Allow Me To Introduce Myself...! (1st Solo Podcast & Season 2 Premiere!)

Welcome to the 2nd Season of Queerly Beloved!

In this inaugural episode I'm releasing my first solo podcast. In the episode I share my personal story of walking the queer and spiritual path. 

Stories include:
Almost converting to Mormonism;
Losing all my friends in 8th Grade because of rumors about me being gay;
Some of the books that shaped my path;
Discovering the radical faeries; 
Connecting back with my Native American (Osage) Ancestry;
Living and working at an LGBT Retreat Center;
Working with plant medicines;
And starting this podcast..!

This new season promises to deliver more interviews with incredible folks talking about queerness and spirituality, plus some of these solo podcasts sprinkled in. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to send thoughts, ideas and feedback! 

You can reach me here-  https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/contact

You can learn more about my work here- https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Transcript

Queerly Beloved, we are gathered here today for some juicy conversations about all things spiritually queer and clearly spiritual. I'm Sylvia will gather rainbow, spiritual life coach retreat hosts with the most, and drag queens, and I'll be chatting with the most amazing folks are simply sharing some wisdom on my own. If you like what I'm serving, please remember to subscribe so we can keep hanging out. Alright, let's get super wound together in this spiritually queer a cosmic container. Hello, beloved, and welcome to the second season of queerly. Beloved, I am so happy you have joined me, my name is Silvia will gather rainbow, and I am your host with the most or your hostess with the most is, I'm so grateful that you are listening and that you're part of this journey. It has been such a thrill for me to be doing really beloved, the first season was so much fun. And I just loved interviewing folks, I loved having conversations about spirituality, about queerness, about the intersection of queerness and spirituality, I loved getting to learn from my guests, and getting to allow them to have the space to share their wisdom and their stories. And I'm so excited to do more of that this season. But I thought I would get started this season by telling you, the audience a little more about me and my journey with my spiritual path and my queer path that has led me to this moment and share a little bit about this podcast and why I decided to start it. So that's what I'm going to do in this first episode, which is also, by the way, my very first solo podcast, which is a new format for me to be experimenting with this season. So let's get into it. So we're going to start at the very beginning when I was a little boy. And when I was a little boy, I was called Willie later, I let that get shortened down to will with two L's and then later, I shorten that to will with one L, which is now the will in my full chosen name, Sylvia will gather rainbow. But as Willie, I lived a pretty carefree childhood. I loved growing up in San Diego, I never knew what weather was, it was the same beautiful sunny day, day after day. And in general, I had a carefree sunny spirit about me. However, under the surface, there was some shadow. So I grew up with two alcoholic parents and a drug addicted brother. And that created a lot of chaos in my household. And meanwhile, across the way, my next door neighbors were a family of 12. And they were a Mormon family. And I've remembered the stark contrast between my household and the way my family functioned or dysfunction. And the way the Mormon family functioned. Everything over there was so organized and pristine. And in my home, everything was chaotic and messy. And so at a very young age, I started associated with this Mormon family and actually started attending the Mormon church with them. And it was one of my first introductions to spirituality. So I was probably eight or nine at the time. And I remember attending church and feeling this sense of innocence and purity, this cleanliness almost. And it was very appealing for me. It felt like a safe space. And at one point, the Mormon neighbors, they invited me to explore if I wanted to deepen my commitment and connection to the church. And so around 10 or 11, they had me meet with the Mormon missionaries. And I'll never forget, meeting with these missionaries. They were similarly clean and innocent and pure of heart, these young men who would come and sit with me in the Mormon family's home, and we got to sit in this beautiful living room that usually us kids weren't allowed in. And I would sit there with these two very handsome missionary men and talk about religion, talk about spirituality. And it was enlightening to me and exciting to me. And I would learn about the Book of Mormon, I would learn In about the Bible, and then I was invited to go home after each session. And between that session and the next session, I was invited to read passages from the Book of Mormon and read passages from the Bible, and then pray and ask God, if it was meant for me to be baptized into the Mormon religion. And I was a diligent student. So I would read the passages. And I would pray. And I believe this is perhaps my first experience of prayer. The first time I was reaching out and connecting with God. And I remember how I felt this connection, how in doing that act of prayer, I felt connected to something larger than myself, I felt connected to something divine. And I was requested I would ask if God wanted me to commit to the Mormon church,
and I didn't get a yes. And I was an honest boy. And so here, I was really walking back to the Mormon neighbors to meet with the missionaries week after week. And they would ask me, did God tell you? Yes. And I would honestly tell them, No, I didn't get it. Yes. And we did that for the entire time that they are meant to meet with potential new church members. And so we were at our final lesson, and I still hadn't gotten it. Yes. And they mentioned that sometimes, one is required to be baptized first, and then they will hear that sign from God. And somehow, I, as much as I wanted to be a Mormon because it was so appealing to me. Somehow, I knew that getting baptized and then getting the sign wasn't quite right. And so I declined. And considering Mormons take on many things, but especially around sexuality, in many ways, I believe I dodged a bullet. And so I'm grateful to Little Willie for his honesty, and grateful to the Mormons for starting that connection to God starting that dialogue that I had with God. The next early memory of connecting with the divine, came when I was around 12, or 13. And I read the prophet, I remember, I was on a road trip with my dad, to Yellowstone. And quick side note, although I mentioned, both my parents were alcoholics, and there was a lot of chaos. There was also a lot of love in my family, and a lot of fun in my family. And my mom, by the way, is almost 30 years in recovery. But anyways, I'm on this road trip with my dad. And I was sitting in the back of the camper van. And I somehow came across the book, the prophet, and I will never forget how I felt reading that book, and starting to understand that spirituality wasn't just about praying to God, but that it was a way of life. And that you can apply spiritual principles, and theories and ideas and ideologies, to every aspect of one's life was another big aha moment, another invitation to keep stepping in to this exploration of the spirit realm. A year or two later, I was in the eighth grade. And I was always a very popular kid. I had a lot of friends and I hung out with the most popular kids at school. Until one day, I stayed home from school because I wasn't feeling well. And I remember coming to school, and everything was different. I could feel it, I could sense it. And people were treating me differently. And something had happened. I didn't know what but I knew that things would never be the same. Eventually what came to light was that the day that I stayed home from school, two girls started some vicious rumors about me. They told people that I shopped for women's laundry, and that I stuck Tribbles up my butt to a very strange and specific lies that implied that I was gay. And the whole school was talking about it and I I fell from the height of popularity to the outcast. And I'll never forget going to the popular kids table at lunch, as I always did, and sitting next to who I considered my best friend at the time, and him getting up and moving and choosing to sit somewhere else. Overnight, I lost all my friends, and my status at the school. And it was because of these rumors that I was gay, which, at the time I didn't even realize was the truth. This was 1992 or so before wheeling grace before Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Before any representation in the media, of folks that were gay and living a happy life. I hardly knew that being gay was a thing. But now I knew it was something that I didn't want. I knew that it was something that had ruined my life. And I became a target for bullies. And school went from this safe place, you know, away from the chaos of my home life to a very unsafe space. And I remember turning to God in that moment. And I remember praying to God, asking for help. And I had a little Bible, and I would bring it to school. And I remember getting comfort in holding that Bible in my pocket. Somehow I made it through those challenging times. And I decided to change schools and attend a private school. And at 16, I met some gay men who were living beautiful lives, I was in a musical theater production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with them. And I was able to see this option of being gay as a viable option. And at that point, I had had urges and desires. And so I found the courage to come out of the closet, very slowly, first to the people in the theater world that I was friends with, and then slowly expanded from there. The way this impacted my spiritual life was, I felt like I had to choose, you know, I had been praying to God, to not be gay, and now I was gay. And I thought that I needed to either live a gay life or a spiritual life. And so at this point, I felt like I had chosen a gay life. And I focused on that, and I enjoyed being a gay man. And as I moved into my college years and early 20s, living in New York City, what that looked like was a lot of partying and drugs and sex, and a certain sense of rebellion against the heteronormative world, really, claiming this freedom of being a gay man and all the possible debauchery that came with that permission slip to be something that society has told me is wrong. Okay, identity never quite fit, right. I always felt a little bit like I was putting something on licking authentic. And then I met a radical fairy. And I was invited to attend a radical fairy gathering. And I didn't know what that was. But I remember showing up at a sanctuary in Tennessee, and arriving and seeing all these queer folks expressing themselves in these radical ways. And my mind being blown and my eyes opening so wide and my heart opening so wide, and finally, recognizing that there was a community within the LGBTQ spectrum that I felt like I belong to. And a big part of that was that the radical fairies loved nature and hanging out in nature, and that the radical fairies had a spiritual component to the community gatherings, a earth based spiritual connection with rituals, celebrations. And this really resonated with me and actually reminded me that there was a whole different part of my spirituality that I had overlooked, which was connected to my Native American ancestry. So I'm part of a song J, or Osage. And growing up, I would go to these Osage gatherings where we would connect with the elements and do these rituals and prayers that were earth based. But because I understood spirituality to be religious associated, I didn't understand that
this was another form of connecting with the divine. And so it was when I was at the radical fairy gatherings, and experiencing these earth based rituals, that I was able to then recall all this connection that I had access to an opportunities for, in my Native American ancestry. So the radical fairies helped me realize I could be queer and spiritual, and helped me reclaim my connection to spirit through earth based practices. Around this time, another book came into my life that had a profound impact on me, which was Autobiography of a Yogi, which is the life story of Parma, Hatha Yoga Nanda. And reading that book helped me see even more possibilities of living a spiritual life and what that could mean. It introduced me to concepts like karma and reincarnation, and meditation. And so I started a meditation practice. I later came to find out that karma Honza Yogananda started at Self Realization fellowship center, in Encinitas, which is the hometown I grew up in in San Diego. And so I came to understand that Parma HUD says energy had been in my life as a child as well, because it really permeates that hometown. Throughout this period of my life, I was living in New York City, and I was working for an organization that did housing for homeless LGBTQ youth called the Ali Forney Center, and I served as their director of special events, and communications. And I loved that job, I loved being of service, I loved helping those who needed help the most, in many ways. But after a decade or so living in New York City, I was starting to want something else. And I started exploring what that might be. And that exploration took me to a retreat center called the Eastern Mountain, they had actually reached out to me to help them produce a queer music festival to benefit their queer youth programs. And so I volunteered to do that. And in doing so, I ended up spending a bunch of time at this incredible retreat center in upstate New York outside of Albany. And while I was doing that, I was able to connect with all these incredible teachers, and visionaries within the queer, spiritual world. It was during that time, I also had the opportunity to experience Tantra. So I took this Tantra, weekend long workshop and realized this deep, profound connection to tantric principles and practices, and realize that I can connect with the divine through the erotic, this was my first experience of sacred sexuality. And it had a very significant impact on my life. As that summer came to an end, I knew that I was not done with my time at Easton mountain. And the founder, John Stasio, asked me if I'd be interested in consulting with them. They are nonprofit and could use some of my nonprofit expertise. And so I negotiated a little cabin in the woods at the retreat center. And for the next couple of years, I went between a little cabin in the woods at Eastern Mountain that had no plumbing and no electricity. And I'd go between there and my place in Brooklyn where I lived with my boyfriend at the time. And so I'd spend a couple of weeks isolated in the country. And then a couple of weeks in the hustle and bustle of the city. It was a really exciting time. And while I was living at the retreat center, I was able to study under all these incredible queer teachers and visionaries and gurus and learn all these different modalities of healing and personal growth. I became Reiki certified, I learned shamanic practices, I started doing yoga, and I also started to teach Seeing workshops and hosting retreats myself. So one of the pieces of my background I haven't mentioned is that I have a theatre background, I have a be a fe in theater and an MA in applied theatre. And applied theatre is essentially using theater activities to engage people in conversations that can create growth or change. I did this work with maximum security prisons, I did work around relationship with manhood and masculinity, doing theater work in these prisons, with this company i co founded called man question. And so I had this background in using theater for things other than producing plays. And now I was being exposed to all these new ideas and principles of personal growth and spirituality. And so I found ways to bring my masters and applied feeder training into that kind of work. And so I use that to help me create these workshops and these retreats that I would lead at the retreat center. Eventually, as I became more and more involved at Easter mountain, the Board of Directors invited me to serve as their executive director. And I was so excited to say yes to that, and I moved there full time, I got a larger cabin, in the woods, but still no electricity and no plumbing. And I started running this retreat center. And it was during that time that I was really called into my power. I had never served such a high level of leadership role in my time before. And it did require me to step into my power. And that was a challenging exploration for me. Fortunately, I came across a teacher named Joe Weston and his work, respectful confrontation, who takes a very embodied and spiritual approach to looking at one's relationship with power, and finding an authenticity to how we embody our power. And so that was a big part of my growth that happened during my time, as I fulfilled my role of executive director at Easton. I also, while I was at Easton had the opportunity to get trained up as a life coach. And so I did that, and started coaching people on the side as I continued to serve as the executive director. But then when I finally came to the end of my time, in that role, and felt ready to be back living closer to society, I chose to move back to San Diego to be near my big, fabulous family and the ocean. And I started focusing more on the coaching and made that my primary career and so I founded willfully living, which is my coaching practice. And I do private life coaching and also private executive coaching. And really committed to that and dove into that kind of work. In more recent years, my spiritual path has accelerated thanks to my relationship with plant medicines. And so working with plant medicines has helped me understand and body and integrate an anchor spiritual ideas that I had a sense of before, but that I am been able to understand and bring into my life on a deeper level. And part of that looks like identifying not just as a mentor and life coach and executive coach, but as a healer. And so a lot of the work that I'm doing with my clients these days, is also deep healing work. And I use some of the modalities I picked up at Eastern Mountain, but also some trainings that I've done along the way, including neuro linguistic programming. So I'm a master certified practitioner of that and also hypnotherapy and timeline therapy. And I also use shamanic practices and energy work and ritual work, all this exciting, spiritual woowoo stuff that I just love that totally lights me up. I love using with my clients into my work, and it has helped me feel like I am fulfilling my purpose in a more accurate way. So all of the spiritual work that I've done, all the personal growth work I've done, it all leads me to the discernment of my purpose of what God wills me to do in my time on this planet, and what gifts he wills me to share. And so spirits source God has helped me and guided me to
show up in these ways and to serve in these ways. And part of those ways I'm so honored and humbled to say is, this podcast is clearly beloved And I felt a true calling to launch a podcast that focus is on queerness and spirituality because it's a topic and intersection that I think is not explored as much as it deserves to be. And it is an area that I believe is missing in the dialogue around spirituality of today of the new consciousness that we're stepping into. And it is such an important part, such an important key, such an important set of codes, that is going to support society as we awaken as we step more into this awakened enlightened consciousness. I'm super grateful and lit up and enthusiastic about this opportunity to create a platform for folks who are doing such amazing work in the world and have such incredible messages and wisdom to share, to give them the space to do that, and to expose these truths to more people, so that we can all be on this journey of awakening and spiritual expansion together, and we can learn from each other and grow together. And so that's my vision for crealy beloved, is a way to serve us all in our growth and on our spiritual paths. Whoo, doggy. Okay, I have told a lot of stories. I appreciate you listening. I hope it has given you a better sense of who your host is and what this podcast is and how it came to be. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a listener for being a supporter for being one of my beloved's. Please reach out, let me know what you're enjoying. Let me know what you want more of less of I'm so happy to receive your feedback. You can get in touch with me via the show notes. My contact is always there. And thank you again for being on this journey with me. It is a total pleasure and honor to serve you. Oh my god is beloved. What a joy it was to be with you today. Let's hang out again soon. Okay. And you can think of a friend who would benefit from hearing this. Please share it with them. Sending so much love and light to you today and every day. Until next time, peace