We recently had the chance to connect with Alex Vaughan and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alex, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: Have you stood up for someone when it cost you something?
Deep icebreaker question….! Well, I do my best to stand up every day for anyone who needs love and support. It is an integral part of my work and a fundamental part of who I am as a person. My wife and my kids inspire me every day. First and foremost, standing up for someone will always cost us something, and from what I have seen so far, the price is always needed and necessary change. I stood up to my children’s father in family court to protect my kids. He is a perpetrator of domestic abuse in covert and invisible ways. As a queer and neurodivergent person, as well as my daughter, I saw responsibility as a caregiver and a parent go beyond the dominant system that was not built for us. I am unwavering and relentless and a total disruption to the shadows of fragile, insecure men who cannot see they have been duped by supremacy. They continue to behave like they know someone (like a trans kid) better than that kid knows themselves. It was never a question of if I stood up to their father; it was always when and how it would play out. My children’s lives, their identities, their authenticities, as far as I am concerned, are never up for debate. But to him, we were toys to toss around in his cage. My children’s father used the family court system, putting his kids, me, and anyone he could up on the chopping block. A big part of my audacity is ‘watch me’. As an athlete, I understand how to train the body for strength, power, flexibility and agility. But this was core power from within; emotional and psychological agility. I applied the same principles in advocacy for my children. I kept showing up; I got stronger, braver, and acted through resilience and courage. While things got more challenging over the arc of our court case, I was also being shown how the flow was shifting. My skills were meeting the challenges. Part of the challenge included facing what it was going to take to break us free from the cycle of abuse. Using fear tactics, attacking our healthcare providers and organizations, throwing out numerous threats, emboldened by his uncontrolled rage using intimidation as “strategy”, this was laughable to me, and…exhausting. For 5 years through court, he blew hot, empty air, and did not, whatsoever, include us as trans people. He wanted us to keep believing we should obey the patriarchal image of control. But, I had seen enough and there was nothing in me that was going to remain a bystander, enabling the cycle. There are no sides or debate of someone else’s lived experience. It takes high emotional intelligence to be able to hold that. People must learn the differences between conflict, abuse and oppression. I had no choice but to see it. And I’m so glad. Transition took on an even deeper meaning, allowing me to see more of my purpose. When you live a lifestyle of standing up for others, you are also standing up with yourself, with everyone that came before you and everyone who will follow after. Standing up means you are allowing yourself to become someone entirely new. I think this is what scares people the most. Being trans is one tiny piece of someone’s experience. People are afraid to change because they know on some level they will have to expand themselves. This brings in a lot of discomfort and honestly, real pain. It’s embracing vulnerability on an entirely new scale. The feelings of loss are real but so are the real costs to human lives. My lawyer called what he was doing to us psychological terrorism, which is exactly what the current administration is doing to every trans/nonbinary person across the country right now. Standing up will always cost us something. We can’t stand up without accepting that doing so means it’ll cost us another piece of our fear melting away. I mean, really, if you can sit with that, it’s an easy choice. When we let go of something, something else is waiting to be let in; it enhances our lives in extraordinary ways.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am the CEO/Founder of Alex Vaughan LLC, “Have the Hope of The Raven”. I am a Certified Peer and Family Specialist, Nationally Certified Recovery Coach, Consultant/Speaker, and fitness instructor, with dance fitness being one of the multiple pathways I use through my own long-term recovery. My business is unique because it’s built on the ability to merge and integrate complexity, while holding space for nuance through our varied lived experiences. With a foundation in the fitness and wellness industry, I approach my work through the lens of the 8 Pillars of Wellness, paired with practices of social justice. My goal is to support others in building self-advocacy, learning to live as allies, and uncovering and re-centering their own voices. This creates sustainable practices and conscious-minded behaviors that extend far beyond the individual into community and collective care.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I am a success in progress, continuously learning from my clairs. I’m kind, bold, and bright. As a queer, trans, neurodivergent kid, I grew up having to adapt to everyone else. Surrounded by people who lived from their fear and chronic self-betrayal, thinking it was protection and care, I didn’t know their worries weren’t mine to carry. And, I had no awareness of what an enmeshed family system was and how detrimental is to wellbeing. Taking on their unregulated emotional states to survive through, thinking it would help create balance, I eventually discovered that trying to be what someone else needed me to be was suffocating. From the outside, it looked like I stopped caring. For me, I stopped handing myself over without discernment. As I approached 40 years young, I felt like I was dying inside so I started to push back, question my conditioning and who society told me I am. I started treated myself as a resource, trusting the vision of life I wanted for myself and my life. It was pretty simple: love and connection. And, I found it! In my core, I’m really loud, silly, full of joy, deeply empathetic, introspective, and relentless for justice.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Many. HA! But I think giving up is a necessary part of the process of becoming ourselves and living with integrity. Giving up isn’t what we think it is. I see giving up as surrendering, giving TO the insight that brings us a sense of internal peace. I live daring through audacity and I know as a trans/nonbinary person, waking up as me every day is resistance to dominant expectations as it is all happening. When I’ve been literally and figuratively ‘on the floor’, breathing through, ready to “give up”, something extraordinary happens. It’s redirection and I think, “Okay, what comes next”? We hear giving up and can start to shame or guilt ourselves. I gave up a lot of things because I had to, because I wanted to, because it was the only way through to finding what felt aligned.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
There is a lot of overlap in the fitness, wellness and recovery. Some lies include selling the myth of the “ideal self”. Basically, it’s whatever version of you makes others the most comfortable, makes dominant society comfortable, and does not challenge cultural ideals. The lies begin with conditioning people to believe they need to be “fixed” or be “healed completely” in order to be an acceptable, functional person. This narrative erases nuance, flattens lived experience, and ignores systemic realities in favor of selling products, programs, and promises.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
Maybe something like, ‘They saw. They stood. They moved. They showed up. They faced. They breathed. They walked alongside. They were a bridge for love and connection. They exhaled with gentle forces that changed the Earth beneath them for others to feel and live more free.’
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.coachalexvaughan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachalexvaughan/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-vaughan-pss-ncrc-gfi-cpt-838457341/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachalexvaughan
Image Credits
Beckyduffyhill.creative
