My name is Tauqir Alerce ( توقیر الارز ) and I am non-binary, queer, non-monogamous, and a person-of-color. My coaching practice revolves around somatic pathways to healing and teaching and learning with a focus on folks with sexual traumas. I am based out of Oakland, California. I work with all folks regardless of their gender identity, sexuality, ethnic background, geographical location, or any other identity markers.

Community

I have an expansive community of people I love deeply and trust to take part in my healing and growth as much as I take part in theirs. I believe in strong communities and friends to be a big part of anyone’s healing journey – being able to reflect our inner world off of safe people in our circles helps us validate and soften the things we find difficult in our often hidden, intimate lives. My community also includes bodyworkers, therapists, coaches, herbal apothecaries, and healers of many mediums who I work with and learn from. I consult with people in my community who I trust and learn from as part of my practice and if I like to bring them in (with my client’s consent) as part of holistic practice of healing and somatic practices.

As grateful as I am for the community I feel so loved and supported and surrounded by, it feels like a long and ongoing journey of how I got here; the healing through which I was able to receive their love, the growth I needed to sustain and grow my relationships with the people I love, and the ever-expanding horizons of healing that I find myself working on.

Early childhood and trauma

Content Warning: physical abuse, sexual abuse

My journey with my sexuality, body, and gender identity is joyous, painful, healing, and full of acceptance, grief, and joy cycles. I was always a very sexual kid and never quite fit into the idea of a boy or accepted into guys groups. Some of my earliest memories are of sexual and physical abuse and attachment trauma. I had the classic case of my survival instinct shutting down a lot of my sexual and gender explorations for a very long time. Growing up in Pakistan in a desi Muslim household also didn’t leave much space for me to explore my gender and sexuality. I do still have memories and flashes of trying on makeup and trying to emulate femme fatale characters in films.

Sexual & gender exploration

At age 23 when I was finally able to freely explore myself felt like a frantic quest to learn about myself without the safety of safe queer friends or community. Not yet having an awareness of my trauma and the ways it was showing up in my new sexual and gender explorations, shame was a big part of all my sexual expression. I was hooking up in unsafe situations with unsafe people. Though I didn’t know at the time, this exploration was re-traumatizing as my body experienced unsafe sexual encounters. Today I have a safe community around me in which to witness and accept the ways trauma shows up in my intimate relationships, grieve the ways I was harmed and “let myself be harmed” – and through the grief, I am able to find joy and safety I have created around myself. I perpetually celebrate the ways in which I treasure my body, have learned discernment, the ways in which I am able to receive love and care from people I love, and give back to the community that cocoons me.

It wasn’t until I started therapy just before I turned 30 that I finally got around to exploring my gender identity to its fullest – or to even recognize that I was traumatized for the first time. When I was finally able to share the abuse I experienced out loud that my heart sank. I realized how horrific it was that anyone would ever harm another in those ways. Being able to witness my trauma was the first step to accepting and grieving the ways I was harmed. Healing our bodies has a way of letting us find ourselves and witness ourselves: we don’t know what parts of us need loving and care and attention until we heal enough to let those baby selves come out to play and explore and ask questions and show their soft, tender, hurt, curious, joyous selves. I had been identifying as a “gender-nonconforming man”, forever trying to expand what it means to be a man. Realizing that I was trying too hard to figure out why I don’t fit in with the idea of a man and abandoning that quest was so liberating. I now identify as transfemme and non-binary.

My journey towards coaching and care-providing

Even before I started therapy, I felt I had a lot of wisdom to share about bodies and trauma and sexuality as a result of all my own journey through it – but rarely able to apply those learnings to myself until I started therapy. I decided to direct my intuitive knowledge of bodies and trauma towards more structured learnings & best practices & and somatic pathways to healing. I am currently working towards a Somatica® certification though my practice differentiates itself from Somatica® teachings which I am happy to talk about in detail.