I’m Christina Dietrich and this blog is where I write about the things that are important to me. Things I find in the compost. Things that burble up from the disowned parts of my body.

I was born, raised, and live in the American Pacific Northwest—so I’m a product of colonialism, settlerism, racism, patriarchy, genocide, sexism, consumerism, disembodiment, whitewashing, sexual violence, classism, privilege, and entitlement.

I’m also a product of focused inter-personal work and community healing. The voice I’ve developed here is a direct result of the healing process that started in 2008 when I met my love, co-parent, and life partner Brendan Perkins; in 2009 when I met my birth doula/soon-to-be embodiment teacher, Nekole Malia Shapiro; and in 2011 when I began working the process of Holistic Peer Counseling.

Nothing I write is wholly my own. Sometimes I choose the material I’m going to focus on; sometimes Nekole gives me homework; sometimes my meditation practice shows me what’s next. Everything I write here first gets worked through with my peer counselors, both individually and in our online group; in my meditation practice; with Nekole; and primarily with Brendan.

The life Brendan and I have chosen to live with one another blends the boundaries of family, relatedness, work, intimacy, and therapy. We are both active in peer counseling and bring its practices to our everyday life, while also working with individual psychotherapists. We live and breathe this work, share its distinctions, intermingle our insights, and hold one another through both the storms and victories that come about as a result.

This is the hardest work I’ve ever done. Giving voice to my body’s experience feels like one of the most important things I will ever do. This is the practice of embodied writing and I couldn’t do it alone. I stand within an amazing community of people who are committed to seeing and holding one another.

I am here to see and tell the truth. I can do this because of the strong mirrors and shoulders of the people in my community.

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Embodiment

The primary lineages I’m practicing come by way of:

• Siddha Yoga as taught to me by Nekole and her mother, Kathryn Julia
• The meditation practices of Dharma Ocean as taught to me by Reginald Ray

Racism / Intersectional Feminism / Classism

I currently heed primarily Black femme/queer voices to get clear about existing power structures and how they impact the reality we live in. Why? Because these are the voices that to my ear are speaking loudest and most clearly to power, without apology and with great courage.

• Rhizome Syndrigast Coelacanth Flourishing
• Ijeoma Oluo
• Ladyspeech Sankofa
• Michón Neal
• DiDi Delgado
• Alley Valkyrie
• bell hooks

Colonial Spirituality

I was raised in and baptized by various sects of the Christian/Protestant church including Baptist, Nazarene, and Assemblies of God; the tenets of which I do not espouse, but have unavoidably informed many of my perspectives.