Abby Loza and Tonya Dawn Recla on Creating Kind Spaces for LGBTQIA Youth

Tonya Dawn Recla:

In every era, every culture, and every nation individuals challenge the status quo for an opportunity to creatively self-express, and make it possible for all of us. Thank you for having the courage to share you with us and inviting us to take a deeper look within ourselves toward what’s possible. We love you and love each other. Perfect. Well, thank you Abby for being here. And that’s the container with which we’re opening this up as part of our feature on celebrating courageous creativity with pride. And we’re talking today about creating kind spaces, because Abby works in a beautiful organization called One N Ten that works with you will identify in this community are curious about it, or looking for safe spaces to sort of figure out even what this means and who they are and how they identify. And that’s sort of my umbrella term. So we’ll get into it. Here is more in a minute, Abby about what One N Ten, does and your work with them. But let’s start with you. What are your superpowers? And how do you use them for good?

Abby Loza:

I feel like my superpowers are empathy and kindness. And I use them for good on a daily basis, especially here at One N Ten. But just as entering the world as a human, you know, right when I leave my house in the morning, I think about how I can be kind and how I can just bring other people’s other people into a space of kindness.

Tonya Dawn Recla:

Brilliant, brilliant. I love that. And I love the creative thread we really see here at the institute a thread a common thread in creativity. amongst most of the social upheaval, most of the uncertainty upheaval in amidst all of that is this threat of creative expression, creativity, and the undeniable realism realization that that does tie us into the bigger creation conversation, which is where we connect with each other at a human level there. There’s a beautiful thing that gets cultivated when we allow for spaces to invoke or cultivate creative expression. And when we understand that through energetics, that the entirety of our creative expression makes up what’s possible in our experiences. And so this goes well beyond arts and crafts at school. And in cultivating that spark, we’re actually teaching people how to better understand themselves each other the world around them how to create with the energetics and there’s this whole world that the youth are sort of playing in that’s much more sensitized environment that a lot of our folks, our older generations are completely obtuse to, it’s a really fascinating thing to observe. And in the energetic space, we look at it as sensitization in your world, you know, in the world, in the conversations of youth and how they identify, you know, we’re looking at variability factors. And what we’re seeing is like, they’re not going to stop randomly identifying however they want to, like the individuated creative expression is out, we know how to keep like to continue evolving it. Like I don’t see this going back into any kind of binary, right, like, like, I just don’t see you all voting for that, like these younger generations that are no, maybe I’m making assumptions, but I’m assuming that you’re in a younger generation if and that and that it is different, right? There’s a different whole way of being and it’s creating a lot of confusion in these conversations. And that’s what’s creating a lot of the backlash, I think that we’re seeing right now. And at the heart of it, folks, we have to understand, these are children. These are our youth. These are our future. And they don’t know anything, right? They don’t know anything; they don’t know us carrying on shoddy construction that we made or boxes that don’t work for them. They want more creative expression, they want to know themselves, and they want the space to be able to do that and not be afraid. So Abby, talk to us a little bit about how we can support things like what One N Ten are doing. I mean, I, it’s such a huge conversation with people in so many spaces, let’s assume we’re talking to the folks are like, yeah, I get it, I want to I really, really want to tap into that humanity. But I don’t even understand this stuff. Like I don’t even get it. Like we allowed me to sort of walk us through the whole pronouns. And this and that. Because even being in the conversation since the 90s, it’s totally different now. Right? And so how can the parents, how can? How can those around these youth really support their walks where we don’t even understand half the time the world that they’re living in?

Abby Loza:

Yeah, definitely, I think the main thing that we all need to remember in general is to just not resist change, that change is good. And we have to be adaptable and be prepared for change. Because I don’t know about you. But I know for me when I finally found the language of queer and pansexual, it was so like a world opening for me to finally have something that was like, Oh, my gosh, this is who I am. This is what I identify as. And it was wonderful to have that language. And I think that if people can just recognize that sexuality, identity, becoming who you are, is very, very fluid. And that’s something that we need to be able to allow our young folks to do, it’s just going to create a better world all the way around, if people can feel comfortable figuring out who they are, and not having it be oh, well, no, the tests have fit into this box, and the test fit into that box. So I think the main thing is anybody that wants to get involved that wants to be an ally, or maybe has a young person in their life, that is figuring out their identity, or maybe struggling with that is to just be adaptable, and be open to change. You don’t think you can change your pronoun usage, I promise you that you can, you don’t think that you can understand all the flags or all the identities, I promise you that you can. And honestly, you don’t have to understand all of them, you need to understand the one that’s going to affect the young person in your life. And if you want to go bigger than that, then by all means, I implore you to educate yourself, because there’s so much wonderful information out there. But also at One N Ten. I mean, the main thing that we do is just make sure everyone feels safe, no matter what you identify as no matter if you want to come today, as dressed as one gender, and come the next day with a different gender identity, that is totally fine. And we want that to be welcomed. We want folks to know that it is a journey. And not everybody is going to be right there with you because you’re experiencing this journey firsthand. So for the young people that are hearing this, have patience with the people that are trying to learn and for the people that are trying to learn it, be open to change and be willing to get your get a little bit uncomfortable in it. And know that this isn’t something that has anything to do with you. This very much has to do with the young person in your life, the young people in your life. So it’s even more than that. I mean, I can tell you, there are people, I don’t know what generation you’re in. I’m 45. So I’m not a super young generation at this point. But I definitely feel like even folks, my age and older are still figuring things out. So I think the main thing is, is just to embrace that change and welcome the education that is all around you. Because we’re I mean, we’re happy to do it, we provide a training program that will literally blow your mind, I learned something every time I take it. And it just will really give you the language that you need to respectfully go into a conversation or be in a relationship with somebody that identifies within the community. But also if you’re just an ally and want to learn to be a strong ally, it’s a great way for you to just get that language, language is so important.

Tonya Dawn Recla:

Really and I love it and that’s sort of what makes us uncomfortable that we’re gonna say the wrong thing we’re gonna do the wrong thing. And it’s okay you know I love that you said it’s okay to get uncomfortable it’s you know, that’s part of our work, and superpower experts are to show you the techniques to work through the discomfort right not to run away from it. We’ve got to clean up these roots folks. And here’s the beautiful thing like these programs didn’t start with us like we’re all polluted with it so it’s kind of like alright, let’s just face facts say okay, we were all kind of our hands are all kind of dirty in this being complicit and complacent the field moves through all of us so cleaning up ourselves first allows for us to first feel good about who we are right back into that sort of, okay okay, we got this right. We are creative beings, like come on. Now we can do this right. And then what is even this right What was the fear, to begin with, and then you can kind of start shining that light a little brighter and say I can extend that kindness out to others, right? Because it’s always available to us. So sharing it doesn’t deplete it, it actually strengthens it in the coolest way possible. So it’s like, why not use it? Right? It’s I love how you’re speaking to thank you so much for the guidance on the allyship. Right? Because in and I think the continuum, right, he goes, takes us back to the Kinsey research of like, we’ve known this, right, we wanted to create space as a long time ago, we started creating those boxes. Now, like think after the pandemic, and everything else, we’re finally ready to see that they were working right, the systems weren’t working for everyone, they probably weren’t working really well for anybody. But we all just kind of accepted them. And I just think enough of us finally said, No more like I’m done pretending, let’s go actually create something that sounds fun and works for all of our creative expression. Because I believe at the end of the day, we all want the freedom to evolve, right and to become more holy who we are. And that’s what we learn from the youth. That’s what we learn from each other. Right, right from it, we take, we get to take it beyond this time kind of thing. And that’s what Neva taught us, bringing her into the business with us when we were when she was two, it was like, wait, holds up. Like if we just kind of removed this whole kind of age construct thing, what happens here and to be to dance in that fluidity within family unity all while still like doing the training and providing the frameworks and all of that stuff, because that’s necessary to. And so I love this dance that you’re doing in the midst of so much chaos, so much uncertainty, so much for him. And it’s like, like the ugliness that’s coming out, like, like, please, please, please hear that you’re hearing these words, like, have patience, because this is in response to just how brightly everyone’s shining. And so just shine brighter. And I know it’s not an easy thing to suggest or and it’s certainly not even fair to ask. For those who can like do you know, shine as bright as you can find your places of support? Right? Abby? Where can we send them if they want to connect with One N Ten?

For the best listening experience, download the Superpower Network App