The topic of connection is something I think about a lot when it comes to covering. How does feeling like we have to cover impact our relationship with ourselves and others? How does covering impact our sense of belonging– at work or in social settings? That intersection is where a large part of my recent conversation with Sovereign focused.
Sovereign Oshumare is a catalyst, curator, educator, and alchemist of systemic change based in Denver, Colorado. I was introduced to Sovereign through a panel discussion hosted by Rocky Mountain Public Media (RMPM) on microdosing mushrooms. During our conversation, we discussed how their ongoing uncovering journey has intersected with the different parts of who they are – being Black, queer, and keenly interested in healing and restoration.
“I can remember a time in San Francisco, where I was with a bunch of [gay] friends,” Sovereign said as we sat at their dining room table. “There was someone that came into the space – another Black, queer, dark-skinned person. And I just remember having this aversion to them. I didn’t want to look at them and didn’t want to interact with them.” This happened at a time when they were starting to learn more about identity, social norms, and written and unwritten rules of the groups they interacted with. Sovereign remembered thinking there was a quota for how many people of color could be in a group – and the quota was one. “It’s like we were breaking a rule,” they said. “And I felt really bad about it. I started thinking, ‘Where is this coming from?’
And then I started thinking, in order for me to be in this group, these are the parts of myself I have to sacrifice in order to be here.”
Sovereign described the genesis of some of those feelings and beliefs. “Growing up, my mom was like, ‘Well, if I want my kids to be successful, then I need to get them as close to whiteness as possible,’” they said. “That proximity to whiteness, it impacts how I speak, the way I dress, the way I carry myself, my temperament, all of these things. I have been cultivated to survive. So I was covering these parts of myself and not really knowing what that was.”
Beyond their upbringing, some of the messages that encouraged Sovereign to cover came from inside the LGBTQ+ community. Similar to working toward proximity to Whiteness is a focus on proximity to straightness or, for others, masculinity in the LGBTQ+ community - something we have both experienced in different ways. These conversations about covering have brought forward memories for me that I’d buried for years. One that we talked about happened during my senior year of highschool and freshman year of college after I started hanging out with a group of gay friends, most of which were pretty masculine. I’d started wearing makeup my senior year and enjoyed experimenting with eyeshadow. There was no YouTube with makeup tutorials or IG influencers, so men in makeup weren’t as much the norm, even in queer spaces. I remember riding in the car with one of them and having him recommend that I tone down the eyeshadow. It was a comment “on behalf of the group,” and that comment and others like it over the years from gay men – “leave your purse in the car” and “you can’t be a professional and wear that,” all chipped away at the queer parts of who I was. Like I said to Sovereign, the “call was coming from inside the house,” so to speak.
“As I’m learning and uncovering and realizing all the things that I was covering, I see in people the things I was mending, and I wanted to talk about it,” Sovereign said. Pointing back to their earlier example of having an aversion to another person of color entering the group, they continued the story, “I went up to him, apologized and named what happened, and realized he was also in it. ‘Girl, don’t worry about it,’ he said. And I was just like, ‘No, we should be able to come together, and it be ok.’”
Something many of us know who have started to uncover parts of ourselves is that not everyone is receptive; not everyone is ready to be part of that journey, to question the systems that have made us feel that way, to expand their thinking, or to work on themselves internally.
“I became this mirror illuminating the problem,” Sovereign said. “Like how many of us have to cover and how a lot of us felt like we couldn't even get together and be in a place without everyone else having a problem. And they did. They had a huge problem with it. Going back to my group [of primarily white gay men], it was like, there's this [unnamed] social contract where I had agreed that I would be comic relief. I would be funny. I would let people say microaggressions and low-key racist shit to me. That was kind of our agreement. As long as I complied, everything was cool. But when I started to be like, oh, there are these other parts of me that need to be in this space, especially my Blackness - then it was a problem. And then, all of a sudden, they would call me Black Panther. I was learning all about this stuff, about how much I had to cover myself. I was angry. And I was like, ‘Hey, can we talk about how like, in order for me to show up in this group, I have to have a certain persona, and I have to allow you to make fun of my Blackness in order for me to belong? Ultimately I ended up getting kicked out of that group.’”
Sovereign continued, “I wanted to uncover and reclaim those pieces. Like, is that okay? And the answer was no. And so I went through a whole period of just being alone: my whole entire network was gone. Because they weren't interested in stepping into that journey in a true, ‘we have to confront all the shit’ way.”
It was these experiences in the LGBTQ+ community, experiences working in nonprofits, and seeing a need for spaces that supported healing, uncovering, and community building that inspired Sovereign to create XRYSALIS, a retreat to activate, empower, and heal LGBTQ People of the Global Majority. “Folks were emerging who wanted this retreat, and also this ecosystem, that's just for queer folks of color to explore the things that they are covering,” Sovereign said. “I wanted to take people on a journey that I had had to go through by myself, which was like, ‘Oh, this shit is crazy.’ Like, the things that we have to deal with and cover is debilitating. It's crushing us. I wanted everyone to kind of come to those epiphanies together versus separately. The first one was like a collective journey. And then the second one had different tracks for people to go on because some people wanted the art and the creativity and like the fun, sexy time. And then others wanted the deep connection and authenticity and community building. So going back to the first one, we started with an opening ceremony to get people's mind prepared for integrating new information. We had this facilitator come in to lead conversations around how we create our reality, about how the world is built.
They asked us at the end of the session, ‘Are you prepared to experience something different?’ The first part was about connection and bridge-building.”
It can be hard to go through an experience like that – one that opens your mind and understanding, shifts your relationship with yourself and those around you, and then step back into your daily life. “Once people saw that something like this could exist (spaces where they could be uncovered), they wanted it in their world,” Sovereign said. “That’s when I started getting in trouble. Because people were like, ‘Wait, you’re breaking the code.’” People who participated in the XRYSALIS retreats were coming back changed, naming things that bothered them in the world and wanting to do something different. “A lot of folks, especially White, gay men were really upset with me,” they said. Not only was Sovereign disrupting the systems that depended on things staying the same, but people [White people] felt excluded. “You have the whole world that you get to live in,” Sovereign said. “I just carved out four days on this little piece of earth for queer people of color.”
A hostile environment not ready for introspection, asking those questions and creating a new world encouraged Sovereign to come to Colorado. “Thank you, Colorado, like, for real,” Sovereign said. “I feel like there's a reason why I ended up here. I went to Naropa University [in Boulder], and I got my Master's in Resilient Leadership, and I met some really incredible people who were into psychedelics. I was just like, ‘I don't think that's for me.’ I finally gave in, and I went to a talking circle. And I watched that talking circle heal a deep conflict between two people. And I was like, ‘Oh, shit, like, word.’ I started building trust with them because I saw how they navigated conflict.I watched this whole magic of a circle, just like, pull out what needed to be said and watch the facilitator and the weaver just kind of like, deal with that. It was so beautiful to watch a circle work. It's magic. So, then I was like, ‘All right, what is this? Tell me more. Now I'm ready to know; now I'm listening.’”
Their first experience, an Ayahuasca journey, provided healing and was “really incredible,” Sovereign said. With legislation in the works to decriminalize psychedelics in Colorado, they started microdosing rather than taking large doses of Psilocybin [the naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound in mushrooms]. “I feel like my stable self is psychedelic in a lot of ways; I'm very intuitive,” they said. “I don't need the big doses, but the microdoses in combination with what I've learned from Naropa, andBuddhist practices and stuff like that has given me like this incredible inner landscape and relationship to it. And to me, microdoses are just like little kisses that allow me to really see how my mind works. That’s the gift that microdosing has given me, and psychedelics has given me, this deeper relationship with my mind and myself beyond it.”
Sovereign talked about their experience with microdosing and how it expanded their relationship to self, including how they identify and their connection to their body and nature on the RMPM panel, which was one of the things that piqued my interest in talking to them.
“Coming to Colorado and having relationship to psychedelics, I was able to understand the spectrum of being,” they said. “I consider myself agender because I feel like there's maleness, there are all the things, and I feel like none of them describe me. In connection to some people, I come off as more feminine. And then, to some people, I come off as more masculine. To some people, I come off as something else. It’s given me the space to inquire, to inquire about my gender expression and gender identity. You don't have to show anyone anything. You don't have to prove anything; you can just be it. And so, like, that's why we're a lot alike, right? I'm like; I am more than what you see. That didn't come until I did a bunch of mushrooms and a wilderness solo, and where my name Sovereign came from. I understand why I'm in this vessel.”
That expansive mindset pervades their work and is something I appreciated seeing embedded in how they view themselves. “You know, I use they/them pronouns. Sometimes people will feel like a different one and call me by it. I get why because that's the part of me that you need to connect with in order to feel or hear what I'm communicating to you. And I get that, you know, but again, that's just me, not to invalidate anyone else's journey or anything like that. Going through this journey in this body has been really interesting because it's just like, for years, I didn't feel like it was mine.
For the moment that we're in, a Black queer, shape-shifting body is what's needed to build bridges. I can traverse those worlds looking the way that I look and getting people to talk that wouldn't ordinarily talk.”
That work to bridge worlds continues through their role at SPORE, the Society for Psychedelic Outreach, Reform, and Education, where Sovereign is the co-ecosystem director. “Our role is to make sure community voices are heard, indigenous wisdom is heard, and to build community that informs how all of this legislation [related to psychedelics] is going to come out,” they said. What’s the current landscape look like? From places like Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research to Stanford University, New York University, and more, research into the use and impact of psychedelics continues to inform what we know about it and the many implications for how it can support people in their health and wellbeing journey. Research and the work of groups like SPORE will also inform where and how it can be legally utilized. In November 2022, possession of psychedelics, including “magic mushrooms,” was decriminalized in Colorado.
My conversation with Sovereign was educational and empowering. As we wrapped up our time together, they said, “I love this topic and having that framework [language, questions, etc.] to ask people, ‘How are you covering?’ Being able to name the ways in which we cover ourselves, like the things that I've talked about around covering my Blackness, covering my queerness, covering my gender expression and identity. Being able to talk about these things in the hopes that other people can see themselves in it and relate to it, and figuring out the ways in which they cover themselves and how to uncover and reclaim those pieces? I don't know; I just think that's incredible. And I'm so grateful for this conversation.”
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