Episode 35 - Zena Sharman: Trans and Queer Healthcare Justice

Author, Speaker, and Queer and Trans advocate, Zena (she/her) joins Josie on the podcast today to discuss justice for all and transforming the healthcare system. Zena also talks about her experience coparenting alongside three queer parents, making one family, and deconstructing the unsupportive narrative that is the heteronormative nuclear family.

[ID: A beige background and orange semi-circle. Text reads: The Intersectional Fertility Podcast Episode 35: Zena Sharman @zenasharman and Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier @intersectionalfertility.]

Zena's latest work The Care We Dream Of was published in 2021. The reading guide can be accessed on Google Docs here, and downloaded in PDF or EPUB here. The Care We Dream Of can be purchased here.

Follow Zena on Instagram and check out her website.

Previous works by Zena include: The Remedy, which you can purchase here, as well as Persistence: Always Butch and Femme, available to buy here.

Episode transcript:

This is an automatically generated transcript edited to be more readable. It may not be 100% accurate.

[00:00:00] Josie: I am 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.

[00:00:33] Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist, and LGBTQ+ health advocate. She's the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in the fall of 2021. Zena edited the Lambda literary award-winning anthology, The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Healthcare, and co-edited the Lambda Award nominated anthology, Persistence: Always Butch and Femme, which was named a Stonewall Honor book by the American Library Association.

[00:01:12] Zena is an engaging speaker who brings her passion for LGBTQ+ health to audiences of healthcare providers, students and community members at universities and conferences across North America. She's worked in strategic leadership roles in the health research sector for over a decade, including as the Assistant Director of Canada's National Gender and Health Research Funding Institute, where she worked to embed gender and LGBTQ+ health into research policy and practice.

[00:01:42] Zena is a former board member of the Catherine White Holman Wellness Center, the Holistic Center for Transgender and Gender Diverse Communities, and the Canadian Professional Association for Transgender Health. A PhD trained health researcher, Zena's graduate research focused on the intersections of gender, power, and care work in the health system.

[00:02:03] Her resume also includes party thrower, cabaret host, Go-Go dancer for a queer punk band, campus radio DJ, and elementary school public speaking champion. You can learn more about Zena and her work at zenasharman.com.

[00:02:26] Welcome back to the podcast everyone. Welcome, Zena. 

[00:02:31] Zena: Hi, I am so glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation. 

[00:02:34] Josie: Absolutely. I'm so happy to have you here. Will you share with us your pronouns and where you're joining us from today? 

[00:02:41] Zena: Sure, I use she/her/hers pronouns. And I am coming to you from the unseated lands of the Cowichan peoples, and so that is Colonially known as Duncan, British Columbia. So I'm on the west coast of Canada, on Vancouver Island. 

[00:02:58] Josie: Nice. It's so beautiful there. I used to spend my summers in British Columbia. I don't know if I told you that, yeah. So what is the story that led you to become a writer, a speaker, a strategist, and an LGBTQ+ health advocate? 

[00:03:13] Zena: When I was thinking about this question earlier, I realized it felt really important to answer in a way that connects to my lineages and my teachers and kind of how I'm showing up. So I feel like I wanna start by situating myself in the work. So I come to this as a queer femme, as a cis person, as a white person of Scottish and Irish ancestry, as someone who is in my early forties and parenting three kids. So really thinking a lot about what does it mean to care for young people?

[00:03:52] What does it mean to be getting older and just generally, really thinking about, you know, how do we care robustly for one another across all of the phases of our lives. And our generations and relationships? I'm someone who has lots of formal training, I trained as a health researcher and studied care work for many years and have spent a lot of years working at national and provincial levels here in Canada.

[00:04:20] Really thinking about, I mean ultimately how do we affect systems change? And when I think about who my most important teachers are, it really always comes back to the queer and trans community. This community that I've been a part of for 20 years now, and a place where I feel like I've learned my most important and powerful lessons about healing and health and caring for one another.

[00:04:45] And just so many rich and sophisticated ideas and practices that so rarely, if ever, exist inside of textbooks and classrooms. So when I think about the work that I do as a writer, the work that I do as a strategist, the work that I do as a speaker, it's so wrapped up also with hopefully how I can show up in my relationships and my communities and the accountabilities I really feel within queer and trans communities and across generations too.

[00:05:19] Josie: Totally, yeah. I love that. It's so interconnected, all of it. 

[00:05:25] Zena: Yeah, and I feel like, I think so much of the work that I've done. after being formally trained in health research has been a really big process of unlearning and relearning. And reckoning with all the things I wasn't taught.

[00:05:40] And so that process of just continuous, continuous learning and continuous curiosity yeah. And trying to unlearn at the same time. 

[00:05:48] Josie: Yeah. I can relate to that. I feel that way too. I feel like I've also had a lot of formal training and over the past several years has been an unlearning of all that formal training

[00:06:00] Zena: Yeah. It makes me think about how, you know, they get called disciplines in academia and like how we're being disciplined into certain forms of knowledge or certain kind of shapes we're supposed to take in order to conform to what an idea of a professional or an expert is. 

[00:06:18] Josie: Totally. Totally. 

[00:06:20] Zena: I see you really showing up like in a much richer and fuller way in the work that you do and I'm sure it's been probably a big process of like unboxing yourself. 

[00:06:29] Josie: Yes, totally. And even the word like formal training, it's like, I was just thinking that like what is that? Why is it formal? We should call it like, I don't know, colonial training or something.

[00:06:43] And then also, not only is it an unlearning, but like you said, it's noticing what was left out, what was missing. 

[00:06:51] Zena: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like, whose, whose curriculums are we being, are we being taught? Yeah. And I mean, I think a big theme that runs through the work that I do around healthcare is really about reckoning with the idea that the system isn't broken.

[00:07:05] It's working as designed. Right, I feel like we can apply that logic to many of our educational institutions, just like we can to the health system. 

[00:07:14] Josie: Exactly. Yep. So I am loving your book. I'm just, it's so incredible and I'm just in love with it and underlining everything. And one of the things that I loved reading, and we're gonna talk more about your book and a little bit, which is called The Care We Dream of.

[00:07:29] It's so, so good. One of the things I loved reading was about you and your mom. So I grew up as an only child with my single mom, and so I loved reading about your mom and the relationship between the two of you. Will you share a little bit about her story and how she inspired you?

[00:07:46] Zena: Yeah, feeling that moment of solidarity too as like only children of single moms. Which is such a specific form of relationship and, and family formation. And my mom, so she passed in 2014.

[00:08:01] Josie: Oh, so sorry. 

[00:08:03] Zena: Yeah. And her name was Lynn. And you know, I really think about her so much now as such a beloved and really important ancestor. And I feel like the older I get, the more I realize how much being her daughter really shaped who I am in the world and the work that I do and how to approach it.

[00:08:22] She was someone who really experienced some really immense trauma and violence in her life, including as a very young person. That survivorship really shaped how she showed up in the world. And she became someone who was an artist, an activist, a community organizer.

[00:08:45] I don't know if she owns a label of disabled in the sense of, as a politicized identity in the ways that it is now, I think especially. But certainly was someone who is disabled by the violence and trauma that she experienced. I've been thinking a lot, including in the work that I've been doing around like, what does it mean to be part of the legacy of my mom as a disabled survivor.

[00:09:10] An artist, an activist, a community organizer who did a lot of work that was really about documenting survivor stories and holding unjust systems and institutions to account and people who perpetrate violence, especially against women and children. So really thinking a lot about that. Something else I was reflecting on as I was getting ready for this conversation is also the gifts that she offered me as a survivor or parent.

[00:09:37] She was someone who worked really hard to break cycles of intergenerational trauma and violence in our family. She really was someone who so deeply respected children. She respected children, not just me, but all children she was in relationship with. And she listened to us and she believed us and she really cared what kids had to say and really wanted to nurture their creativity and their selfhood, you know?

[00:10:07] And I'm so grateful for that, cause I see how it shows up in my own parenting and just that fierce respect I feel for children. 

[00:10:16] Josie: Ugh, that's beautiful. That's such a gift that she gave you. 

[00:10:20] Zena: Yeah. Also to like be adjacent to, I think often like a disparity focused narrative. I think that can come up in the context of parenting in relation to intergenerational trauma and survivorship, like there was hard stuff and complexity there too, but I also feel like it, yeah, it gave her some really important superpowers as a parent that I really wanna honor. 

[00:10:43] Josie: Yeah, totally. That's so cool. Yeah, speaking of like family structure, when you and I first started corresponding, I feel like we've been pen pals, I feel like I'm meeting my pen pal today. You sent me this gorgeous piece that you wrote about family structure and how you have gone about creating your family. Will you share with our listeners about how you've chosen to build your family and how your background has informed those decisions? 

[00:11:15] Zena: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's a really big shift from that experience of being in a family of two. Your mom, you know, similar to you having that, that two person family kind of core family structure. And in my family, I think, you know, it really was just the two of us and in many, many ways.

[00:11:33] And so, for so many years of my life as an adult, as a queer person, well into my thirties, I was very convinced I would never have kids. I loved kids, but the idea of parenting felt really overwhelming to me. And specifically I remember feeling really afraid of being needed too much. And so I share that background really kind of in a light touch way to say.

[00:11:59] So today I'm co-parenting with three other queer people and we have a four year old and we have three month old twins. So things are really, really full for us in our family right now. And part of the reason I wrote about our family, you know, very much with the consent of my co-parents was we wanted to be able to share our story so that other queer folks could see what we're doing as one of myriad possibilities for parenting outside of more normative family structures. 

[00:12:31] And so basically I dated my way into this family structure. My partner Scout, we got together initially, this is a number of years ago now, like very casual, you know, this was like this cute non-binary babe that I was gonna have some dates with and it just so happened that they were trying to get pregnant, which felt very novel to me at the time, but not particularly relevant to our circumstances.

[00:12:56] They were at the time starting to try and get pregnant. Cuz they had made a commitment to co-parent with a friend, years before we got together. A Queer femme named Linden. And Linden eventually got into a relationship with someone named Jen. When I started dating Scout, they were already part of this trio of people who were committed to co-parenting.

[00:13:18] And eventually Scout and I fell in love and that opened up a bunch of different conversations, right? Cause suddenly I needed to really be in the question of like, what would it mean to become a parent within the configuration of this already forming family system. And really wanting to figure out how to do it from a place that wasn't about scarcity or fear of losing an important romantic relationship, but like really going into parenting in a way that felt authentic for me and like something I genuinely wanted to move towards.

[00:13:50] Luckily for us in some ways, it took Scout a long time to get pregnant. So that gave us lots of time to talk and think together as a family. And Jen and I eventually took on the titles of Vice Parents. So Scout and Linden are the, the lead parents in our family. Those two people who came together years ago as friends and chosen family.

[00:14:13] And what that really looks like is we all do parenting work in a very hands-on way, but Scout and Linden have a more kind of intensive role. So for example, they're the ones that are up at night with the babies right now. And Jen and I are really holding it down during the day and taking care of our older kid and really working as a team.

[00:14:34] I mean, it's busy, don't get me wrong. And also it feels like way more consensual and reciprocal I think, than I ever thought parenting and this kind of caregiving could feel. And we definitely have looked at each other many times this spring and early summer and said, oh my goodness, like, how do two parent families do this?

[00:14:56] Or reflecting on my own experience of being raised by just my mom thinking, gosh, like what if she had had three kids? And, and I know that people do it all the time, right. But yeah, it really makes me think about the ways that capitalism and white supremacy and settler colonialism and ableism and, and so many other forms of oppression have conspired to cut off and limit the forms of family that are available to so many people.

[00:15:21] And yeah, I think certainly as a white queer person, like thinking about the ways that I feel like it kind of impoverished my imagination for what family could be right's been feeling really yeah, really potent for me over these many years now of coming into this four parent family structure and being in the everyday and every night work of this together.

[00:15:42] Josie: Yeah. And it's like no wonder that you had no desire to have kids based on that old colonial structure of how things have been done. Why would anybody feel supported in going into something like that? It makes sense that you would have some resistance to doing that.

[00:16:07] Zena: And I mean, I don't know what it's like in the circles that you're in, but even within the queer communities that I'm part of, so many of the folks that I know who are parenting are parenting with a partner in what resembles a nuclear family like structure. And there's more, more of us that are in different kinds of family structures.

[00:16:23] Like I know several, three parent or four parent families or people parenting together as friends instead of romantic partners. But yeah, I think that I didn't know the alternatives that were available to me until I found myself in one. To my great surprise in my late thirties. 

[00:16:43] Josie: Yeah, that's so cool. I just feel like this is the way to do it. It's just, this feels like so much more creative and practical and where everyone gets more of their needs met than the previous way of doing it. And yeah, I'm just thinking too, like three kids to four adults, that's a good ratio.

[00:17:05] Zena: Yeah our line is we always wanna make sure we outnumber the children. To get the ratio kind of right. Yeah. And I will also say too, like one of my co-parents, the person who birthed our twins, Linden, is on parental leave full-time right now. Our older kid is in full-time daycare. So even knowing that we have this rich family structure, we still need extra support and care to be able to.

[00:17:32] Be able to do this work together, I think in ways that allow us to maintain a little bit more of that sense of groundedness and spaciousness, and feeling more resourced. And I mean, again, to me it just speaks to some of the lies were fed about what is possible. Or the really unreasonable expectations I think that get heaped on so many parents and caregivers and societies that so often I mean absolutely limit and in some cases completely police people's ability to care or to parent.

[00:18:03] Josie: Totally. And then we think we're failing. Yeah it's so hard to make it work in those parameters. 

[00:18:11] Zena: Yeah. And it's interesting, like none of us in our family identify as a mother. Like even though everyone in our family, you know, my partner's non-binary, the rest of us are people who are women.

[00:18:22] And I think about like, what does it mean to do mother work, like outside the identity of mother. Like my kids call me Zizi. And I sometimes feel like it almost gives me more permission to be an imperfect parent, than if I were trying to hold myself like solely to the standard of like a certain kind of story of like what motherhood is supposed to be.

[00:18:47] Josie: Totally. And I think I cut you off a little bit. You said your kids call you Zizi. Is that what you said? 

[00:18:52] Zena: Yeah.

[00:18:53] Josie: So cute. Yeah, that's such a good point that that does take the pressure off. Everything that comes with that word mother is just not there and you have your own role to dream up and be whatever you want it to be.

[00:19:07] Zena: I mean, yeah, I feel like some of the stories have wormed their way under my skin in terms of maybe like the standards I still will unconsciously hold myself to. But yeah, it does feel freeing. And yeah, I feel like sometimes I get to be more like a dad in some ways, which again, is like just such an interesting way of like traversing across sort of gender roles. Especially as a person who strongly identifies as a femme in terms of my own gender identity. 

[00:19:34] Josie: Yeah. That's so cool. I love that. So I would love to talk about your books. I love this, all the work you've done through your writing. Will you share a little bit about each of the books you've written and edited and what makes them different from each other? Is there an evolution among them? 

[00:19:51] Zena: Yeah, for sure. And it's wild for me to think about the fact that, so I've, I've edited or co-edited now three different anthologies, so collections of stories by queer and trans people.

[00:20:03] And that has happened over a more than 10 year period. So really thinking about that body of work. I love anthologies because they really bring together and honor people's voices, the stories and expertise that really lives in our communities and in our bodies. And I think about what Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, who's another writer, and someone who's edited amazing queer anthologies, like she talks about anthologies as interventions.

[00:20:33] There's some other folks I know who co-edited an anthology called Refuse. It's Hannah McGregor, and Erin Wunker, and Julie Rak and I mentioned them cuz they talk about anthologies as community formation and care work. And so I like think about that idea of intervention, community formation and care work as something that threads together all of the books that I've created or, and, and co-created.

[00:20:58] And the very first one was called Persistence: Always Butch and Femme. So that one was published back in 2011, which is more than 10 years ago now. And so it was something that I did in collaboration with Ivan Coyote.

[00:21:12] And the two of us really wanted to just make a book that was an offering to community at a moment when there was a particular kind of resurgence of femme and butch identities and wanting to bring together stories that reflected a bigger diversity of those identities. So moving beyond maybe more binary notions of what butch and femme could be or like what desire or identity or gender could look like in relation to those identities.

[00:21:38] And several years later I edited a book called The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Healthcare. So that one came out in 2016 and there's always long gaps between my books cause I'm a writer who also has a full-time day job. And so I try to move at a pace that feels sustainable as also a worker. 

[00:22:00] And that was a book that actually really had its genesis in me getting sick of giving presentations to healthcare workers and medical students that were like PowerPoint slides littered with statistics about why they should care about queer and trans people's lives. Ugh. And try and give us half decent healthcare.

[00:22:20] And I thought, I don't wanna just be using PowerPoint slides for the rest of my life because where I think the real power is, is actually in telling our stories. And so that was a book that brought together more than 30 stories from queer and trans people, writing as patients, as community members, as students, as healthcare workers.

[00:22:42] And it was a very much about documenting the way the current system harms people, as well as showing possibilities for what really rich care and accessible care can look like. And then The Care We Dream of, which came out in 2021, was really the product of me thinking and learning for five years after the Remedy came out.

[00:23:05] In particular, doing a lot of learning about disability justice and prison industrial complex abolition and like really deeply engaging with the work and scholarship of Black, Indigenous and People of Color, disabled people, you know, people from communities disproportionately affected by mass incarceration and really thinking about what those ideas mean in relation to health. 

[00:23:27] Fundamentally about wanting to answer the question in some ways. Like, well now what? We know who the system is harming people. So what do we build instead? And yeah, I think importantly, like how do we change the frame from which we approach that so that it's not just about tinkering around the edges of a broken system, but really allowing ourselves to sink in more transformative ways about what liberatory care could look like.

[00:23:55] It's a bit different in that it's a book that has contributions from 15 people across North America, and then a number of longer essays by me. So as someone who'd only ever edited anthologies, it was a big experiment in finding my voice as a writer and putting myself in a little bit more.

[00:24:12] Josie: Okay, cool. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I'm just loving The Care We Dream Of. It's so, so good. And also a couple of the folks in there have been on the podcast. 

[00:24:24] Zena: Absolutely, I know. And the reason actually that I originally learned of your podcast and then have become such a fan and an avid listener was listening to the amazing conversation you had with Sand C. Chang and Sand had pieces both in the Remedy and in the Care We Dream of, and I'm such a big fan of Sand's work and so yeah, it's really nice to see some of those interconnections.

[00:24:45] And I think you did an interview with Sean Saifa Wall too. Yeah. And I just love, love Saifa so dearly and, and Saifa similarly had a piece in the Remedy and also in The Care We Dream Of. So yeah, some of those like entwined relationships and connections for sure. 

[00:25:00] Josie: Yes, so cool. I know. Now I wanna read the Remedy next. That sounds incredible. I was looking through like the contributors to that one the other day. I was like, wow, what a cool compilation of folks. 

[00:25:11] So as a fellow writer, I'm always so curious about what the writing process was like for you specifically with this book. You mentioned you have like a day job and then also that this was like the first book that you wrote yourself more into. Did it take you two years to write it? What was the process of writing this book like for you? 

[00:25:28] Zena: Yeah, I always joked that putting together a book is like kind of like an elephant pregnancy, which I think also takes about two years. And I imagine feels like just as uncomfortable as it might be to be a pregnant elephant.

[00:25:40] I mean I'm not a pregnant elephant, I don't know. But, I mean it was interesting with The Care We Dream Of, because when I was putting together The Remedy, it was like just in the wake of my mom dying and actually then, not long afterwards, my marriage at the time ending. So really in an intense period of transition and loss and grieving, but also really wanting to create this offering for community.

[00:26:11] And I did a lot of work in the ensuing years around like moving through that, that grief and learning to really come back into my body more and like shift some of the practices, particularly like forms of workaholism that were very easy and instinctive for me to reach for. That really didn't feel sustainable for me when I was working on the Care We Dream Of including as at the time the parent of, you know, just one young kid.

[00:26:36] Like I knew that I couldn't just disappear from my family into a project the way. I had more capacity to do when I was like living alone and just taking care of myself. And I felt scared of backsliding really into kind of unhealthy work patterns for me. I mentioned that because one of the things I did really early in the process of the Care We Dream Of and, and it was so important and such a gift, was to reach out to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, who is you know, a writer who I deeply, deeply admire and a friend.

[00:27:09] And Leah was my writing coach for the whole process of working on the Care We Dream Of, and as well as an amazing piece in the book called Cripping Healing. And that was super important because what it really allowed me to do was work with someone who helped me think about what would it look like to root my own writing practice in disability justice and how to find like pleasure and accessibility in the process. 

[00:27:36] Which of course was like, still an immense amount of work and like very hard and stressful at times. But it felt like such a different entry point into the work. And I conceptualized the book before the pandemic started. It was the summer of 2019 when I first started working on it.

[00:27:53] But so much of the work that I did on the book happened during the Pandemic. So I felt like that really called upon me even more to really bring an ethic of care, like trauma-informed practice, disability justice into not just how I was working with myself, but really importantly, like everyone that I was collaborating with.

[00:28:14] I purposefully delayed the publication of the book by a season with my very wonderful publisher's enthusiastic support cuz I wanted all of us to just have more time to just metabolize the experiences that we were in inside of the pandemic. I used a lot of ritual as well and like practices to really ground me in the writing.

[00:28:36] So early on I really came into a core intention for the book. And use that, you know, I had an altar for the book that I had above my desk with pictures of queer and trans ancestors who I learned from and, and hope to honor through this work. And whenever I would sit down to write, I would light a candle.

[00:28:56] I would say that intention out loud. I would connect with that, that lineage. And really trying to come into the practice of writing in a way. allowed me to touch into more of like a sacred practice and grinding out work. So yeah, I feel like those were really important interventions in my own writing process that I hope like really shaped what the book became.

[00:29:21] And I think really impacted the experience of creating it and hopefully for the people I collaborated with, allowed it to feel really good. Cause I didn't want a book about health and healing to feel extractive or harmful to anybody who was working on it. I really wanted to feel enlivening to the people who were part of the project and like an act of love.

[00:29:43] Josie: Right, yeah. That's so cool. I'm picturing you writing in front of an altar or near an altar and it's like then what you're writing becomes an offering. 

[00:29:54] Zena: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:29:56] Josie: That's so cool. And when you say you approached the writing process from through the lens of like disability justice, that's so fascinating. And I'm trying to think of how that would look in terms of like, kind of just like you said, like making sure everyone, no one's like suffering in the process. 

[00:30:13] Zena: Yeah. And like some of it was just about like really going slow. And not coming in with a false sense of urgency being flexible as much as possible with, with the people I was collaborating with and myself being able to support people to find extra help and support when they needed it.

[00:30:34] So, like, for example, there was a contributor whose piece that I knew needed some extra editing. And because of the identities that that person was bringing to the piece, I really wanted to pair them with an editor that had those shared identities. And so with their enthusiastic consent, I found someone who I knew they knew and had a relationship with, and who was really happy, to be paid, to be a person, to help that individual shape their piece.

[00:31:02] So I think also trying to get a sense of like, what would each person need as opposed to like a one size fits all. And then like, trying to apply it to myself too, right? Like trying to be more slow and self-compassionate and to know when to push through and then to know when to ease off, you know, and that answer of reaching for ease is like so often the right answer.

[00:31:30] Josie: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. And then also it feels like there's a balance there to like, cuz I'm just thinking that's part of the reason why like my book that I want to write has never happened because I'm like, it needs to feel easy for me and it needs to feel like I'm not suffering myself, but also making others in my immediate circle suffer because of that.

[00:31:52] And so it's like, man, it's tough to strike that balance of like making it happen, but also having it feel easeful. 

[00:32:01] Zena: Yeah. And I, I like wanna honor that too, cuz I feel like for me there's like seasons in my life, which means sometimes are actual, seasons out in nature. But it, I think it's also like seasons or phases and like that feel really generative and where I feel like I have a lot of that creative capacity.

[00:32:20] And then other times when I don't, like, I didn't write for six months after The Care We Dream Of was finished cause I needed to, I needed to let the field be fallow for a while. I have a new project that I'm working on that like I desperately wanna dive into. And I know it's not the time. 

[00:32:37] I have so much happening in my family life that I can carve out, you know, kind of little pockets of time to write, but it's not the moment when I feel like I can really immerse myself in a project in a way that will like, honor the bigness of the next piece of work that I wanna do. So trying to be okay with that too. Which, you know, sometimes feels easier than others. I'm not , I'm not claiming any sort of magic formula here. 

[00:33:03] Josie: Yeah, totally. So I'm wondering with The Care We Dream Of, it's just, it's so vast in what it encompasses in terms of all the aspects of what our healthcare system could look like for queer and trans folks, and then also how it fails us. When you were compiling these stories, what stood out to you in terms of something you hadn't thought of before or something that surprised you to learn?

[00:33:30] Zena: I feel like the core revelation for me in some ways that really shaped the book as a whole was really just a reckoning with the ways that I had really internalized a limited and I think a limiting perspective on what was possible for LGBTQ health. And I say that as someone raised by an activist. You know, who've spent many years like deeply immersed in social justice communities and doing community care work and activism and things like that.

[00:34:01] And I think in spite of that, it was really an opportunity for me to pull back and think about the ways that. I think some of my formal training and then also just some of the mindsets that I feel like still are present and even some of the most wonderful work around LGBTQ+ health. Like I write about it in an essay in the book called Regrowth and Ruins, and I talk about this idea that I feel like, I think too many of us are trapped in a mindset where we feel like healthcare that respects our dignity and humanity is like the pinnacle of what we could possibly expect as LGBTQ+ people.

[00:34:37] In sort of as the baseline. And so if we move away from that as the pinnacle, and if it becomes the baseline, I think there was so much power for me in really thinking with the amazing offerings from sinkers and organizers for prison industrial complex abolition, right?

[00:35:00] Because I feel like abolitionists are so visionary in being able to think beyond an existing system. And we pragmatically think about how do we create change in the now and then how do we organize and dream together towards something vastly different than what's in front of us? I think about Mariame Kaba, who in the book, We Do This Til We Free Us offers that instead of asking what do we have now and how do we make it better, she invites us to ask what can we imagine for ourselves and the world?

[00:35:35] So like that, that kind of entry point for me, you know, really was where the notion of the Care We Dream Of came from and this, this invitation to be in that process of dreaming with the people that I was collaborating with and all of the plants on the cover of the book. That was done by a really amazing QTBIPOC artist named Tiaré Lani who basically worked with this notion of like, what can grow back in the ruins of old systems.

[00:36:04] And so all of the plants on the cover are among the first in this bio region where we both live to grow back after a forest fire. So like really thinking about like, what, what can we grow together? What can we imagine together? And that really was, was I feel like what the process of working on this book offered me.

[00:36:24] And just really shifted the way that I approach the work that I do and, and the conversations that I'm interested in having. Like, I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone that we are worthy of survival. Yes, We are worthy of survival, which I realize is an immensely important topic of conversation, particularly in the present political moment when so many people's lives and access to care are being imperiled.

[00:36:47] Like I don't wanna minimize that. And I also really want to orient maybe to a different perspective, I think, in terms of our capacity to imagine what's possible. 

[00:36:58] Josie: Yeah, totally. Because it's like, that's part of the, like we can't get there if we can't imagine it. Yeah. When you shared that with me about the plants and the flowers on the cover of your book, I was just like, floored.

[00:37:16] I remember thinking not only like that you're someone that does something with so much intention and artistry and creativity, but I was like, wow, that that symbolism is so beyond cool to think about like, what can grow back after a forest fire and like, what can we grow? Yeah. Starting from what would we wanna see?

[00:37:38] What do we want? Yeah. 

[00:37:40] Zena: Yeah. And I think like that you know, thinking expansively about kinship and our relationships with the natural world, like even one of the plants on the cover of the book in particular, the salmon berry, which is a berry that grows here in this part of what is now called Canada.

[00:37:55] Like I really feel like I'm friends with salmon berry. It was one that that used to grow near where my family lived, and I really got to know the berry and I felt so excited to know that it was one of the first ones to grow back after a forest fire and was like, I just need salmon berry on the cover of the book.

[00:38:14] Some of the other plants grow near where our family lives now. And so even just feeling that sense of kind of relationship and familiarity yeah, it feels like, it feels important to me again in terms of thinking expansively about like, what does health and healing look like? And when we're imagining these possibilities, like how do we, how do we think about this?

[00:38:34] This world that we're in, this planet that we're on. Alive, like non-human beings around us as well. 

[00:38:40] Josie: Yeah. And also like what naturally thrives? What's supposed to be here or what's in connection with what the earth wants? Like what's, you know what I mean? It's like thinking of it in terms of plants that regrow to heal, what's been demolished.

[00:38:58] It's like those plants are gonna grow here because they can thrive here. So it's not like we're forcing something else on this thing. Like it's not like we're taking something that didn't work and then forcing something else on it. You know what I mean? 

[00:39:11] Zena: Yeah, yeah. And it makes me think about like, the way that sometimes things grow in sequence.

[00:39:16] Like there are some things that have to grow first before something else can grow, or that some things grow, they thrive better together. I feel like there's a, like such a lovely way to extend that, to like what we can co-create for our own health and healing in communities and in the places we're part of.

[00:39:35] What grows where you are and what thrives together where you are will look different from what grows together and thrives together. Where I am. So like how do we do this work also in like deeply and really rooted ways?

[00:39:48] Josie: Yeah, totally. That's so cool cuz yeah, it's gonna look different for every part of the planet. It's gonna, it's gonna be different plants and then also that order, it's like, yeah, there's like a first line of defense almost like the triage, you know, people that come in and just like, okay, and then there's the next phase and the next phase. Yeah. That's so cool. 

[00:40:08] Zena: You made me think of like, you know, the wonderful like plants and vines with big, big thorns that are just like yeah, we're gonna keep you out. And sometimes like we need that first line of defense in our communities. 

[00:40:20] Josie: Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I love that. I love this metaphor. We can keep going with it. So I would love to talk about like how queer and trans folks, especially those with multiple oppressed identities, how we can begin at reimagining, recreating our healthcare system as we're having this interview.

[00:40:42] Roe v Wade was just overturned in the States, and I read this powerful quote from Dr. Ayesha Kahn, who's on Instagram @wokescientist. And it says, you are part of building the solutions. You are part of building community infrastructure. The state cannot crush a decentralized rebellion because they cannot target us everywhere, all at once.

[00:41:05] But we can be everywhere, all at once. And that just really felt so powerful to me cuz it's like that vision too we were just talking about of like the plants regrowing, but it's all different plants regrowing in the ways that make sense for that part of the earth. And so it's like, I, I pictured that as all of us doing this work, we're all doing this work in different ways and different parts of the world.

[00:41:27] So what are some ways that we can be everywhere, all at once? Where do we start? Like as queer and trans people going through the healthcare system, but also as like healthcare providers? Like what are some starting points? 

[00:41:40] Zena: Yeah. I mean it makes me think about, and this is actually a language I've learned from listening to your podcast is saying Black, Indigenous and People of the Global Majority.

[00:41:48] Instead of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. I think about that and the people of the global majority. Right. And so like, I think of that and I think of how many disabled people there are in the world, I think of how many older people there are in the world, how many children and younger people, how many queer and trans people, and more and more folks identifying in these ways every day.

[00:42:13] And I think about this and name this because I feel like there are more of us collectively than there are of them. We're already everywhere all at once. So like naming that, cause I feel like something I think so much about always, and especially in this moment is like, how do we practice deep and active solidarity?

[00:42:36] With one another, you know, and across communities particularly among communities of people whose bodies are often rendered as disposable or harmed, you know, and had immense immense violence perpetrated against them by systems and the people inside of them. And also in terms of that, that idea of we are everywhere all at once.

[00:42:58] Like collectively, I feel like queer and trans people are part of such a rich and expansive legacy of collective and community care. as are so many other communities, right. That we can learn from. And so that connection, I think, to ancestries and lineages, you know, whether it's one's own ancestry or like a larger, kind of like a political ancestry or a genealogy of empowerment which I think is wording that I remember learning from Aurora Levins Morales.

[00:43:27] So thinking about that. Some of the work that I did while writing the Care We Dream Of was reading history that, again, I hadn't been taught, right. Learning about really important community health activism of groups like the Black Panthers or the Young Lords really important care practices that grew up in queer and trans communities.

[00:43:47] There's a historian named Jules, Jules Gill Peterson, who's a trans woman of color and she studies trans do it yourself, you know, and, and like from a historical perspective, like looking at these many generations of trans people and trans women like organizing their own healthcare and caring for one another.

[00:44:06] So I really think that looking at those legacies and contemporary practices of communities and people who already know how to richly care for one another, like especially outside of institutions, is so important and outside of formal systems. And I think like in the present moment, I think about writing that I've seen there's a couple folks who have a piece in the Care We Dream Of, that's called Thoughts on an Anarchist Response to Hepatitis C and H I V, it's Alexander McClelland and Zoë Dodd, and they have another piece that they wrote that's about drug user solidarity in the face of a toxic drug crisis.

[00:44:46] And they talk about this idea of taking risks as a path to survival. And I think that that's an important call to action, including for people that are working inside of formal health systems right now. Because I feel like such an important question for many people inside those systems to be asking themselves is like, who am I accountable to and how can I not become complicit in the violence of these institutions?

[00:45:11] And so, I think looking to examples like, there's folks I know that are abolitionist healthcare providers here in Canada who co-created a zine with people who either have experienced incarceration or are currently incarceration. That's really about like how healthcare workers can engage in abolitionist practice inside the health system right now.

[00:45:33] Like the work that interrupting criminalization is doing around beyond do no harm. So like, again, extending that abolitionist analysis into the work that healthcare providers do. So again, I really think like there's these conversations I'm seeing on social media right now about some healthcare workers feeling like, oh, well I'm gonna have to start reporting people seeking abortions to the cops.

[00:45:57] Or similarly, I'm gonna have to report the trans children of cis people or whatever. In the state, because we're gonna apprehend them as has been used as a tool of state violence against obviously so many racialized communities over the years, and disabled parents and, and children as well.

[00:46:13] And it's like, no, you don't, you don't actually have to become an agent of state violence. Full stop. You don't. And it's like there's not a correct, like the correct answer to that question is never, yes. I want to become an agent of state violence, like things that we're moving towards. It's the wrong answer. 

[00:46:33] Josie: Right? Ugh. Totally. Yeah. And I'm thinking about one of the essays that I read recently in your book, and I'm forgetting the name of the person, you'll know who it is. But how they were saying that folks with disabilities are like mentoring other folks of like how to thrive, how to, like hacks, different hacks to use.

[00:46:54] And it's like, yeah, where else are you gonna learn that stuff? That's what happens naturally is these communities who are you know, oppressed, they, they support each other and they come together and they, you know, mentor each other and, and like, here's what worked for me. Try this, go here, do this. You know?

[00:47:14] Zena: Yeah. And it's, it's it's Leah who I was talking about earlier, Leah, I know in that instance is, is I think probably talking about a phrase that was coined by Stacy Park Millburn, who again, is now a beloved disabled ancestor to, to many people. And it was Stacy who gave the idea of Crip doulaing. 

[00:47:33] Josie: Yes, that's what it was. 

[00:47:34] Zena: Yeah. So like how to, how to crips, how to disable people like doula, like invite in newly disabled people into disability community. And you know, I've seen important conversations about that, including in the context of the Covid Pandemic, right? 

[00:47:49] As a mass disabling event, and so many people experiencing the health impact of long covid and you know, self-organizing in communities, but also being welcomed in by people who have already been living with disability and chronic illness and saying, Hey, like, we've been here all along, like, you're welcome now. 

[00:48:06] You know, here are ways in which we can help you to survive and adapt, to life inside a fundamentally ableist society. 

[00:48:15] Josie: Right. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, that's, I love that term. That's such a cool term. 

[00:48:21] Zena: Well, and it's interesting, I know you've had conversations about death doulaing on the podcast before and I'm doing a death doula training next month. And it, and it's interesting cause I've been thinking about it. The reason I feel drawn to it, you know, in part is because I've done my own kind of complex grief work and end of life work around caring for my mom at the end of her life. 

[00:48:45] And have tried to offer some of that knowledge really informally to my loved ones and my community. And so I'm doing the training, like really just as a way to have more skills to bring into the community care that I hope to offer in the communities that I'm a part of. Like, not as a profession at this point, but just really more about how do I get better at doing this and like caring for the people around me.

[00:49:06] And I've also been thinking about it in the sense of like, This preoccupation I have with like systems transformation and systems change. And I feel like maybe part of my work is actually about like helping to death doula, the kinds of systems and structures that need to die. 

[00:49:23] Josie: Oh my gosh. 

[00:49:24] Zena: Yeah. It's been kind of percolating on that recently. 

[00:49:26] Josie: I love that. That's so cool. I've never heard it spoken of in that way. That's, and in that way it feels like everyone needs to be a death doula right now.

[00:49:36] Zena: Yeah, absolutely. And like how do we, how do we help things that need to die, die. How do we help birth and create things that need to be alive and thrive and you know, what do we need to compost, you know? Help kind of churn it into something new, right? 

[00:49:54] Josie: Yeah, totally. Oh my gosh. And that makes so much sense cuz in the work that I've been doing over the last few years, I am like, I'm finding myself in birth working communities. And I'm like, I'm not a birth worker, but why am I among so many birth workers?

[00:50:10] And it's like, that makes so much sense because it's like we're birthing this new reality right now. It feels like it anyway. And then also we need the folks to help the old systems die. So like this, this intersection of like doulas. You know, like doulas are like helping in every regard this, this transformation that's taking place right now.

[00:50:33] Zena: Yeah. And like as someone in a family where we've been really lucky to, to be receiving support from some amazing doulas recently, including, you know, at birth and postpartum. Like I think about also like the profound accompaniment that a doula offers and just the -ment. And sometimes it's like really active tangible care.

[00:50:52] Sometimes it's sharing the expert knowledge or the skills that you've gathered through training. Sure. But also so much through community and experience. And I think also like just that, that being there with you alongside you. 

[00:51:05] Josie: Right? Yeah, totally. Just that presence. Yeah. So will you, do you have a vision of what the healthcare system could look like? And if you do, will you share it? I love the question that you open your book with, which is like, what if queer and trans folks enjoyed going to the doctor? I love that question. I keep thinking about it. I'm like, what can I do for my patients to like, make this more enjoyable for them? I just wonder if you have a vision, like what our healthcare system could look like for, for queer and trans folks, and especially those with multiple, you know, multiple oppressed identities.

[00:51:40] Zena: I feel like the, the answer is, is not a vision, right? It's all of our individual and collective visions. And so that feels exciting to me is what can we dream together and how can these dreams be similar and be different and be rooted in the places we are, the webs of relationships that we're a part of, and that we're tending the rich identities that we have.

[00:52:04] Right? And like knowing that like the care that I dream of as like a white, cis woman in my forties, right, who happens to be queer is not gonna be the care that someone who has many different identities for me is dreaming of. And that's super important too, right? Like this is not about one size fits all. Ever. It's so much about like that richness and the robustness of like being rooted in people's identities and desires.

[00:52:30] And, you know, I have a conversation in the book with Dawn Serra, where we talk about this notion of pleasure centered healthcare and like, again, the notion of like, what if healthcare actually felt pleasurable? Like not just, okay, it's all right, it was tolerable, but like, what if it actually felt really good? And like, when are we in healing spaces like that?

[00:52:51] So, you know, I think about that. And when I think about, you know, really the care that I dream of, I think a really important part is seeing communities be so richly resourced to provide their own community lab forms of care and healing. Like even earlier today, I was reading this wonderful article that was sharing what at that point I think had been sort of a, kind of talked about but not broadly known piece of trans history.

[00:53:17] Still fairly recently of like. A couple of trans women who basically created their own DIY medical clinic and were doing orchiectomies, like on a farm in the Pacific Northwest, in a very affordable and affirming way for other trans women. In the Orchie barn is what it was known as. And so that story, and I love the examples that I know of from the present day and from history of the ways communities, you know, queer and trans and other communities have led and co-created their own forms of care and healing.

[00:53:47] So I want so much more of that to really be in the hands of communities. And like, not in the hands of like white executive directors in the nonprofit industrial complex, but like really in that like richly community led, community owned community visioned kind of way. So that is exciting to me.

[00:54:07] You know, I'm, I'm excited about like what it could look like to have healthcare and healing, that's like really fundamentally rooted in disability justice. In anti-racism, in decolonization. Like really thinking about like, what, what could that look and feel like, and like, what could that offer to people?

[00:54:27] Not in a way where we're trying to replicate some sort of like disciplining or sort of normative, punitive notion of what healthiness or healthfulness looks like, but actually one that's really about like people's aliveness and thriving and. I wanna see more like really, really old queer and trans people.

[00:54:45] And I wanna see so many more joyful trans children, queer children, you know, children who are being honored and celebrated in like, the fullness of their identities and self expressions. However, those may change over their lives. 

[00:55:00] Josie: Yeah, totally. Yeah. You're so right. I think that that notion of having it be one vision is so rooted in white supremacy,

[00:55:11] Zena: Yeah. Like, you don't need my white lady vision . And I say that like, it's, it's one of the reasons why I have intentionally worked with anthologies as a form, right. Is like I wanna, I wanna take up what I hope is like a right sized amount of space and really to be in conversation, like with community and to, to dream and imagine together, and then to build together.

[00:55:34] Yeah. Because that, that feels like really enlivening work too. 

[00:55:37] Josie: Yeah, totally. And it's gonna look so different for everyone. I love it. Well, I have one last question that I like to ask all my guests. In Chinese medicine, our fertility is referred to as our essence. So the more we're able to get in touch with who we really are, or our essence, the more access we have to our fertile potential and our creative power.

[00:55:57] Do you have any personal practices or rituals in place that allow you to connect with your essence or what I call your Whole Self? 

[00:56:04] Zena: Yeah, I was really thinking about like, what does this look like for me and my life now, right? Where my days feel really full, with the work of caring for our kids and, and caring for my co-parents as we care for each other, working a full-time job.

[00:56:19] So. I feel like I'm, I'm needing to be like quite intentional about how I find those spaces. And a really important one for me as like an Avowed morning person is waking up before everybody else and even just having half an hour at five in the morning to like drink a cup of coffee, redo a little bit of writing.

[00:56:41] And I feel like that allows me to like nourish the part of me that's a writer and that loves to think and create and be in dialogue with the work of others and build community like through, through this work that I do as a writer. So that feels really important to me. And you know, something else I'm doing that feels really nourishing is,

[00:57:01] when my co-parent was getting close to having the twins, I was noticing just like having some complex feelings coming up about parenting that I could pretty quickly diagnose were about like old stuff. Cuz I've done lots of therapy over the years and so I found a new counselor, you know, and she is so wonderful.

[00:57:18] I just have phone appointments with her every couple weeks and she's someone that has a really, like an embodied kind of form of practice. And so just that invitation to be in my body with someone who is a really compassionate witness. Feels really like an important resource to be able to continue offering to myself, especially through a time when things feel, yeah, feel, feel, you know, joyfully, intense, and sometimes overwhelming in terms of what we have to do in any given day.

[00:57:46] And how many other people's bodily fluids I happen to have on me in any given moment. 

[00:57:52] Josie: Yes. Oh my gosh, I love those answers. I can really relate to the half hour before everyone else wakes up thing. I do that too, and it's like, I hate it in the moment. And then I, but then I get up and I'm like, ah, like I have this whole house to myself. I can make my coffee. Yeah. It's so beautiful. 

[00:58:11] Zena: Yeah. Like creeping around in the morning trying to not wake anybody up. And if I hear any peep from my older kid on the monitor, I'm like, ok, sleeping just a bit longer. Yeah, . 

[00:58:25] Josie: Exactly. Zena, I have loved this conversation so much. How can people find you, support you? Where should people go? 

[00:58:36] Zena: Folks can check out my website, which is just zenasharman.com. I have a newsletter that I send out. I write a letter once a month. It's the last Friday of every month, which is always just kind of a window into what I'm thinking and feeling. And because I'm a big nerd who's always reading and listening to podcasts, I always share some of the things I've been listening to and reading that month.

[00:58:56] So that feels like a place where folks can connect, and you can find me on Twitter and on Instagram I'm more active. So definitely happy to connect with folks there as well. I keep my Instagram locked, but that's really just to keep the trolls out. And so I enthusiastically welcome anybody who seems awesome, and I'm sure all of your listeners are.

[00:59:17] Josie: And is it at Zena Sharman? Is that right? Okay. Cool. Oh, yes. And as a recipient of your emails, I can, I can attest to the wonderfulness of receiving your email, so I'm gonna go sign up for your newsletter as well. 

[00:59:31] Zena: Oh, thank you. Yeah, and I mean, I love writing letters and cards, right? Like I still write a lot of physical letters and cards, and so this is one way to be able to, to share the same kind of moment in time with a wider group of people.

[00:59:44] Josie: I love it. Ugh. Well, thank you so much, Zena for being here. It was just a lovely, wonderful, inspiring conversation for me. I loved it. 

[00:59:53] Zena: Yeah. So did I. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be in conversation with you as a, you know, longtime listener, first time caller

[01:00:03] Josie: Thanks for listening to the Intersectional Fertility podcast. To get customized fertility recommendations based on your Whole Self Fertility Method element, join my mailing list at intersectionalfertility.com and get immediate access to my two minute quiz. If you like the show and wanna hear more, tap subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and please leave us a review.

[01:00:27] It really truly helps. The Intersectional Fertility Podcast is hosted by me, Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and produced by Rozarie Productions with original 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.