SA
What strikes me about your work is this devotion to survivors and I feel similarly. Yesterday, I woke up feeling so heavy… I just wanted to sleep, which is very unlike me. Then when I saw the news, I already knew on some level. To contend with the reality that our bodies, and I speak as a femme person, our bodies are not safe. Something like a mass shooting that targets women (even if there are other casualties) has such a nefarious component. So your work is ever important today and that’s why we are here. Also, it’s why we have to keep going.
E
Thank you, first and foremost, for inviting me. The previous conversation we had before this recording made me so pumped to meet you. It feels like we have already worked together and I really look forward to this relationship blossoming.
My name is Eri Guajardo Johnson and my pronouns are she/they. I am biracial. My dad is white, predominantly of German descent and my mom is of Mexican descent. I am queer. I am located in the mid- west, the Detroit metro area which is located on Anishinabe and Native American lands. And I am a birth worker, a rape crisis peer counsellor with San Francisco Women Against Rape. I also provide, in terms of my own individual practice, holistic peer counselling utilizing a foundation of indigenous healing modalities. In terms of my own practice of two different kinds of indigenous healing modalities, I use that foundation to support folks connecting to their ancestry and connection to their mind, body, spirit connection – however that means for them – and I work with survivors and their significant others. I guess, two other things..
Sometimes I think I wear too many hats…I also specialize in supporting survivors of sexual violence through the birth experience. I provide birth consultations which allows folks in four to six sessions. We go in depth in preparing folks for birthing – whether it be a home birth or a hospital. Helping folks brainstorm strategies and connect to their resilient practices. To minimize the chance of being re-traumatized through the intensity of birth and reproductive care. Helping folks connect to the tools can be really helpful in having an empowering experience. The last thing is, I am also the founder of Birth Bruja which is an online educational platform devoted to intersectional liberational de-colonial approaches to birth work, healing and life.
SA
So many hats and I am so glad you wear all of those hats because we need all this work and I am so grateful to you for doing it. I am curious to what – and only talk about what feels comfortable and what feels safe for you to do so. But was there a moment for you that clarified this work that is the trajectory of your life. Because there is a theme.
E
I wouldn’t say a moment but a time period… I am a mixed-race person and my parents divorced when I was two. So I have had very two different worlds all my life: ethnically, socio-economically, culturally. I also am queer and for a long time it was me being in two worlds at the same time. I wasn’t queer enough to be counted as queer but I wasn’t straight enough to be with folks calling me straight. Just like how I wasn’t brown enough. I wasn’t comfortable in white spaces. So that in betweenness in a lot of realms. Gloria Anzaldua, an activist and an author, talks a lot about that in her work being mixista, a mixed person belonging, connecting to everywhere but belonging to none and nowhere. So I mention that because flash forward to my young twenties. When I started to do work in the rape crisis movement I also started to rally engage my own healing journey. A healing journey as a survivor of sexual violence of multiple assaults in college. Also as someone who has on both sides of my lineage, sexual violence is everywhere. Like murder, incest, domestic violence – all the nasty horrible things – all those threads tie into my lifetime here and now. So therefore, spirituality was a really important part of my political education and vice versa. Then flash forward a little bit more, I studied Ayurveda which is from India – an indigenous modality. I also studied folk Mexican healing traditions. Ayurveda was the first indigenous modality that I was invited to learn. I want to pause and acknowledge this lineage specifically because I studied for four years at a school called Vedica Global under Archarya Surya and that healing and spaces allowed me to unpack the complexity of Catholicism and how I wrote off so much of my Mexican heritage because of the toxicity of Catholicism, that I thought it was one and the same. Also the complexity around gender based violence and gender oppression with the machismo culture. It was tied up together and through the study of Ayurveda and learning how to honor ancestry and lineage in the blood and spiritual realm gave me that spaciousness to unpack that. Also, towards the end of that study — that program was four years -– at the end of it, I realized I cannot authentically show up in this practice without doing the work of acknowledging my own ancestry and uncovering all of those practices as well.
My own identity exploration and my own journey around healing is very much wrapped into decolonizing work. So years after that I studied at California Institute of Integral Studies in their Women’s Spirituality program. I was lucky and privileged enough to get my masters in Women’s Gender and Spirituality and Social Justice. A lot of my writings were on the intersections of identity, reclamation work, decolonial strategies and specifically spiritual and political strategies for ending rape. I feel like my whole life is a trajectory of weaving a lot of threads into these intersections. I feel like my identity forces me to continue to do this work. I am continuing to understand myself and my context in society and my positionality. So, I can’t get comfortable. It’s constantly changing and so I have this opportunity to revisit again and again what it means to be doing this work.
SA
My parents are Bangladeshi but were also mixed but that’s also confusing because of Partition. I never wanted to think about it and I have always had a lot of shame about not having answers and feeling really blurred as a person. Then understanding, coming to the earth, coming to the land…all these things that I have never understood has suddenly opened something immense in me. I am so grateful that you have named all of these things. Because I think not having all this awareness allows all this unconsciousness and more unconscious relationship in connection. I think what we need now more than ever – even though I hate that statement – we really need connection. The work that you do in a way is creating that connection. A connection where people don’t normally find that in birth work. I mean, I am sure people find it in birth work, but the people you are working with – survivors.
E
The concept of connection is, honestly, the backbone of spiritual (and I say spiritual specifically instead of religious) relationship, as well as political work. “Reproductive care” is a professionalized realm. So when we are talking about professionalized anything, we’re talking about something that is most commonly positioned within the colonial perspective of professionalism, right? Which is mind based. It’s spoken in English. You need a lot of letters and acronyms after your name. You need a full page of trainings. It’s very capitalistic, exploitative, competitive, blah, blah, blah, blah. Similarly when people are talking about (in a professionalized context) when they are talking about a decolonial work, what I find is a lot of folks in a totally well intended and it totally makes sense… but a lot of times especially folks of privilege approach this like it’s a linear process. Like decolonial work or intersectional work like it’s a list of checkboxes that we can do. What happens is, again, Westernized thinking, colonized thinking, has us thinking very narrowly, very linearly. So, we miss that everything is about connection and relationship, right? So, first and foremost, it’s about us knowing ourselves. Just like how you mentioned the complexity of your ancestry, one of the things that came up for me was that I identify as a person of color with white privilege. Everything is in comparison to whiteness in the United States. Even for someone like you and I, for us to be talking about decolonial work or intersectional work has to begin with you and I understanding who we are and our lineages of marginalization. As well as our lineages of privilege. Only from there can we know what integrity looks like, what accountability looks like.
SA
We were just talking about this earlier. When you have people who are good hearted—dedicated and devoted to justice—but are unwilling to look at themselves to see how they might be perpetuating harm… I am constantly humbled by how much I don’t know, on an individual level. I’m not a perfect person, I’ve made mistakes but I also vow to keep getting better and whole so I don’t cause harm but that also means I’ve had to get stronger boundaries. Lots of people project shit so it’s a constant path that requires diligence. What happens is that people are willing to criticize others but not themselves, so people lose themselves in ego. But this kinda work requires a really healthy ego.
E
Yeah but I think that culture though, that mainstream culture of not engaging in this work I think speaks to the toxicity of A) colonialism, but B) That this country was founded upon trauma. Then on top of that, the complexity of how folks got here—whether it was a chosen immigration or not—so it makes sense that mainstream culture is based on survivorship. Which is scarcity, disassociation and these legit trauma responses that have become implemented into our family dynamics, our cultural expressions, and so we can talk until we are blue in the face describing the power of meditative practice, the power of slowing down and building connection with yourself and others. But that’s not going to mean anything to someone who has this built-in fear that everything will be taken away from them at any given moment. And that’s not even talking about those who have experienced acute violence in this lifetime—not even ancestral shit.
SA
And the layers in this. When you are a survivor, a child sexual abuse survivor as I am, nobody takes you seriously because sure they’re like “Oh that sucks” but they won’t really understand what it feels like in your bones, because how would they know how deep that wound is? They can only go by their own metric of what they understand about their own lives. I think people look at survivors and go “shut up” or they want what you have without understanding or wanting to carry all that you’ve carried to get to this point. Nobody has any kind of framework for understanding what it feels like to be betrayed by your parent on that level. You know? And to live with that your entire life. And then, inevitably what happens is that in these situations, according to my therapist, when one parent betrays you the glorification of the other parent becomes normal. So you create narratives in your homelife to create this binary that you can survive. So, of course what happened yesterday—the murder of eight people in a massage parlor in Atlanta, six of them being East Asian women, and sex workers. There are so many layers that as a society we are unwilling to hold at all times. We have our own limitations. But I think this time is necessitating the value and importance of hearing everyone’s story. It goes back to what you were saying about that means you have to engage with yourself and your privileges. You have to actually see yourself wholly and complexly and all the things that you hold. Then you can actually hold someone else’s full self as well.
What does intersectional liberation and decolonization work look like to you?
E
Thank you for asking that question. It’s something that I have had feedback in the past but it’s been awhile so I like to clarify why I say…it’s part of my business tagline: intersectional liberational and decolonization. First and foremost, yes, they can all be interchangeable in a lot of ways but they are also very different. So intersectional, for example is when one acknowledges the full realm of possibility. In the realm of reproductive care, it’s not enough to specialize in one dynamic. It’s important to educate ourselves on the full spectrum of what reproductive journeys can look like. Right? As a birth worker, it’s not enough for me to read books or read or listen to podcasts that center around people who have chosen pregnancy. Right? Like they intentionally wanted to get pregnant and have maintained their pregnancy and have beautiful birth experiences and are shiny and blah blah blah. Yes, that can happen and that’s very powerful. And, I would be doing a disservice and harming so many people if I stopped there. I needed to learn and listen to stories where this pregnancy was intended, unexpected or it’s really complex where they got pregnant and perhaps they found out their partner has been cheating on them, now they don’t know. Now this pregnancy is just a reminder of that pain. Of that infidelity. Folks who were raped and were pregnant and decided to keep it. Or they didn’t feel they had any options but to keep the pregnancy. Or folks, like myself, where the infertility journey has been around for so long. For me personally, we actually decided to stop trying to have kids. But I have worked with so many folks where that grief of the infertility journey carries over into the pregnancy. Even though they have their goal of conception, it’s just a living example of all the miscarriages that came before. It’s super complex. That’s just one example of what intersectionality can mean. And also intersectionality is led by understanding the connection between identity and experiences. So understanding a birthing person in a Black body is way more likely to have experiences of microaggressions in the doctor’s office/OB care. They are way more likely to be not taken seriously in the birthing room during their labor when they are talking about their pain levels. They are way more likely to be perceived as problematic and confrontational if they are (during a contraction) getting pissed because a nurse is talking to them. Meanwhile someone white and light skinned will be written off as, oh that’s just a person in labor being normal. That’s the thing about intersectionality is there’s not just the full spectrum of what’s possible, but tying and correlating experiences with identities and vice versa.
The next word is liberational.
I was really frustrated with being in a lot of activist-y where folks come together with others in connection with our pain and our wounding, that’s where we can put words to the struggles we have been feeling inside, what happens is sometimes folks are hyper-fixated on liberation that specifically impacts them, the way they have been suffering that what happens is when they talk about their own liberation they end up envisioning the same cycle of hierarchy, but with a different person on top. So, for example, Feminism. A lot of women, specifically in the sexual violence movement, rightfully speak about patriarchy, toxic masculinity and offer a lot of legit critiques that often involve male identified people. But what ends up happening is people just start to talk shit, saying stuff like, men are trash, masculinity is trash. And while the anger is legit, I get it, but that does not speak to liberation. That doesn’t acknowledge how one in six people who were socialized as male will have experienced sexual violence by the time they are eighteen. This doesn’t talk to the full spectrum of gender. How there are a lot of masculine identified – whether be trans or non-binary folks who just — masculinity is part of their experience and part of their identity so where does this leave them? So what ends up happening is just a regurgitation of a hierarchy but this time putting women (white women, particularly white cis women) at the top.
What is now known as US and Canada is founded upon the exploitation of land and peoples and specifically the exploitation of Black and indigenous peoples. Knowing that it all goes back to that point, we can see how anti-Blackness and anti-indigenousness contributes to so many societal systems of oppression that we have now. So by focusing and prioritizing on Black and indigenous liberation we are able to focus on liberation for everyone. We can’t talk about Black Liberation without talking about prison abolition. We can’t talk about indigenous liberation and indigenous sovereignty without talking about environmental justice and sustainability. And we can’t talk about either of those communities without talking about access to healthcare in this country. Or, access to food, right? Knowing food deserts and food swamps are something that are really big issues within urban and rural areas as well so …yeah, by centering that it gives us a strong foundation for the intersectional approach and the liberational approach I previously mentioned.
SA
There’s a lot that you’re focusing on, that you’re thinking about, that you’re clarifying, that you are working towards. And I thank you for all of your explanations. And I think of this in my own life when I use words such as liberation I often wonder if I even know what I am talking about. So it’s always useful and helpful to talk to somebody about what does this word mean? – can we deconstruct together and communally and not for individual gain, which is the way of capitalism. But people don’t want to necessarily think too deeply. I see that a lot right now, this over saturation of the “right language” but it’s still within these toxic dynamics and behaviors. True liberation cant be supremacy over another person or another people. However, anger is an important thing to talk about in these spaces as well. You know, the righteous anger. To go back to working with survivors’ narratives and the complexities of narratives of pregnancy. For me, I am thirty-one, and I’ve always wanted children but after my abuse clarified a little bit more for me, I realized I didn’t actually know if I could carry children. So your work has created this reality that I didn’t know existed. That people are thinking of people like me and thinking about my body and what would happen to my body if I were to get pregnant.
E
Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing all that. I know there are a lot of folks who are going to hear your words, and be like, oh shit, I never thought about that. Or folks who are (and I am sure you are aware) there are a lot of folks who are survivors but because of memory repression and also how normalized sexual violence is in our society – that a lot of folks are survivors and have that trauma encoded in their bodies or haven’t identified as survivors or they haven’t recognized that experience as violence. There are a lot of folks who are survivors who have given birth and it was intense and confusing and all these things and then years later unpacking that experience for the first time and drawing those connections together.
SA
Oh my God, wow, to do that in reverse?
E
Going back to one of the powerful things about indigenous medicines that I appreciate is how it acknowledges that time and space is not a linear thing. That we can be grown ass people and actively be healing our child selves. We can be in this lifetime and in this body and be contributing simultaneously to the healing of those who came before us and the healing of those who come after. And yes, I am talking about blood lineage, however, we are not just blood and bone, right? Spiritual lineage as well, whether that be queer communities or spiritual communities, or even the community of residing on a certain land. Therefore, it’s never too late and there isn’t a step one and a step two.
(She/Her, They/Them) is a queer, bi-racial, trauma-informed birth worker, rape crisis peer counselor, holistic wellness coach, community organizer, and host of the Birth Bruja Podcast.
For over 13 years, Eri has been dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual assault (with an emphasis on serving marginalized populations); has studied indigenous Mexican and Indian healing modalities to learn about mind, body, spirit, & communal wellness, herbalism, and food as medicine; and has taught and organized countless classes and community events centered around the healing and empowerment of those most marginalized in our society.
Eri’s emergence into birthwork became a natural extension of her passion for intersectional, liberational & decolonial work. They believe that the immense power of birth and reproductive care can be harnessed as a mechanism for individual and collective liberation. Eri’s services include birth support, birth consultations for trauma survivors, holistic peer counseling for sexual violence survivors, & community education.
The Birth Bruja platform is a manifestation of Eri’s passion for building community & cultivating intersectional, liberational & decolonial approaches to birthwork, healing & life. Join us for monthly gatherings & recorded workshops that span the full range of this transformative work.