in their pockets, smiling, and looking off into the distance.]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

I'm Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and this is the Intersectional Fertility Podcast, where ideas and identities intersect to deepen our understanding of fertility and ultimately, our whole selves.

Welcome to the first episode of the Intersectional Fertility Podcast. Today I want to share with you the story of how intersectional fertility came to be and what led me to change the focus of my women's health practice. First, I'll read my mission statement, which you can find in the about section on my new website, intersectionalfertility.com. Then I'll offer some commentary and expand on certain aspects of my mission statement, and at the end, I'll answer some listener questions.

Coming up in future episodes, I have some incredible conversations lined up with queer-trans and non-binary folks and the reproductive health world that you won't want to miss and tons of useful content for you to deepen your knowledge of your own reproductive health and have a successful queer fertility journey. I can't wait to go on this podcast journey with you. And stay tuned for details at the end of this episode about how to enter our giveaway, to celebrate the launch of the Intersectional Fertility Podcast.

In 2016, I upended my life and held my young children close as I navigated coming out and leaving my 10-year cis-hetero relationship. Thinking back to that time and knowing how close I came to not wanting to be here anymore, instantly magnifies my gratitude for the life I've created today. I often compare my story to the mythical Phoenix bird who set fire to its own nest so it could be reborn. Intersectional Fertility was born out of that burning nest. As I woke up to more of who I am, I simultaneously woke up to the identity of the US and the world and became painfully aware of my role in the women's health industry. As a fertility acupuncturist, my new path, and calling emerged loud and clear to create liberatory and intersectional spaces for queer, trans and non-binary folks, especially people of color in reproductive healthcare and everywhere.

Footnote: the term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, to describe how the intersection of a person's identities like race, class and gender complicate the ways in which they are oppressed.

I am a mixed race, non-binary queer fertility acupuncturist, writer, intersectional feminist, parent, and partner. In order to create safer spaces for queer-trans non-binary people of color, as a white Latinx person myself, it's my responsibility to come to terms with, and to heal the duality of the colonizer and the colonized within my body and bloodline so that I don't perpetuate the harming cycle. And instead, contribute to the liberation and de-colonization of queer-trans and non-binary people of color.

This is no small task and one that I intended to never complete. First and foremost, I'm a queer reproductive justice advocate.

Footnote: queer reproductive justice is a concept and term coined by my mentor and teacher, full spectrum birth worker, king yaa.

Queer reproductive justice encompasses racial justice, disability justice, sex worker rights, access to pleasure, access to food, environmental justice, indigenous rights, land sovereignty, fat discrimination, gender identity rights, sexual orientation rights, and so much more. Put simply, queer reproductive justice addresses how different oppressions intersect to impact people's ability to reproduce.

Since 2008, I've been supporting people with wounds to conceive with the help of traditional Chinese medicine. The most revolutionary concept in Chinese medicine is that of one's reproductive essence; your essence as both your fertility blueprint and your authentic self. Therefore, the more true you are to yourself, the more access you have to your fertile potential, your creative power. This little known teaching of Chinese medicine blew my mind and heart wide open when I first learned about it. How I interpreted it; be you above all else, and you will restore your own personal creative power.

Inspired by this ancient knowledge I created and put into practice the whole self fertility method, which calls forth all five elements to be healed that are within each of us; fire earth, metal, water and wood., Each element contains physical and emotional attributes that contribute to your integrated whole self. And I walk you through how to heal and bring into balance each one, in order to conceive in my online program, Fertile.

I am dedicated to the reparation of the whole self. I'm invested in the restoration of ancient systems of medicine and healing. I am determined to be a valuable member of our queer community or qmmunity.

Footnote; qmmunity is a term I learned from my teacher and mentor, king yaa.

I'm a fighter, worker and student of the queer reproductive justice revolution. I am clear about recentering queer, trans and non-binary folks and the reproductive healthcare realm. Not only have we always been here, but we were once leaders in reproductive health. It's not about being inclusive. It's about bringing justice, recognition, and respect back to our community. Our liberation leads to the liberation of all. “There is a significant difference between ‘all are welcome here,’ and ‘this was created with you in mind.’” Marcus Harrison-Green. Qmmunity, all of this was created with you in mind. Welcome.

Hi friend, I just read my new mission statement or my manifesto, and I'm just going to go through it a little bit and explain different pieces of it that I'd like to elaborate on and things that people have been curious about that have asked me about. And then, I'm going to answer some listener questions after this. So yeah, on this new iteration of my reproductive healthcare practice and online presence is called Intersectional Fertility, and it includes this podcast, the Intersectional Fertility Podcast, and my new iteration of my online program, which used to be called fertile woman that I ran online for years and years and hosted many people from all over the world to help conceive with that program. So the new iteration of that program is now called Fertile instead of Fertile Woman, and it centers queer, trans and non-binary folks instead of cis-hetero women, so, big change.

And actually, one of the listener questions that I received was, I'll just go ahead and answer now, since we're kind of talking about this subject, “is how has coming out changed the focus of your business,” which I thought was a great question. It changed the focus of my business entirely. Yeah, as I came out and really woke up again, it definitely wasn't for the first time I woke up again to my queerness. What came up with that was also waking up to my gender and other people's gender and what gender is in general. Like what it's all about and how it got here, and you know, I really started diving into what gender means and where it originated and how this concept of gender kind of got upon us through colonization. And, you know, with that, I've had to kind of in the back of my mind for a long time. You know, every time I was addressing or speaking about women's health; part of me was always thinking "What about people who don't identify as women, who still have these reproductive organs that need care and attention? You know, what about those people? And how are they feeling about being excluded from this conversation of women's health?"

So that was sort of a seed that was planted a long time ago and it just grew and grew. And as I came out, it grew stronger and really ended up changing the whole focus of my business and my practice, to now I don't call it Women's Health anymore. I call my practice Reproductive Healthcare. And I'm really excited to launch my new fertility program for queer, trans and non-binary folks to support them in conceiving and creating the family that they desire.

Something else that I really woke up to was my heritage, my ethnicity, and my race, being of a mixed race descent Latinx and white. That was really something that confused me for a long time. And growing up in white spaces was pretty disorienting as someone whose lineage is Mexican. So that was also part of my journey was waking up to what that meant and what my relationship is to whiteness and to privilege, and how people that I want to serve, what their relationship is to whiteness and privilege. So, that's really played a big role in reclaiming my own relationship to my own heritage - things that have been erased. I just enrolled in a course through the University of New Mexico to study Traditional Mexican Folk Healing called Curanderismo, which I'm very excited about to learn more about. I actually know very little about it.

So part of what my journey has been learning how to figure out my positionality in terms of what my privileges are and how to show up in certain spaces, when to be more vocal, be more present, take up more space and when to step back and let people who are experiencing more marginalization than I am to speak up and let their voices be heard. So that's been really interesting to explore and get more clear on the ways in which I can inflict harm on people and communities based on my privileges and my relationship to whiteness and the whiteness and my bloodline, and the ways that I can heal and restore this connection to my Mexican heritage as well.

I talk about this concept of a person's essence in Chinese medicine, and that is something that really I think changed the trajectory of my life and my business. I learned that concept from Randine Lewis, who's a wonderful fertility expert in the Chinese medicine world. And I was learning from her, she really dive in deeply to ancient texts and Chinese medicine and unearthed some really... I thought very profound teachings of Chinese medicine that I had not heard before. That really seemed to resonate with what I was experiencing at the time and what I was going through. Her teachings really focused on perimenopause and sort of the changes that happen within people who have female reproductive organs and start to approach menopause and the shifts that happened with them emotionally, which I felt at the time, that is what was happening to me.

Looking back, I'm not sure if that's what was happening to me necessarily, or if it was that I was coming out and really struggling with how to come out as a queer person. But regardless, it really resonated with me what she was saying. Basically that, you know, your essence is, you know, in Chinese medicine, your essence or your kidney essence is what is referred to as your fertility. It can be called your fertile essence or your kidney essence, or just simply your essence. And that is like your... how I explain it to my patients, it's like your fertility blueprint. So it's like this is what dictates how old you'll be when you get your first period, how many eggs you're born with, how old you'll be when you go through menopause, sort of the robustness of your fertility, how easy or hard it will be to conceive. All of these things are sort of already there within your kidney essence when you're born; it's almost like pre-fated thing.

So what Randine Lewis brought to that was that another interpretation of your essence is literally your essence kind of who you are. So it's, you know, she kind of brought this new way of accessing that fertility that you have is actually to being more of who you are or to get more in touch with your essence of you. And so, I started playing with that with my patients. You know, a lot of the patients I work with, we ended up kind of delving into some emotional, mental, emotional, spiritual realms, you know, not just the physical. And I started having a lot more conversations around that kind of topic, around, you know, if patients were struggling with their fertility and struggling to get pregnant; where else in their lives were they abandoning themselves? Where else in their lives, did they not have good boundaries? Where else in their lives were they not speaking up for themselves or doing what they really wanted to be doing? So what were some tweaks or changes they could do in their lives that could bring them closer to themselves?

And so many of my patients had wonderful stories about making these small and sometimes big life changes that then really freed them up to get pregnant. So that became, it kind of organically grew into what I now call the whole self fertility method, which basically just takes into account the entire person, your entire personhood, you know, all of who you are. Because according to Chinese medicine, you really can't access the fullness of your creative potential without bringing into balance all of the systems, all of the organ systems, all of the elements. So, I walked through that in detail in my online program Fertile.

You know where I've ended up is really clear space about wanting to recenter queer, trans and non-binary folks and the reproductive healthcare realm. I feel like that is my mission and that's what I feel really passionate about. And I say recenter because, you know, the more I learn about even just nature and biology is that, you know, queer, trans and non-binary have always been a part of nature and we've always been here and it's not something new, it's not this new generation new wave thing. It's like we've been here all along and we've been represented in nature all along. But we were intentionally systematically removed from the conversation and from the access to our own knowledge of our own bodies and our own healthcare. It wasn't very intentional by white supremacy, by patriarchy, by colonization through colonizers. Yeah, it was not by accident. It was on purpose.

So that's why I say recenter instead of center for the first time. And that's why I say that it's not about being inclusive. It's not like this was that women's health needs to suddenly be more inclusive of all these fringe communities. It's actually the other way around that, you know, these "fringe communities" used to be the norm and we were all here. And so, it's time to recenter the reproductive health conversation to include queer-trans and non-binary folks and especially people of color. And as is what's true, whenever you recenter marginalized communities, everybody benefits, you know, everyone you know, it usually corrects the system in more ways than one. So, it's a great model to follow in many respects. So that is what I'm here for; I'm here for the liberation of queer-trans and non-binary folks and especially people of color.

So now I'm going to answer some listener questions. Thank you all for submitting your questions; I asked on Instagram. I answered one already, which was “how has coming out changed the focus of my business.” That was a good question. And now I'm going to answer another one. “What's the number one misconception people have about fertility their own or their partners?” It's such a good question. I think the number one misconception people have about their fertility is that it's immutable, that their fertility is what it is and there's nothing they can do to change it. And that is so far from the truth. And what I always like to remind people is that our cells are constantly renewing and our cells make up our entire body. And so, whatever we are doing, thinking, feeling, feeding our cells and our body is making a new body for us constantly.

And I think it's something like every, a high percentage of every cell in our body is reproduced, I think it's close to a year, every year, but a high percentage of our cells reproduce even quicker than that. And it does take about three to four months for an egg cell to completely mature. So if you are using your own eggs or your partner's eggs, or wherever your eggs are coming from, you can look at the previous three to four months of what that person was doing in terms of nurturing and nourishing their bodies and their minds and their souls. And that egg quality is kind of a representation of those previous three to four months. So, there's sort of a belief that you can really - I guess, at least in the fertility world, that you can really influence sperm quickly, but that eggs are much harder to influence in terms of egg, quality, and egg health.

But it's really not true; you can really have a lot of influence over egg quality, especially through Chinese medicine and herbs and dietary changes and tweaks that can really improve the quality of egg cells. So, yeah, that's a good question. Another question is “what do people get wrong about TCM?” So TCM means traditional Chinese medicine. What do most people get wrong about TCM? This made me think of... I think the, the comment that I hear the most often is when people tell me that they believe in Chinese medicine as if it's a religion. And it always makes me chuckle on the inside. I don't chuckle out loud because I don't want to be rude.

But yes, Chinese medicine works whether or not you believe in it because it's not a religion; it's a system of medicine. It's thousands of years old and it's been around longer than most of the systems of medicine on earth. So yes, you don't need to believe in it in order for it to work.

“Who is your favorite queer person dead or alive?” Okay, this is a great question. My favorite queer person is my fiancé, of course. And I can't choose just one; I'm going to choose several. I definitely - there are so many teachers that I love. My teacher king yaa is one of my favorite queer people. Adrienne Maree Brown is an activist and author who does amazing work. Roxanne Gay, love her writing, and her wife, Debbie Millman. I love Chani Nicholas is incredible; one of my favorite astrologers of all time. Gabby Rivera is one of my favorite authors. I love her podcast. Who else? So many. I love Kate McKinnon is one of my favorite comedians to watch. Yeah, there's so many I could keep going, but those are what I can think of off the top of my head.

“What would you have told yourself 10 years ago?” 10 years ago I was 32, and I was just having my first child. Ooh, yeah. I would tell that self, I would say, "Hang in there that the next six to eight years are going to be really, really difficult. And that it's going to be completely worth it. So do the best you can and you're going to get through it and it's going to be glorious."

To celebrate our launch and thank all of you amazing folks joining this community, we're doing a giveaway. So this is how it will work. Leave a written review of the Intersectional Fertility Podcast on your favorite podcast platform before 11:59 PM, Mountain Time, on Saturday, April 17th. Five lucky winners will be announced on our next podcast on April 24th, and they'll each receive an Intersectional Fertility mug. Good luck!

Thanks for listening to the Intersectional Fertility Podcast. You can find us online at intersectionalfertility.com and on your favorite podcast platform. If you like the show and want to hear more, tap subscribe. And please consider leaving us a review, it really truly helps. The Intersectional Fertility Podcast is hosted by me, Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, with audio production by Bryce Anderson-Gregson and music by Jen Korte.

All content offered through The Intersectional Fertility Podcast is created for informational purposes only, it is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.