Bonus – Rivkah Reyes

Rivkah Reyes, School of Rock Child Star

Our Pride month bonus episode features School of Rock child star Rivkah Reyes. 

Rivkah Reyes (they/them) is a Filipina-Jewish actor, writer, musician, comedian and self-acceptance warrior from Chicago. Riv has been performing since the age of 4 and made their film debut as Katie in the beloved film School of Rock in 2003. Since then, Riv has performed in plays, sketch revues, TV, and film all over the country. They currently reside in Los Angeles and spend their days writing and hosting a podcast called Where Are We Now?

Episode Resources

• Jessica Buch’s Bonus Episode | S2 Bonus with Jessica Buch
• Alokvmenon’s Instagram | @alokvmenon
• The Okra Project | theokraproject.com
• The Future Perfect Project | thefutureperfectproject.com
• For the Gworls Website | forthegworls.party
• For the Gworls Instagram | @forthegworls
• Disclosure The Film | disclosurethemovie.com/about
• The L Word | sho.com/the-l-word

Connect with Rivkah Reyes

• Instagram | @rivkah.reyes
• Where Are We Now? Podcast Instagram | @wherearewenowpod

Connect with Us at The Courage to Change

• Podcast Website | lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Instagram | @couragetochange_podcast
• Podcast Facebook | @thecouragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Email | podcast@lionrock.life

Coffee, Coffee Alternatives, & Support Meetings

• Lionrock Coffee & Coffee Alternatives | lionrock.life/shop-products
• Lionrock.life’s Meeting Schedule | lionrock.life/meetings

Listen & Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora
• Stitcher | iHeart | TuneIn | Overcast | SoundCloud

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change.

Rivkah Reyes:

I started going by she/they interchangeably. If people were to use she for me, that wouldn’t upset me. If people use they for me, it made my heart kind of flutter in a fun, warm way.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. Today, we have Rivkah Reyes. I am so excited for this bonus episode today. It is Pride month, and we are going to talk about queer issues. Rivkah was amazing giving me all of the information, allowing me to ask difficult questions as I often do so that we all can have a better understanding. We want to be in council culture, not cancel culture. This is about learning, and teaching one another and being seen. So, Rivkah does an amazing job, and I am so excited for you to hear this episode. All right, bonus episode. Let’s do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You are listening to The Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. We’re a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds, and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey. Rivkah, thank you so much for being here. I’m really excited to have you here for Pride month. Have you started celebrating yet?

Rivkah Reyes:

Not yet. I think it’s pretty interesting. A lot of social media posts are just like, “Here’s why I’m proud, and I’m celebrating pride because this this and this.” I always think of Pride as a protest. So yes, I guess in a way I have been celebrating, I’ve been actively raising funds to save Sheikh Jarrah and Palestine. I think that is like a part of my queer identity is being radically an actively anti-racist, and radically for the justice of all. Especially for people of color and those that are just harmed by oppression, and imperialism and all of that and colonization. But yeah, I guess in a way my celebration of Pride is like giving back to the community. So I’ve been like offering a pay what you can sessions like for Akashic records readings with queer, and trans people of color for this month. So I guess that’s an ample celebration.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. That is ample and it’s actually the way that we celebrate is different, right? Because we celebrate the end of a life when someone dies with a funeral. Which doesn’t seem like it’s not the same type of celebration. It’s somber, but it is a celebration of life, right? We are celebrating, and in so each thing that we celebrate sometimes we do it very differently. And sometimes that celebration is somber and serious, and sometimes that celebration is light and fun and joyful and it can be everything in between. So I love the way that you’re celebrating, because it really does reflect this idea that there’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ve still made progress. So trying to celebrate both of those things.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah, Definitely.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, tell me, you were a child star, you’re known for being the bassist, the young girl bassist in School of Rock. Fantastic movie by the way. My dad reminds me so much of Jack Black, so there’s like a special place in my heart for that. Because my dad would set me down when I was a kid and teach me about music in very similar way. So very funny and a great movie. Actually, let me back up. How old were you in that movie?

Rivkah Reyes:

I was 10 when we shot the movie, and then when we started doing press and everything, I was 11.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was your state of mind at 10/11? Were you innocent? Were you aware? Did you have any idea that you were going to identify as queer, alcoholic, any of that?

Rivkah Reyes:

Oh, yeah. So when I was 10 going into it, I was very pure, and very innocent and didn’t know too much. I’ll never forget this, is like maybe on like my third night in New York. So I was from Chicago and they brought us out to New York for shooting the film. We went out to dinner at the Waldorf, or something like that. I walked into the bathroom and I saw a girl like hammered and messed up. She was just like, “Wait, what the fuck? There’s a kid in here.”

Rivkah Reyes:

I was just like, I asked my mom I was just like, “Is that girl sick?” She was just like, “Yeah, she was drunk.” I was just like, “Oh, okay.” I had seen drunkness before. My parents made it a point to never be wasted, like drunk in front of us, which is really nice, but their siblings did not. So I definitely saw like drunk titos and titos and uncles and aunts and cousins and stuff. But I remember just seeing that, and as far as the queerness goes, I wasn’t really aware of my own until I was in high school. But I knew what being gay was because I was raised in a pretty liberal family. I grew up in a pretty predominantly gay neighborhood in Chicago.

Rivkah Reyes:

My dad’s got like a bunch of friends who are drag queens and business partners who are gay. I have a lesbian aunt and stuff like that. But as far as on set goes, I was very pure, very innocent. We were actually together last night, me and the kids from School of Rock just on Zoom just catching up and talking about how pure the friendships were, and how pure our personalities were on set.

Rivkah Reyes:

Then it’s like when we came back, a lot of us had this experience. But I’ll speak from my own is like when I came back from set after gaining this confidence, being around like minded kids, and being able to be goofy and be fun and be confident, I had this new found like sense of self and I was just like, “Wow, I’m cool.” I have it together. I came back to school and kids are like, “What you think you’re better than us, because you made a little movie.”

Rivkah Reyes:

They were really mean, and they were really nasty and stuff. My mom would always be like they’re jealous. I’m like it doesn’t feel like they’re jealous. It just feels like they hate me. It feels like they really just want me to like be gone because they liked it better when I was out and doing the movie and stuff. Anytime I got to go away for press or for premiering in another country or whatever, I was just like, “Oh, thank God I get to be with my people again.” Then when I come back to school, it was just like, “Yeah, we’re back to reality.” Then I kind of started chasing that next gig because I was just like, “I definitely don’t want to have to like do this forever.” This coming back to school. I would like to just book something else, so I can like be with another cast and just work on set and do school on set. So I don’t have to deal with the mean people at my actual school.

Rivkah Reyes:

Then that gig never came. So it really took a toll on my spirit, and I guess it’s kind of funny how I was so lucky to have been… Not lucky. Richard Linklater was very intentional with how he cast School of Rock. The kids specifically, especially the ones who were in the band, he knew. He put together this beautiful, special family, and we still love each other very much. We talk all the time. Especially as of recently we’ve lost a member of our family, and it’s been really, really tough. But it’s like you were saying, a celebration of life, right? Like we got together today to celebrate their life, and I’m flying back to my hometown next week to go to the actual Memorial funeral and stuff. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Which cast member passed away?

Rivkah Reyes:

The drummer, Kevin Clark. He played Freddy Jones, and he was my best friend in the cast. It’s been extremely dysregulating and difficult. Especially as a person in recovery. My grandma passed away about 90 days into me getting sober. But she was 90 something and we had known that it was going to happen soon. This was sudden and it was just a freak accident. He was killed in a car crash while he was biking home. He’s young too. It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t feel real. I’m like just now starting to be in the acceptance of it. But even that is hard because it’s like I accept it, but I don’t like it.

Rivkah Reyes:

I don’t want to feel feelings, but ultimately what I have now is immense gratitude for the community I’ve always had around School of Rock within the cast and within the family that is that cast. It’s interesting like in mirrors in a way, the sense of I’m home that I feel when I am in space with people in recovery especially. My close circle of recovery friends, that feels like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How long have you been sober?

Rivkah Reyes:

I got sober from drinking on December 10th, 2017, but I didn’t like start actually working in recovery until March, 2018. So it’s been a little over three years of recovery because you feel like sobriety and recovery don’t always mean the same thing. They certainly didn’t for me because for the first three months of me being sober from alcohol, I was still very dry. I was still acting out with food and with sex and people pleasing and stuff like that. Now three years later, I definitely have a strong sense of spirituality that has been able to hold me through this grief, through this loss. I was noticing the other day how some of my routine has been thrown off.

Rivkah Reyes:

I’ve not done my praying and meditating the same way that I had been doing it last week. That’s fine. I know that my creators have forgiven me for that. They’re not going to stop protecting and caring for me if I’ve taken a couple of days off. But the thought always gets me. The thinking always is like the first thing to go. I’m very fortunate that I have like strong friends in recovery, a strong community in recovery of people who are like asking me if I’m eating, making sure that I’m taking care of myself. Making sure that I’m getting out of the house. Making sure that I’m not numbing out in work. Because that’s usually the second thing to happen, is I start to get really analytical and thinky.

Rivkah Reyes:

Then I start numbing out in work, and forgetting to eat for getting to take care of my body. Luckily aside from my friends in recovery, the kids from School of Rock have all been very like checking in on me, and being like, “Hey, are you okay? What are you doing to take care of yourself?” One of the other kids from the film is sober and we like sat on a FaceTime last night and chanted [inaudible 00:13:38] like for like a couple of minutes together. I was just like, “Oh, I needed that. I really needed this.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. Yeah. The thing about you talk about your sobriety and your routine and having been sober a long time. I can tell you that the what matters is that you have all… in the good times, you’re working on all the different things, right? So you are working on taking care of your body. You’re taking care of your spirit. You have the community, you have all the different legs of a stool. The stool has many legs so that when one or two or three fall off, the stool can still stand. It’s so important that we have multiple stools. When I hear about people who have like, I just go to meetings, or I just pray, or any one of those things, when shit the hits the fan.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you lose a close friend, and you’re not going to take care of yourself perfectly, that’s okay. That’s why you take care of you try to take care of yourself more perfectly in other times, because when it falls apart, you have this community, and you have all these things to fall back on.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. I often will, when I’m working with others, which I do, thank God. I actually just started working with somebody new yesterday, because I was just like in my head, I need to get out of myself and get into helping somebody else for please. I was giving a talk on a Monday night, and I just kind of sat at the end of it. I was just like, “I’m going to make myself available to work with a newcomer.

Rivkah Reyes:

I think I would like to take somebody under my wing, take them through the steps, and go from there. Somebody reached out and they were perfect too. We’re not perfect, but I was just like, “Oh, this is definitely my person. This is my newcomer.” I’m really stoked. I can already see the willingness there. I’m like, “This is what I need. I need to see recovery through a newcomers eyes again.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I love that.

Rivkah Reyes:

Just because when life starts to get lifey, and I start to get bitter or jaded or just in it, it starts to feel like I’m drowning in the waves of my emotions. It’s hard for me not to want to numb this out. I’m going to be real honest. It’s been really, really hard. It’s been a week. It’s been difficult for me not to isolate, or starve myself or numb out with other people. Thankfully I haven’t wanted to like pick up drugs again, or alcohol, but I’ve been chain smoking cigarettes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. Sometimes they got to just pick up like one kind of harmless thing. I haven’t been doing my nightly 12 steps skincare routine as much, and I’m seeing it on my face. I’m just like, “Wow, this is insidious. This disease wants me dead. This disease wants me dead.” As much as I like simultaneously never want to outlive anyone again after this, I very much want to be alive. I very much want to carry my friend Kevin’s legacy through service, through acts of service, because he was humble. He worked at a Starbucks for like the last five or six years in Chicago, and was perfectly humble, and excited to work at Starbucks and be a manager there. And talk to people and meet people, and-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Be caffeinated.

Rivkah Reyes:

… be caffeinated and get people’s days going. He was just this wild ball of energy, and grew to be this loving, tender, warm, hearted, special, special person in my life, and in all of our lives. I’ve been collecting messages from fans and from people who knew him both from School of Rock, and from Chicago. Because we have the weird Chicago connection. It’s a very small city despite how big it is. Everyone somehow knew him whether it was through me, or through the movie or through Starbucks or through whatever. It’s just so surreal hearing how big of a impact he had on so many people’s lives. Even if he was only in their life for 10 seconds, or 18 years in my case. We really fucking grew up together. I get to carry that legacy on by showing up to my humble retail job that I work on the weekends, and smile and show people all of the things that I love about skincare.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There you go. It’s about doing what you love. I want to jump to in celebration of recovery and Pride month. I want to jump to a couple of questions I have. One is about the changing of the pronouns. You have a pronoun [sha 00:19:08], which I had to look up.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. It’s pronounced sha.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, well, there you go. I didn’t look it up well enough. Okay, sha. When that transformation and changing your pronouns, has that been liberating for you and how did you choose your pronouns?

Rivkah Reyes:

I love this question. I love talking about my journey gender wise, because I feel like it goes kind of hand-in-hand with my recovery. When I was working on a play in Chicago in 2015, one of my cast mates was non-binary and use they/them pronouns. They were the first person that I had ever met, and become friends with that was non-binary. Like I had known trans people trans women, trans men. But I’d never met a person who kind of floated in between genders, and lack of gender, and identified more as an amoeba or a ferry or a wizard or a an otter than a man or a woman. I was just like, “Huh.: I started going by she/they interchangeably just if people were to use she for me, that wouldn’t upset me. If people use they for me, it made my heart kind of flutter in a fun, warm way. Yeah, that was in 2015 or 16 that I started saying like, “I go by, she/her, and they/them.

Rivkah Reyes:

Call me whatever you want. Just don’t call me by my government name.” Because I never quite liked it. I always had just like a thousand different nicknames. Nobody ever called me by my old name. When I would perform at standup shows, and whatever people would introduce me, the host would be like, “You might recognize them from School of Rock or Netflix’s Easy. Give it up for them.” That started making me feel amazing to have that affirmation. In 2018, a couple of months after I got sober, I started feeling much more fluid and neutral than I ever had. I think it was just like my connection with God honestly, like my higher power that allowed me to not be so black and white in my thinking. I think a lot of what was holding me back gender wise was like, “Well, if I’m not a woman, then nobody’s going to ever find me a attractive.” I’m a member of many fellowships, like one of which is a people fellowship, where I deal with my addiction and deep fear of people all at the same time.

Rivkah Reyes:

I have learned that what other people think of me is none of my business. As long as I have validation from God, which I already do and I already have, and I always will, I’m free to go by any pronoun, and God will still love me no matter what. I’m free to change my name to an ancestrally fit version of the name that I was given by my parents, who did their best naming me. They did their best. They just like call me what they wanted to, because they saw the name Rebecca Brown on a marquee, and that name ended up not working out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What is your ancestry?

Rivkah Reyes:

I’m Jewish and Filipino. Ashkenazi Jewish and Filipino. Going from being like Becca brown, which I even hate saying it. I do my best not to like really say it that often. Because it just truly does feel like a foreign language now, and something that just never fit. It’s kind of like a costume that’s a little too tight and too itchy. In the summer of 2020 during COVID started working within the Akashic records, and opening those for myself. And looking back at my ancestry and doing some ancestral healing and work. The message I kept on getting was like you have to take our name, you have to take our name. I’m like, “What does that mean?”

Rivkah Reyes:

They were like, “Go to the roots, go to the motherland.” I was just like, “Okay.” I took on the Hebrew version of Rebecca, which is Rivkah, and friends call me Riv. I love that so much. It just has been a journey, a process of discovery and rediscovery of who I am and who I always was meant to be. Being with the cast of School of Rock who met me going by a different name, who all now call me by Riv or Rivkah, it just felt so good. It feels so good to hear my name in my family’s mouths. I love it so much. Then as far as the pronouns go now, they/them is like my strong preference. It gives me gender euphoria, and affirmation to hear people they for me, especially strangers. Like when I’ll go to a little Thai place down the street from my… or it’s not Thai, it’s Taiwanese, place down the street from me.

Rivkah Reyes:

The cashier was just like, “Do you have an order for Rivkah? They’re here to pick it up.” I just get so happy. Like when a stranger knows that, or doesn’t assume like, “Yeah, I think they wanted a orange blossom tea.” It’s just so second nature that it just makes me feel so good. She is like, it doesn’t give me dysphoria. It doesn’t give me like… sometimes it does. But for me I’m like neutral about it. It’s like I guess.Iin some shapes and forms, I am that. He like, nobody calls me he, but I’m not closed off to it. It’s definitely one of those things where it’s like I’m super fluid and kind of just aware that in my many lives that I’ve lived before this one, I’ve been many different things and many different genders, and that’s beautiful.

Rivkah Reyes:

I feel like in this life honoring all of those past selves by just using a neutral pronoun for now, and that could change. It could change tomorrow. I could wake up tomorrow and decide to change my name again, or change my pronouns to he or go back to she or whatever. That wouldn’t make me any less non-binary or any less clear or anything like that. As far as the queerness goes, I think that I was born queer just like I was born an addict. But I’ve been blessed to have a strong community of queer sober friends who some of them are also navigating gender. Some of them are also navigating, like being openly out as queer for the first time since the pandemic. It’s beautiful to see.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I have some questions for you. I’ll just give you a tiny bit of background. So I’m married to a man and I have two little kids. So very traditional in that way. I’ve been sober for 15 years, and I’ve dated women, I’ve dated women a couple of times. I consider myself straight for the most part. I don’t know. I’m considering myself someone who can be attracted to anyone and either way, but I don’t really have the need to call that anything. I often feel like I have a lot of really masculine qualities. I’m describing this for you, because I wonder why there’s this strong need to identify differently.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Because what I think of is, “Gosh, I feel a lot of different ways, and that doesn’t make me want to change my pronouns.” I wonder if people who’ve want to change their pronouns must not feel the way I feel. Because to me non-binary is what we all are. A great mix of men, male and female energy. There must be something other people are feeling that I’m not feeling if they have the desire to identify that, and tell people that, because I always assume everybody feels that way.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. Well, my thought always has been, yes, exactly what you’re saying. We all have a delicate and fluid balance of divine masculine, and divine feminine within us. On some days I am definitely feeling… like today, I feel pretty butch. I feel pretty masculine, but I never quite identified as a butch lesbian. Because I’ve dated Butch lesbians and I definitely that couldn’t be me. Because I also am attracted to all genders, and I do identify as like the blanket term would be queer, when people are like, “So, do you only date women?” I’m like, “No, I date all genders.”

Rivkah Reyes:

They’re like, “So are you pansexual?” I’m like, “Yes, but also I feel like there cannot be sexuality for me without love.” I have to at least be a little bit in love to be able to feel sexual attraction for somebody, which is technically referred to as demisexual. But I don’t like all of them labels. It doesn’t really feel good to just stick a pan on a dummy, and a bi, and a queer, and trans on me. I identify as loosely queer and trans because I’m definitely not straight, and I’m definitely not cis. I think it’s like each person… just like each person really diagnosis themselves as an alcoholic, or an addict, or a sex and love addict, or an anorexic, or bulimic. It is up to them and God how they choose to identify.

Rivkah Reyes:

I don’t identify as a sex and love addict anymore, even though that is like disease that I have been through, and addiction that I have worked on. I identify as a person with addiction. I identify as an addict. That’s again, a loose umbrella term for, I can’t think normal. I can’t think without snorting the thought. I can’t date without snorting the person. If I’m not careful, I do tend to get obsessive over anything. It can be TV.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

Christiana:

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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I relate to that very, very much. I always joke I could qualify for any of the programs.

Rivkah Reyes:

I have never gamble, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t be in that program for sure.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Whatever. I just don’t put it past myself. You know what I mean? I’m just like, “Well, no I haven’t, but I’m sure I could.” But I guess during Pride month, one of the things I want to highlight is there’s a lot of people out there like me, because I talked to them, who want to be supportive. The way I’m supportive personally is twofold. One, I take direction and two, I tried to put myself in that person’s shoes. That’s one of the ways I’m supportive. I grew up in the Bay Area and my first wedding was a gay wedding. Being gay, was not any weird at all to me. In fact-

Rivkah Reyes:

Taboo or anything like that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

… In fact, the way I grew up being Jewish, my father Ashkenazi Jewish. We’re 51%, my father being Jewish was way more of a pain point than any of the other stuff. Because that was what people were judgmental about. I grew up in the Bay Area. We’re right next to San Francisco. It’s just not a big deal. [crosstalk 00:33:26]. It’s not a big deal. I guess, where I would love your input as someone who’s been through this. I really want to understand, I really want to understand the need to have the labels to change the pronouns, and I don’t understand. I don’t. I find it hard. I find I’m not as supportive as I could be. I could be more supportive if I had the understanding, because I could explain it to other people, who are saying the things to me that they’re not going to say to you or other people, because I am a straight woman.

Rivkah Reyes:

So I can only teach from a place of my experience. There’s a lot of discourse on pronouns, and getting pronouns right, and striving to be inclusive. Doing things like, simple as like if you’re, for me, like as a coach and as a mentor and as a tarot reader. I have little forums on my website that people have to fill out with their like birthday, and like why they’re booking this session with me. I didn’t have a pronoun thing. I was like why did they add that? Adding like, what are your pronouns just to make sure I get them right, or if I’m just asking people what their pronouns are rather than doing this thing that I see a lot of allies, and non trans folks cis people like doing the whole, “Oh, I’m trying, but it’s just really hard.” Is just showing up willing to fail and knowing that you probably are going to slip up.

Rivkah Reyes:

When you do slip up on somebody’s pronouns, correcting yourself and moving on. Rather than saying I’m sorry when you slip up. Saying, thank you when you’re corrected that way the person who has pronouns that you’ve slipped up with, doesn’t feel compelled to say, “It’s okay.” Rather than that, it just shows like, okay, change behavior, we’ll show them. Just moving on swiftly, and getting into habit.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s the part of doing what you’re told, right? Like that’s where allies come in. Like we show up, we ask pronouns, we do those things. I really love that tip of saying thank you instead of I’m sorry. But it doesn’t get me across the bridge to understanding.

Rivkah Reyes:

Okay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So let me give you an example. So I often want to do male things, right? Like I have the urge to do male things.

Rivkah Reyes:

What do you mean by male things?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Things that are historically considered… if you go back in history, they have a masculine energy. Shooting guns or being the heads of… like things that today we have made more equal, but historically these things you could call them drive fast cars. Things like that. Things that were historically considered more male. It has never occurred to me to change how I identify, because a big piece of me feels more masculine than the average woman. Does that make sense?

Rivkah Reyes:

What’s an average woman?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I don’t know. The straight average woman.

Rivkah Reyes:

That’s the whole thing is I feel like for us to be able to kind of dismantle, and decenter limiting beliefs about gender. That women are dainty and pick flowers, and they’re the gatherers. They gathered the berries, and the men hunt the meat-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. That kind of thing.

Rivkah Reyes:

… and the men drive the [crosstalk 00:37:34]. To be able to decenter that, we have to kind of just completely set aside everything we thought we knew that a woman was. I 100% like have had to work the set aside methodology, and non-attachment around all of my gender stuff. Because like I said earlier, I thought if I’m not a woman, men aren’t going to find me attractive, women aren’t going to find me attractive. Because if I start to be more androgynous. The feminine, lesbians that I’m attracted to are not going to be as attracted to me. Or if I start to be more androgynous, the men that I’m attracted to aren’t going to be more attracted to me.

Rivkah Reyes:

First of all, if me cutting my hair or dressing more on the “masculine side”, which when I say I dress masculine, I mean I wear looser fitting, baggier clothes. Not as much tight fitting shit that my are hanging out of… who’s to say that’s feminine or masculine. Because obviously like in indigenous culture, everyone was fluid and everyone had the two spirit especially in my Filipino side where the sha comes from. There is no gender in like indigeneity in the Philippines. There just wasn’t no gender. That’s why there’s only one pronoun.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s very interesting.

Rivkah Reyes:

As far as like changing the pronouns goes like, yeah. That’s why for a long time, I didn’t feel a strong need to change my pronouns. I oscillate between being very strictly. Like today, I am they/them to some days referring to myself as a woman and a girl and being fine with that. I think it’s really just when people are like, “Hey ladies.” I get really triggered by that, but that’s me. I’m working on that too. I’m working on life not being so triggering by just practicing this non-attachment. And knowing that accepting that society, while it is progressing in many ways and like starting to move away from certain things, and starting to implement certain changes, that there are always going to be people who don’t understand that there are more than two genders.

Rivkah Reyes:

Even the idea of divine masculine, and divine feminine kind of gives me just a little bit of like, “Well, why do we have to categorize it? Why does it have to be put in a box?” As somebody who struggles with that cognitive distortion of black and white thinking. Why does my thinking have to be so masculine, and feminine? Check one box. It makes me feel like I’m killing part of myself to check off one box sometimes, you know what I mean?

Rivkah Reyes:

To say this outfit is feminine, I’m completely ignoring, dismembering these parts of myself that are innately masculine, and vice versa. So, I think that the answer is there is no answer. The answer is that it’s fluidity. We are made of 80% water, which is fluid. Which I think that gender and identity and spirituality are so fluid. I saw this thing in this book, the spirituality of imperfection talking about how spirituality is fluid and religion is solid.

Rivkah Reyes:

There are these like solid messages in religion. I feel like there are solid messages in the patriarchy understanding of gender. There are these solid, like men should do this and women should do this. Women definitely should not do this. Men definitely shouldn’t do this. But luckily through program, through recovery, and through my own like deep soul work, and my education on Filipino witchcraft, and Jewish witchcraft and things like that. I’ve been learning a lot about just how fluid I am, and just how fluid we are. It just makes things a lot easier when I’m not limiting my beliefs of gender, not just my gender, but the gender of everyone. I think giving voice to the fact that there are parts of me that have been undiscovered. That have not been awakened yet. That are kind of just in the icebox for later is important. That I just don’t know. Yeah, I feel like I’m talking in circles at this point, but yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, it’s helpful for me to understand and to hear your kind of free thought about it. Two things came up for me when you were talking. One was that you were saying, because when I was saying, “Oh, the average woman or whatever.” You’re like, “What’s average.” It’s changed. It’s changed tremendously over the years in good ways. So one of my thoughts was maybe the categorizing or the naming or the options helps change the narrative on what’s normal and what’s average. Those old ideas may be giving more options creates these places we can go the de stabilize.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You said something to the effect of like we destabilize all gender, and that’s how we get to this new place. That makes sense to me. Okay, we have to destabilize the whole system first in order to repaint. I’m like, “Okay, that makes sense.” The other question I had was, okay, so if we want to change how let’s say, we look at genders. We just say they actually like, okay, you were born with female parts, but you have a lot of masculinity here. You have all these different things. What is the value of say of creating all these new identities, or different identities, or different categories as opposed to stretching the categories of each physical denomination? Does that make sense?

Rivkah Reyes:

Yes, absolutely. Because gender isn’t just about what’s… obviously, you know this. Gender isn’t what’s downstairs, it’s what’s up here, and it’s what’s in here. Even though I was assigned female at birth, and I feel completely happy with my body parts that I have today. I say today, because tomorrow I could decide that I want top surgery. In a couple of weeks I could decide that I want to go on testosterone, but that’s not my journey right now. What I do feel is really important is that it’s important for me at least to not feel alone because I spent my entire childhood up until School of rock feeling alone. Then after school of rock ended and I was out of that situation, I felt alone until the time I got sober. From when I was like, yeah, 11 till I was 24.

Rivkah Reyes:

Meeting that person, Roe is their name who was in the show with me, who was non-binary. Meeting somebody who was fluid for the first time, and getting to know them and getting to know what their gender or lack thereof meant to them, was incredibly eye opening for me. So as a non-binary person, I think it’s important for… especially as a public figure too. It’s important for me to talk about my gender/lack thereof/where I’m at in my journey and keep people updated on that. Because what I get is a lot of messages from trans kids, or teenagers, or even people that are older than me.

Rivkah Reyes:

I’ve definitely had like friends in recovery who are like 38, 37, 40, 50 starting to use they/them pronouns and starting to use a different name. It’s magical to see that. They’ve told me, I’ve had some people tell me, like it was seeing you become Rivkah, and change your pronouns on Zoom that made me feel safe to do the same. So it’s important I think for like cis and straight people to understand that. We have all the labels not to confuse them. Like not to confuse you, but just so people know they’re not alone. I think that’s another big part of Pride. It’s another big part of Pride, right? Is this unity, is the unity around like our spectrum, our wide spectrum of sexuality. Because people are just learning that there’s more than just gay, straight and bi. People are learning that pansexual is different than bi for some reason that I actually really don’t know too much. I feel like they’re pretty-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It must be that you include like trans in there. That’s the only thing, because I was thinking about that.

Rivkah Reyes:

No. Bi is that you’re attracted to more than one gender, and pan is that you’re attracted to all genders. So like if I were to [crosstalk 00:47:21], so I’m both bi and pan because I’m attracted to like men and women, yes. I’m also attracted to non-binary people. I’m also attracted to A gender people, gender less people. Obviously when I say I’m attracted to men and women, obviously because trans men are men and trans women are women, trans men do fall under those categories. So I don’t have to say like I’m attracted to men and trans men because men are men, whether they’re trans or not. I honestly am attracted to all genders. It’s just that I know for me emotionally, I feel more of a connection with other queer people. So, I probably don’t want to continue to date cis straight men.

Rivkah Reyes:

But if like a bisexual cis man came into my life and things were aligned and they were spiritual and sober, or it didn’t need to be in recovery program, I’d consider it. But that’s the whole thing of fluidity that I think is beautiful. That’s why I think I do identify as both like gender fluid, and sexually fluid, and romantically fluid is that I just don’t know what I don’t know yet. I could meet this straight guy. Likely he wouldn’t be straight if he was attracted to me because I’m trans, but that’s all another realm of it.

Rivkah Reyes:

I could educate you and the listeners like on that for forever, but it is also quite exhausting. There’s a lot of discourse about it on the internet and Twitter. I feel like when people labor trans people, especially trans people of color and people of color with the work of educating, I’m not the only source. I’m probably not even the best source. They’re definitely other black and brown trans folk out there that understand more.

Rivkah Reyes:

I think I’d be happy to share some of better resources. There’s specifically alockvmenon who is on Instagram @alockV M-E-N-O-N, who posts all of this trans and POC history. They’re a trans person too. There’s a bunch of different public figures out there. Theo Jermaine. There’s just tons of resources out there. I’m not the only one. I want to say that my experience of gender is way different than I have a sponsee who is a trans man. I said gender is stupid the other day. He was just like, ‘Well, it’s not to me, because I almost died because I was born into the wrong body.” I don’t want to put words in his mouth.

Rivkah Reyes:

But he said I almost died because I was identifying and perceived as female for a long time. Gender is very important to me, and it’s not stupid to me. So I had to really right-size myself on that. Because to some people, it is very important. My sister is also trans, and she’s kind of like me where she’s fluid sexually and gender wise. But she is a very staunchly uses she/her pronouns. Whereas I am very fluid in mine, and I have other friends who are trans mask who have had top surgery, who have been on testosterone. But still only want to be referred to with they/them pronouns. It’s all just like, no two DNA’s are the same.

Rivkah Reyes:

Just like with recovery, I feel like I have definitely… My stool doesn’t look the same as yours.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. There’s a woman who came on our podcast, she is intersex. Her name is Jessica Buch. She is a model. She is the definition of what people… when you think of woman, the straight woman, it’s like, that’s what she looks like on the magazines, and what have you. She’s intersex. Get this, her DNA shows up as male. So I want to write a thriller about her, where she commits crimes and they take the DNA sample. It shows up as male. She’ll never get caught, because no one would ever think, you know? That’s a perfect example of her.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

If you took her DNA it would tell you, it would say male. It would say male. Yet everything we see in everything we think we know based on what she looks like, based on what we can see would tell us something different. That was a huge like wow. Look at all these different scenarios. I really, really appreciate number one, you letting me ask you these questions. Because I’m really into council culture not cancel culture. I think that it counseling each other.

Rivkah Reyes:

I haven’t heard of that one. I like that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. Council culture not cancel culture, because how do we get better if we’re not learning, if we’re not being shown the way. You said something that… and every time I’ve had these conversations, I get a little nugget that helps me understand more. You said something. You said it’s about not feeling alone and identifying. That is something I can relate to. I think most people, whether it’s their particular religion, Christianity has a huge umbrella. But people they’re Catholic, they’re Protestant, they’re Lutheran, whatever. There’s different types because people, those types identify in a very specific way, and people like that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So to me, when you’re describing the feeling of being home, not being alone, I’m thinking to myself, yeah, there are Facebook groups for people who own a FJ cruiser. That’s a Toyota, because people have a specific narrow interests.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. It’s the same thing as like… I feel like for me, I used to diagnose myself and my friends with various diseases using astrology. Be like, “Oh, you’re a Sagittarius. That makes sense.” Doing that thing, and just like you said, there’s a Facebook group for PT cruisers. There’s like also a bunch of like internet communities for Leo’s. There’s a Facebook page that’s like specifically devoted to people who have their moon in Aries, which I’m in. It’s we are all so similar. Of course this makes sense that we all express our feelings this way, because we all have this same astrology. It feels with having community around.

Rivkah Reyes:

One of the greatest gifts in my life was being able to work with this production called Q2, which was all about queer kids navigating, being kind of loners in small towns, and then finding each other on the internet. I ended up getting to like work with that on my sister. They didn’t know we were siblings. It was really years ago. We have a common last name. They didn’t know. They put us in this cast and everyone had their own unique experience of sexuality, or lack thereof, because some people are also asexual, and they don’t experience sexual attraction.

Rivkah Reyes:

That doesn’t mean that they’ll like never be in a relationship. That just means that sex doesn’t do it for them. That’s okay. But the writers Celeste and Ryan, they like took the stories of actual queer youth in small towns to create and curate this musical. I learned so much just in those like two weeks that I was working on the workshop of it just learning about the different identities, and the different terms and labels and things like that. While I balk at labels, because I don’t like being put in a box, and I don’t like black and white thinking, it feels nice even if it’s just like a silly meme on Instagram where it’s just like, “Oh my God, where are my queer non-binary people at with a Leo sun and an Aries moon. If it’s like exactly what I am, if I see myself in that at all, I feel seen, and I feel very [crosstalk 00:56:15].

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I love that. You feel seen because we all want to feel seen. This is the piece. When I have these conversations I’m like, okay, I don’t understand. Then you explain it and you say things like I feel seen. I’m like, I get wanting to feel seen? I get wanting to be in a community. These are things I can relate to. One of the most powerful things. I went to UCLA undergrad, and it was a really cool experience for me, because I was exposed to so many different types of people, and many different types of people that I had never come in contact with. They helped shape my view of who those people were. People who had undocumented people trans, everything. I had really amazing conversations.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There was this person who at the time I don’t believe had changed pronouns, or identify differently. Was still identifying as a he, but he said to me something so powerful. He said to me, “Ashley, imagine if every time you were in a public place, and you had to go to the bathroom. You had to look at two signs, two genders, one with a skirt and one without a skirt. You had to question your gender every single time you just wanted to use a public restroom.” I thought about that hard because I’ve always thought great where the sign with the dress or whatever thinking to myself like, “Yeah, that could be probably more inclusive.” But I have never thought twice going to the public restroom, and thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, which one do I go to?” Or thought anything about my gender at all whatsoever. I just picked the female one and walked through the door. That’s it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It wasn’t an existential crisis for me. It didn’t trigger me. Nothing happened. It never occurred to me that that was even right. There was anything beyond just telling me what room to go into. When he told me that, I thought about how painful that would be if that was a painful subject, and thinking about my personal journeys with other things, with eating disorders and weights. Imagine if every time I wanted to go to the bathroom that topic was brought up for me. Every time. Whatever it was, and that helped me a lot. That opened the door for me to the conversations to start to try to understand what other people were going through. What it would feel like to be born in the wrong body. What it would feel like, because for the people who I’m around who are trying to understand this movement, who are trying to be supportive, if you’ve never felt that, if you’ve never questioned it, if you’ve never even considered gender, it is really hard to understand. It’s really is.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. You did mention putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. I don’t do that as much as I try to look at people from a God’s eye view, and see because I will never ever understand what it is to be black in America. I’ll never ever understand that. Instead of centering myself by putting myself in a black person’s shoes, what I’ll do is I’ll just look at everything from a God’s eye view, and know that racism doesn’t come from God. Looking at that and being like, “Okay, where do I show up? What’s my part? What do I still need to work on? What part of me is still ignorant? What part of me still has limiting beliefs about race, limiting beliefs about gender?” Having a transgender sister has like really helped me.

Rivkah Reyes:

She definitely checks me all the time. She definitely, definitely right sizes me and tells me, “Hey, that thing that you said was a little bit bioessential.” And not all women have ovaries. Like I said something about, this is like two or three years ago, on like International Women’s Day. I said something that was like, “Congratulations. You had to suck on a titty to be alive or something like that.” She was just like, not all women have the ability to breastfeed and not all people with breasts are women. So like that’s a little bit bioessential, and just make sure you’re checking that. Because be careful, you don’t want to like hurt anybody by sharing those types of things.

Rivkah Reyes:

I too, spent a lot of time before I like really started to do the work on educating myself about gender, and about the history, and all of that. The science of it all is that again, the body of the person doesn’t matter. If they look a certain way, but they’re telling you they’re a he, then you got to just trust the individual. I have struggled with like partners who didn’t get it. Partners who didn’t understand my gender or my pronouns. They unfortunately just weren’t on my level and I don’t always have the patience to teach and to educate.

Rivkah Reyes:

That’s not a reflection of me. I think it’s also a reflection on the person’s lack of willingness to try, and to make an effort to be more understanding. I think of the Saint Francis prayer all the time. I think of that to understand rather than to be understood, to seek, to love and comfort rather than to be loved and be comforted. Where can I bring justice where there is discord, where there is imbalance just by living in my truth and by putting my pronouns in my bio. And by being on a Zoom meeting or something, and seeing somebody who has added like she/they to their profile and sending them my info and being like, “Hey, do you know of any good queer meetings? If not, I have a whole list and I can send them your way if you’re interested.” That’s me doing my part to bring that love and understanding and comfort to the rooms, because I feel like the rooms are very, very binary.

Rivkah Reyes:

It just passed like a couple of weeks ago to change the preamble to AA as a fellowship of people who share their experience, strength and hope rather than men and women just to make it a little bit more inclusive. That’s a tiny little footnote on the rest of the literature that is intensely gendered that there’s so much more work to be done. But that is even a small victory in my queer fellowship group chat. We were all celebrating it. That’s a celebration of pride. That’s an act of pride is that that got passed. I’m grateful that the rooms are becoming more inclusive. Definitely in California, and New York, can’t speak for all of America. I’m still seeing a lot of spaces that are like a sponsor is somebody who is of the same sex that can take you through the steps where it’s like, well, no, that’s not what it is.

Rivkah Reyes:

The sponsors gendered doesn’t actually matter. It’s just use your best judgment and pick a sponsor who you’re not at risk of acting out with sexually.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m just laughing inside just thinking of me as a newcomer. Just that two things I didn’t have was best and judgment. So maybe asks someone you trust, because my judgment was definitely less than suburb.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. For me as a newcomer, I definitely was very careful who I chose to be my sponsor. But I knew that I wanted to work with somebody who was also queer, and also at the time I was identifying as a woman, like I still kind of identify as a woman, let’s be real. I identify as non-binary, but I also identify as a Filipino woman, and a Jewish woman. I don’t know why I conflate my race with my gender at all. It’s kind of still all a discovery for me, but yeah, I for sure picked a lesbian as my first sponsor. Because I wanted to work with somebody who understood queerness. But I was very careful in picking somebody who I wasn’t at risk of falling for. Yeah, it ended. She’s not my sponsor anymore, but yeah, I ended up finding a new sponsor in Chicago who is now been my sponsor for almost two years now. Wow. There’s no risk there. She’s in a beautiful partnership with a man who is sober in AA, and the two of them work a lot on social justice within the rooms. I look up to them so much and that is what I want to do.

Rivkah Reyes:

I want to continue to bring neutrality, and inclusivity to the rooms just by adding a simple statement that love and tolerance is our code and that racist or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic or abelist or xenophobic like statements aren’t welcome. That can be a small act of justice that can change the way a newcomer feels safe in a meeting. Because that is like strongly upholding the traditions, making the newcomer feel safe, and welcome and making sure that they feel like this is a space they can recover, and this is a space they can trust.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m sure you have a list of lots of great queer meetings, and all sorts of resources, is should people contact you on your website, or Instagram if they’re curious about joining various groups? What do you have recommendations for people?

Rivkah Reyes:

There are many. Yeah, there are many, and I wouldn’t be able to like post a list, because I just don’t want the wrong people to get those. I can definitely… yeah, Instagram is typically the best way to contact me as far as resources for recovery goes. But I’d be happy to point people in the direction of a safe place to recover.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, that’s awesome. Because I think that’s a huge part of getting sober, being in recovery, and finding where you fit, and finding your people. I had to find my people, and like you said, my people have changed over the years, right?

Rivkah Reyes:

Oh, yeah. Definitely. When I was new in AA, if I hadn’t started just going to every meeting that said LGBTQ on it, I wouldn’t have found that first sponsor. I maybe wouldn’t have stayed sober. Like who knows. Then when I left, because I got sober in LA and I left to go back to school in Chicago for a little bit. I remember coming back to Chicago, and that’s where I’m from originally. So I had like friends who were in program, and I was just like, “Hey, take me to your favorite meeting.” I found this great group called Sobriety in the Arts, which still runs virtually on Zoom. Where the speaker brings in a piece of art that speaks to them about their sobriety in some way.

Rivkah Reyes:

It could be something they wrote, it could be something that somebody wrote. Going to that meeting and meeting other young people with cool tattoos, cool hair in Chicago that were in the program that were sober, and made sobriety look like so much fun. That kept me sober. Then that’s where I met my first sponsee. That’s where I definitely understood what service was about, because there was a person. I remember specifically, this person brought cookies every week, and there wasn’t even a built-in commitment for that. There was no cookie commitment, but they just… because they love this meeting so much brought cookies that they made every week. It was like a 40, 50 person meeting. That’s a lot of cookies.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s a lot of cookies.

Rivkah Reyes:

They were good too. There were fire.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I think I love that. That’s really cool about the sober within the arts. What is it called? Remind me the name.

Rivkah Reyes:

Sobriety in the Arts.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that.

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. Call them. It’s a great meeting. It’s on Thursdays. But yeah, I’ll definitely leave my inbox on Insta open for anyone who is interested in Sobriety in the Arts or in any other queer focus, or bipack meetings. We do have like a very strong fellowship of all POC recovery meetings. So, there’s like a spreadsheet that’s out there about, I think there’s probably like 200 meetings on there of meetings that are open to predominantly only people of color. Some of them are only open to queer people of color as well. Yeah. My inbox is open, hit me up on a Insta or Twitter if you want the info for any of those meetings.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love it. Thank you so much for being here. I really, really appreciate it. We’re going to put some resources in the show notes, so that people have places to go and can look up meetings. Whether they’re on person, and kind of give a breakdown of what you can do to join meetings where you feel safe to recover. On a ending note, what is something that we can all do this month those of us who are not in the community to support Pride?

Rivkah Reyes:

Yeah. Well, there are a lot of orgs that can be donated to. I would recommend doing research, and putting in the work and going on. You can come on mine, you can come on to alockvmenon Insta, and look at any calls to action. Typically, I post a lot of calls to action in my stories. A lot of people need top surgery, or surgery to get the correct medical care that they need, and they post their GoFundmes. Something that I often do is I’ll just like retweet a bunch of different mutual aid things for individuals. I think it’s important to be donating even if it’s like a couple of dollars to like houseless trans person, who is in need of childcare, or in need of a gender affirming surgery.

Rivkah Reyes:

I think that’s equally as important as donating to bigger organizations like the Okra fund. I think that’s what it’s called. The Okra Project or The Future Perfect Project is another one that comes to mind. Another one that comes to mind is for the girls. I can send you like the Instagrams of all of those just to link in the show notes. Yeah. There are a lot of different orgs that especially help with like black trans people’s rent, and their surgeries. There’s very specific ones too. There are companies that like help queer people who used to be in gangs get their tattoos covered up so they can get work.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s very specific.

Rivkah Reyes:

That’s very specific. Yeah. They’re out of Chicago. But yeah, I think it’s just important to do your own research, and think about what your specific passions are, and looking into where you would like to donate your time and your money. But time is also as valid as donating actual physical money to I think even donating a couple of hours to doing some good research on people, places and things to support. People, places, and things to educate yourself on. There are lots of documentaries. The documentary disclosure on Netflix talks, or I think it’s on Netflix or HBO. I’m not sure. Talked a lot about like just transness in the lens of Hollywood, and how kind of unfairly trans people as actors have like been treated for a long time.

Rivkah Reyes:

There are a ton of different shows. That can be Work in Progress, is a great TV show for Showtime. The newer L word is pretty good too on Showtime, which is called The L Word: Generation Q. Which has like actually good trans representation. Not like last time. Yeah, there’s truly-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

A lot.

Rivkah Reyes:

… There’s a lot out there. Just like I think a willingness to show up and do the work.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I love it. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. My heart goes out you in this time. I know what it’s like to feel tragedy, and grief and loss. I completely understand not willing to feel that pain and my heart sending you hugs from over here and just be gentle with yourself during this time.

Rivkah Reyes:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. Thank you so much of Rivkah. This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.