Hi, I’m Denise

I work with women and gender non-conforming femmes of color both personally and collectively to:

heal interpersonal and intergenerational trauma
create new consensual culture and interdependence
decolonize our wellness and worthiness.

I do this through group programs, monthly healing circles, 1:1 somatic healing work and community-building trainings.

My site is currently moving through a transition, do come back later for more about me and what I do.

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Your privacy will always be protected.

@denisedimensional

Y’all, feeling your grief, anger and rage DOES N

Y’all, feeling your grief, anger and rage DOES NOT mean you are not healing.⁣⁣
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It does not mean you are behind, or back where you started. ⁣⁣
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Today on the Embodied Truth-Telling call we talked about our reactions to Breonna Taylor and dissociation around intensity. ⁣⁣
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Feeling your feelings means that you are not dissociated from your power.⁣⁣
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Read that again.⁣⁣
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When we are overwhelmed, our nervous system can only take so much before it collapses into dissociation/ freeze.⁣⁣
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Having the capacity to be present with your 🔥🔥🔥 is a sign of growth in nervous system capacity and access to YOUR inherent power.⁣⁣
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Keyword: present.⁣⁣
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Not, catharsis or destruction (self or otherwise). ⁣⁣
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When we can be with our intense emotions and still have clarity & choice within it, we connect to our DIVINE birthright as humans to experience the fullness of humanity- joy, pleasure, compassion - grief, rage and sadness included.⁣⁣
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When we awaken our capacity to feel the fullness of our humanity, we awaken to our inherent power. ⁣⁣
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So much of our world is dissociated due to internalized shame and overwhelmed nervous systems. On both collective and individual levels. ⁣⁣
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The systems that oppress us wants to keep us this way so we can be controlled.⁣⁣
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Well, 👏🏼WE👏🏼ARE👏🏼NO👏🏼LONGER👏🏼ASLEEP👏🏼⁣⁣
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Learn how to be, hold and sit with intense emotions and sensations in your body. Little by little. I like to say, small doses of big emotions over time.⁣⁣
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Eventually, your capacity to hold them will grow, and with that, more access to your erotic, essence-nature = YOUR POWER. ⁣⁣
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With that, all systems and structures that oppress and repress it will fall away. We will no longer be available for it. Change can and will happen.⁣⁣
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May we all awaken to, sense, feel & embody our inherent power.

Deeply desiring and craving: ⁣ ⁣ To sense and

Deeply desiring and craving: ⁣
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To sense and embody the fullness of my essence-nature— the erotic, creative energy within my sacral spaces that is eternal— rising to meet my divinity. ⁣
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To know belonging— that undeniable feeling of knowing I matter here, I am seen & heard here, I am loved here. ⁣
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Relationships where we know how to ask the right questions, the hard questions, the are-you-okay-I’m-here-for-you-no-matter-what questions.⁣
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Relationships where we know it’s okay to not be okay— no fixing or meaning-making needed here. ⁣
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Relationships where our capacities for our needs to be known and met are clear, true, and unwavering.⁣
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Spaces where relationships are forged not because it’s without fear, but because we face our fears together.⁣
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Spaces where I’m allowed to feel expansive, to be the embodiment of my fullness without it being too much, dismissed, minimized or repressed.⁣
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To be ALL of me- beyond the programming of inherited and collective trauma— meaning, to move through and emerge whole, liberated. ⁣
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I hold multitudes and layers of shameless possibilities, visions upon visions of co-created culture within my own soma and psyche.⁣
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I’ve been holding them close to my own bosom, nurtured and held with tenderness and fierce protection. ⁣
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May the naysayers within & without be laid to rest. ⁣
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May those who hear my call— feel my desires for it matches their own— bravely answer with their own embodiment of YES. ⁣
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May we all know we fucking matter. ⁣
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(And may we feel safe to cheese as big as want, knowing it’s okay for us to shine amidst the darkness). ⁣
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📸: @jesse.giovanni

My Sexuality Story.⁣
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cw: sexual assault⁣
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My sexuality story begins way before the timeline I’m sharing here, but I’m starting here because it feels like the most outward expression of sexuality in my lifetime, and yet, there was so much trauma underlying it all.⁣
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August 2013 - Basically FOB. Sexually assaulted a month before moving to the US. I want to feel sexy and seen but wear clothing that isn’t flattering to my body shape, so I end up hiding my body as much as I can.⁣
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Dec 2013 - Sexually assaulted twice more. I believed it was normal to be so “sexually liberated” here in the US since sexuality and sex is much more repressed in Malaysia. Feeling lots of shame around it because I was in a long-distance partnership with my then-boyfriend and felt like I was cheating.⁣
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Jan 2014 - At the peak of my hyper-sexual trauma response and slept with many, many men with recklessness. Only saw myself through the lens of my body and how good I looked. Constantly felt “not pretty enough” because I had Asian features and only felt good if my body was looking “good.” I began to confuse sex with companionship. ⁣
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April 2014 - Mom had passed away just two weeks before this photo. I was unable to access any feelings in my body, so I repressed my grief. The only ways I knew how to feel anything was through sex and marijuana. I believed I was only worthy of sexual attention and dressed accordingly even though I carried secret shame around it. ⁣
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June 2014 - Rock bottom. The football player I was “seeing” dumped me when he learned I had contracted herpes. A few months later, I confessed to ldr boyfriend. Grief from all this loss, including the death of my mom hit me all at once. Decided to get support through free student counseling. ⁣
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Nov 2014 - Had my heart broken again after “dating” my weed dealer who was only into me for sex and exoticized that I was from Malaysia (he even called me that instead of my real name to the point his friends thought my name was Malaysia)- I was his “side chick” and had no idea. At this point I was addicted to sex, marijuana and was deeply longing for love and true companionship but didn’t know how to receive it. ⁣
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cont 👇🏼

I’ve been feeling, healing, writing about, teach

I’ve been feeling, healing, writing about, teaching on and exploring shame A LOT this year.⁣
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More recently, I’m attuned to how colonial capitalist patriarchal culture relies on the shaming and diminishing of a woman’s inherent power to maintain its dominance.⁣
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Some might say our power derives from our eroticism. (read: Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde).⁣
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As women of color, we’ve been conditioned by the virgin-slut dichotomy. ⁣
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We’re sexualized and demonized when we embody any form of robust fullness of our essence,⁣
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Or we’re made to be invisible bodies faded into the background, keeping corners clean with our smallness.⁣
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That, or we have to be hardworking to the bone in order to “lean in” and chase false securities.⁣
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Since we’re socialized to maintain the status quo, we might ostracize and oppress one another for stirring the pot.⁣
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!!!! Shame be to anyone who refuses to play by these standards !!!!⁣
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This is why I created Radical Rising.⁣
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It’s a space for women and femmes of color to un-shame aspects of ourselves through the practice of truth-telling and being celebrated, received and honored, as magnified or minimal our taking-up-spaceness might be.⁣
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Through the practice of Consensual Culture, we co-create the trauma-informed conditions in which a woman/femme can reclaim her wholeness. ⁣
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As I’m unraveling more into my whole-hearted truth, the practice of pleasure and sensuality has been central. ⁣
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This is our theme on Wednesday! ⁣
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Only ✨5✨ spots left with 1 scholarship available. Click the bio link.

I’m healing shame and expressing more of my cute

I’m healing shame and expressing more of my cuteness through roller skating.⁣⁣
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I’m feeling safer and safer to be seen by other humans in vulnerability.⁣⁣
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• Falling down pretty hard on my bum in public.⁣⁣
• Asking for an emotional need to be met.⁣⁣
• Having conversations with men about boundaries.⁣⁣
• Telling my HERstory. ⁣⁣
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When I was a kid, I used to hide my body in cargo pants and x-large t-shirts.⁣⁣
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My mom used to say I looked like 𝘬𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘬 (the help) and wanted me to wear more dresses 😒⁣⁣
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Because my parents traveled for work, I was alone with my lil sister most of my childhood. ⁣⁣
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It wasn’t their intention, but them not being around impacted my nervous system as a form of neglect. ⁣⁣
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There wasn’t the safety of co-regulating with my adults after long days at primary school. ⁣⁣
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Plus, I was exposed to *actual* danger when my cousin sexually abused me. ⁣⁣
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The combo of these developmental traumas had shrouded me in shame and repression— having to grow up quickly meant that there wasn’t room for playfulness and rebellion. ⁣⁣
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Instead, I poured my energy into books and getting good grades because my parents affirmed this to be “good behavior.” ⁣⁣
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In the last year, thanks to my mentor @rachaelmaddox, I’ve embodied worthiness and receptivity of my needs, set and upheld sacred boundaries, and now.. ⁣⁣
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~expressing my whole self~⁣⁣
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I skipped an entire teen angst phase. ⁣⁣
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And I feel it budding within now that I’ve healed younger parts of myself.⁣⁣
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As women of color, we might believe that our whole-self expression comes at a cost— further shame or gaslighting, or taking away from someone else’s expression.⁣⁣
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This isn’t true. It’s a trauma response of internalized shame. ⁣⁣
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We’ve kowtowed to whiteness long enough.⁣
We’ve hidden our bodies long enough.⁣
We’ve played small looooong enough. ⁣⁣
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Shame is a doozy but it’s possible to heal. And there are folks who want to witness and celebrate your identities and truth. ⁣
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May I be a testament to that.⁣⁣
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Come hang with me at Radical Rising next Weds where we’ll unshame pleasure+sexuality. ⁣⁣
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Or, apply to work 1:1 in somatic trauma resolution with me. Links in bio.

Just some of the wisdom that have been informing a

Just some of the wisdom that have been informing and guiding my healing, my expansion, my writing & creative expression, my relationship-building, my community-healing, my culture-making and my joy and pleasure. Words give us such powerful language and insight— it’s what we do with them that makes the difference. ⁣
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1. Love & Rage by @lamarodowens⁣
2. My Grandmother’s Hands by @resmaamenakem⁣
3. Pleasure Activism by @adriennemareebrown⁣
4. Emergent Strategy by amb⁣
5. Belonging by @tokopa⁣
6. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks⁣
7. Living for Change: An Autobiography by Grace Lee Boggs⁣
8. Radical Dharma by Lama Rod Owens, @zenchangeangel, @dr_jasmine_syedullah
9. The Body is Not An Apology by @sonyareneetaylor⁣
10. Minor Feelings by @cathyparkhong⁣
11. Tantra Illuminated by @hareeshwallis ⁣
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You? ⁣