Committing
When I was first a participant in Pleasure (your) Chest I had been looking at it for weeks. I was already in some contact with Jess and saw her promotional posts as they went out, thought about it, maybe even wrote it into my calendar. But I didn’t sign up. And then the day it was scheduled to start, I messaged her asking if it was too late to join, since it was too late to go through the formal registration which had already closed.
What kept me from locking in? I don’t know, but this class is not the only thing that has played out in this way for me. I often have things on my radar that I am interested in but waiting until closer to the date to “know for sure”. This has likely been a life long pattern that has surely led to me missing opportunities. While getting diagnosed with ADHD and starting treatment 6 years ago helped, those 6 years have also been full of a lot of unpredictable things. Things that feel beyond my control.
Would my childcare plan work out, or would the care giver get sick? After 3 of the people who were first rung care providers for my kid got cancer and 2 of them died, I may be a bit overly anxious on this front.
Would my own energy levels cooperate in such a way that I would be able to participate as fully as I would like? After years of managing chronic health conditions and burnout, I may be a bit overly anxious on this front too.
Would my finances allow for something that I hadn’t really accounted for? As a person with ADHD who lives on government benefits, things can be both tight and somewhat mysterious financially, and guess what, I might be a bit overly anxious about that too.
All of these things are very normal. And I don’t see myself as a problem for being challenged in this way. AND… I know that I have and continue to miss out on opportunities because the executives required to do the function of signing up were not clocking in, or threatening job action, or had been instead replaced by the head bullies who are really good at saying things like,
“this seems a bit extra.”
“are you sure you deserve this?”
“isn’t there something more ‘productive’ you need to be doing?”
The head bullies especially like showing up in these ways when it’s about opportunities for personal care or supported growth work. I can intellectually know that this has roots in a religious and cultural upbringing that instilled “work ethic”, selfless service and some calvinistic judgement towards pleasure, especially embodied pleasure that is specifically celebrating the trans experience.
So why am I saying all this now? Well… I suspect I am not the only one. My suspicion is fueled in part by having had lots of conversations about Pleasure (your) Chest on and off line, between rounds. People who have done it have lots of good things to say about it, and lots of folks who haven’t have expressed interest, but… we are coming up to the scheduled date and we don’t have enough registrations to run the class. We can postpone, let the people who have signed up know that their payment can be applied to our January group or be refunded, but…. I’m going to be real with you- I really want to run this fall session. We took the spring off to focus on our wedding and immigration process, which means we haven’t run this course since last January. And I miss it. I want to start up on Saturday with the people who have committed and those of you who, like me, face some barriers to locking in.
I hope these pieces can help:
- payment options exist on a sliding scale and can be paid with a payment plan that allows you to stretch it out. The cost of these sessions, even at the high end of the scale come out much cheaper than a lot of other things, whether that be seeing a practitioner 1 on 1, going to a retreat or, again if you are like me, the bar tabs I used to run up in my days of partying. Spending money on your post-op well being may feel indulgent, and having the money to do it may feel out of reach. I encourage you to consider this as a gift to yourself that may help you breathe a bit fuller, stand a bit taller, and have a deeper sense of belonging, knowing that you are not alone in your experiences. If paying the lowest amount, over payment plans still feels completely out of reach, reach out anyways. We get folks who offer to sponsor participants sometimes, and if you need a sponsored spot, let us know and we will do what we can to connect the dots. If you are in a position that you could pay more, or sponsor someone else’s participation, you can do so here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/postop-care-fund-4-transmasculine-spectrum-folks
- participation is flexible. We do ask people to commit to the 4 sessions, but besides the initial introductions we do in helping create the safe-enough space together, everything else in the course is invitation based. Participants in our courses have remarked on how affirming it felt to their disabilities and neurodivergence that they felt truly welcome to be on or off camera, sharing verbally or in the chat, and exploring the activities live and in time with the group or taking the instructions to use later when it worked better for them.
- what happens is what’s needed. While there is a lot of prepared content that we try and fit in to this course, a lot of what happens during each session is emergent and flows according to the needs of the group. Sometimes that means our regular schedule gets adjusted at the last minute because something timely and pressing has come to the surface.
I want you to know I fully understand barriers to signing up for things, even things you are excited about or know would be good for you.
If you sign up here in the next couple of days, we’ll see you on Saturday. If you don’t, we won’t.
