8/22

This collaboration is part of my ongoing exploration of the power of vulnerability, and the ways that transgender and gender expansive people find strength outside of societal ideas of power. We speak with our bodies to the power and strength it takes to be truly vulnerable. There is clarity in this shift of perspective. Through our transness we find the spaciousness to discover more abundant ways of being. The freedom to evolve, to expand, to keep creating someone more beautiful than before." Fiona

"During the time Fiona reached out to collaborate on this photo series, I was about a year in my t journey. I was really struggling to feel grounded in the many deaths and rebirths that my vessel and spirit were undergoing both as an identical twin and as a trans person in transition.

To me, being trans feels like a spirit entering a body for the first time, learning how to dance and move. I was creating a home in a place where all I’ve known and lived was pain, suffering, and loss, and finally growing into a place where I had safety and choice.

One of the most challenging things about my t journey was the grief I felt about my twinness. I hated being a twin for so long and now that I was finally in a place where I began to love it, my physical form and hormones were now beginning to alter. All that I could think of was, will I lose Nancy too? Is my transition worth the change for the sacrifice of my twinness? Eventually, I realized that no amount of hormones will ever take away my twinness and the bond that lives between Nancy and me will always live within us. Being trans and an identical twin has and will always be an ongoing journey of unlearning, recreating, and leaning into joy.

This photo series and the journey really symbolize what it means to create a home in places that feel hard and to do it and surround yourself with the community you love to support you. Being trans has gifted me the power of choice that I have on my own body while embracing my power and the self-love I have for myself and my community.

**The love, attentiveness, and care that Fiona has shown Nancy and me throughout this photo collaboration really made me feel so held which I think was the key ingredient to allowing me to lean into the many emotions that were coming up for me during our photo shoot. I’ve never had a collaboration that centered on care, agency, and trust as much as I did with Fiona which I’m realizing now that is something I prioritize within myself and all the relationships I carry throughout my life." Sal