I am foremost a mother to my son, Julien. Together, we live in a small home on a hillside in San Rafael, California, surrounded by eucalyptus, acacia, bay, oak, and walnut trees. Our home faces the mountain that the Coast Miwok named támal pájis, meaning “west hill.” Mount Tamalpais is said to reflect the contours of a young Miwok girl who was saved from a rival tribe by the shuddering of the mountain. I was raised by a single working class mother, and also my grandmother, whom we call Momita. I was born, “Christina Alexandria Najaf-Pir,” as my father was from Tehran, Iran, and I took his name at birth. Later, my name was changed legally and socially to what people know me as today: Alexandria Vasquez.
When my grandfather passed, he left me $20,000. This funding sparked the idea that I could go to college and live somewhere I could feel a sense of belonging. I never cared for high school and barely graduated, but from the City College of San Francisco I transferred to The New School in New York in 2007. At The New School, I discovered my intellectual home in sociology, philosophy, and critical discourse. These fields gave me an abundant resource for understanding the society and culture I witnessed around me, and my relationship to them. Finally, the why and how had answers I could understand. I also had an internship with The Brooklyn Rail, reporting directly to the founding editor, Theodore Hamm.
I eventually moved to Virginia and studied under Dr. Sarah Jane Brubaker, at Virginia Commonwealth University. Aside from my mentor at The Oxbow School during high school, Stephen Thomas, Dr. Brubaker was my role model. She nurtured my curiosities in medical sociology, and I conducted and defended my research on the reasons why women choose to undergo cesarean section delivery without medical indication. Choosing Surgical Birth: Personal Choice and Medical Jurisdiction, was an attempt at also exploring my own understanding of structure and agency, and the complex decision-making process of navigating what works best for us within the limitations of unavoidable social structure. It was also the first time I could identify and thoughtfully explain power dynamics between laypersons and those who hold the ability to make decisions for their livelihoods and well-being. A decade later, I delivered Julien via a medically necessary c-section delivery, and experienced the loss of agency when having no choice but to be laid like Christ himself on the cross of the surgery room table. In this very physical and emotional experience, I relinquished control of my life and my son’s to people talking about what episodes they were watching on television. It was one of the most healing experiences of my life to date.
After earning my Master’s in Science in Sociology in 2012, I moved to Boston to study Sociology at Brandeis University under medical sociologist, Peter Conrad. Together, we published work on health social movements, community, stigma, and how technology interacts with the emotional experience of illness. I presented work at the Society for the Study of Social Problems on the medicalization of women’s sexual dysfunction. Though, it wasn’t long after beginning my doctoral studies that I took interest in the meaning and experience of work. Working under MIT professor, Dr. Ofer Sharone, I studied the emotional experience of long-term unemployment among white collar older job seekers. In our research, Sociology as a Strategy of Support, we discovered that Americans internalize shame and stigma of long-term unemployment, and that white collar job seekers have an overlooked vulnerability because their families and society expect it to be easier for them to just get a job.
As Professor Sharone’s research assistant, I conducted some of my most important qualitative interviews to date.* I cried with people; empathized & sympathized. I could feel their pain, and the depths of their experiences. Thankfully, I had sociology to ground the experience and give me purpose in not only illuminating their stories, but building theory and frameworks that are useful for understanding — more broadly — the human experience in our current cultural, social and historical contexts. Our work was the inspiration for our MIT-based nonprofit, The Institute for Career Transitions, which provided unemployed job seekers the support they needed: emotional support matched with community. We provided them with group therapy as well as free 1:1 career coaching with professional career counselors. It was impactful because many of these job seekers internalized their experiences as a reflection of themselves, and not the larger social structure. Former President Barack Obama invited our team to the White House to sign a historic pledge with over 300 corporations on non-discriminatory hiring practices for the long-term unemployed.
My dissertation continued illuminating the lived experiences of complex work relations in a job economy beyond the employed and unemployed: mismatched college educated workers. The ethnography took place in Chicago, Illinois. The findings revealed that mismatched work is an emotional experience where people seek to mend their expectations for career- and life outcomes, and find strategies to exercise their agency through their current roles. A key context that guided this research were the concepts of ontological security and identity-work match. Misfit: The Impact of Mismatched Jobs on Creative Workers and the Organizations that Employ Them, was defended in 2019, and I became a Doctor of Philosophy.
During the first year of my doctoral studies back in 2012, I began making clothing for myself with a vintage Husqvarna sewing machine. Simultaneously, my eating disorder flared up and reminded me that this healing was not to be put aside. In the Spring of 2013, I began psychotherapy for an eating disorder, which led to the diagnosis of body dysmorphia. My therapist recommended that I refrain from looking in any mirror or reflection for one full week, and so I tried it. I found the abstinence rather liberating. This compulsion to receive visual feedback lended a pathway towards somatic healing: how do I feel, and how do I feel in my body? As a result, many dormant issues began to arise. For one, the anger I had towards my mother, and the wounds I had from being abandoned by my father. As I journeyed through this, I found myself in wellness communities, from meditation retreats to indigenous plant medicine ceremonies. I was also partnered with an architect who was choosing a healing journey for himself and his work, too.
I worked on his master’s thesis, an empathically designed palliative care facility for the elderly. This facility had central community spaces with a hearth where people could gather just like our ancestral origins; hallways without dead-ends so as not to confuse dementia patients; soothing colorways that studies suggest soothe peoples’ emotional state. In this work, we brought together sociology, architecture, and empathic design** for well-being. It became evident that I could heal myself by creating the conditions that aid in my resolve. In 2014, I removed the mirrors from my home, and set up a home sewing studio. I now had acquired several machines, purchased large tailor shears, and a textbook on patternmaking.
My first design was a wrap pant. I realized that dealing with any kind of inflexibility in clothing was not an option for me because it triggered my sense of fluctuating bodily difference. I started wearing these wrap pants, and then found dear friends in my life also could use love: my best friend’s uncle was brutally murdered and my other longtime friend was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 30. What should I say? “I’m sorry” did not feel at all an adequate gesture, and so I made them my wrap pants. I later named these pants after one of my friends who I originally gifted the pants to. I then created a light I called Kodama, meaning spirit of the forest in Japanese. I became invested in and passionate for my healing.
I lived four years without mirrors.
Never when I brushed my teeth did I think I needed to check in with the mirror about how I looked; never when I made a new pair of pants, dress, or top, would I need to check first with the mirror whether they were aesthetically passing and if I looked flattering in them. This experiential and experimental way of life was a deep healing. I coupled it with plant medicine retreats on a number of occasions, which helped me bring forward my spiritual purpose: to help others heal, too.
In 2017, prior to graduating from Brandeis, I exhibited the Kodama light and my clothing at an alumni fundraiser for Oxbow School in Napa, California. Richard and Ann Grace of Grace Family Vineyards, as well as the Vella Cheese family, bought Kodama lamps for their homes, though it was Richard Grace who asked if I could visit their winery before leaving back to my cabin in New Hampshire. I agreed without hesitation. In that meeting, I was commissioned to make a Kodama light from a redwood tree on their property, and his wife purchased a number of my garments. Later that year, I delivered the light to their tasting room, and then was offered funding to start a clothing studio, which I have to this day. I named the clothing studio Herderin. I was using natural fibers, and I was moving back home to California in the urban environment of Oakland, California. I wanted the Herderin archetype to stay alive in my heart, and for others to share in the feeling of what is possible when we nurture ourselves so that we can nurture others and our Earth.
Over the years of sharing my work under the name Herderin, I was in an abusive relationship that further had me discovering new layers of my grief and wounds. For 6.5 years I was in a relationship that led me to question romantic love and partnership. I learned that being empathetic and generous opened my heart in a vulnerable way. While I believe in the idea of always keeping one’s door open, I also have learned the value of boundaries as a form of self love, and also love for others.
Our wounds don’t define us — they are what makes the medicine.
I teach part time at The University of San Francisco, and am working on a study and future publication titled, Clothing The Self: The Social and Emotional Connection to What We Wear. I am bridging my work as a sociologist, business owner, and empathic designer to my life experience as a single mother, domestic peace supporter, and body positive advocate. As I change and grow, I am still learning about myself and what best fits my life now and is an authentic offering to others. Sociology has provided me with an invaluable foundation given the nature of understanding society, culture, and the self. Especially with my focus on medicine, health, identities, and the emotional experience of social structure. Qualitative research has made me aware of my own emotional intelligence and my capacity to hold safe space for others. Finally, my work with Herderin has deepened my compassion for how many of us see ourselves. The feeling of performance – being passing – permeates not just with our bodies, but also our identities and attitudes towards self definitions. As the symbolic interactionist, Charles Horton Cooley, explains in his concept of the looking glass self, it is not how I see me, nor how you see me, but it is about how I see you seeing me.
Upon final note, I want to revisit the idea of the mirror. For me, it was a visual dysmorphia that was embedded in a deep lack of self-love. Today, I can look in the mirror and appreciate the physical form I have taken, and when in doubt, I can look to what is outside of myself and work and ask what is reflected back to me. I have sisters. Born an only child, I have sincere friendships with other womyn who I call my sisters, and I am so joyous when I hear them call me sissy. When I cannot see myself clearly, I look to them and see myself. Unwavering, I know who I am when I look at my sisters, and more than ever we need to build communities of sisterhood.*** I also have my friends who I dare even call my brothers. Artists, designers, storytellers, nutritionists, professors, all doing the work that is needed for men to heal themselves with honesty, love and compassion. My students who have been my teachers; who have held me accountable to not just passively ever teach a class. If I am ever lost, they hold the mirror for me that is so steady that I can see so clearly who I am.
The most healing experience of my life is to be Julien’s mother. When I ever question myself, I just need to look at him and see myself in a mirror of immaculate perfection. Julien has directly healed me and has truly made me whole. I never thought I would feel such adoration, admiration and love for anything nor anyone until I met my son. Because of him, I now know so much more about life, and yet through him I also realize I know nothing at all. I have often said, “It’s not ‘I think therefore I am,’ but rather ‘Julien exists, and that’s all I know.”
Finally, when I cannot look in the mirror, all I need to do is look out at the mountain, támal pájis, right here just North of San Francisco. Earth is our greatest mirror. As Frank Lloyd Wright once said in response about religion, ‘Why organize it? I put a capital ‘N’ on Nature. That is my religion.’ Nature does not lie, and yes it can kill you easily. It is what brought us here into life — into consciousness. We are nature, and it is our divine mirror. I have had a miscarriage on a trail at Mount Tamalpais, and I have also wept so deeply on trail runs that I was scared to feel every line of vulnerability in my body. And yet, I have understood my soul just by admiring a waterfall or a stream of soft flow atop smooth stones. When in doubt, look to nature.
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In gratitude to my ancestors, my elders, and my teachers. And to every artist, musician and writer who had the courage to paint, record, and write it. You have saved my life time and again, and have always reminded me that perfection is not the goal: it’s the process that matters.
If you resonate with my story & work, I would love to hear from you.
* I was also a qualitative researcher for a number of other studies over the years on health, relationships, cancer, to name a few.
** Inspired by Temple Grandin.
*** Sister is not necessarily a gender-conforming concept for us. Many identify as non-binary and queer.