Pickles and Vodka: a Mental Health Podcast · Christina & Lauren

#232 Stripping Away the Trauma feat. Asteria

·55 min·2 clips

Asteria says stripping was an act of reclamation: she could tell a man "you can't touch me, but you have to pay me."

1. Pickles and Vodka episode #232, "Stripping Away the Trauma," follows guest Asteria's path from a rural northern Michigan upbringing through an abusive marriage to a queer adult life in Portland. 2. Hosts Lauren and Christina interview Asteria (she/they), who runs a large dance center in Portland and was introduced through previous guest Orion, with whom she once co-hosted a support group. 3. Asteria frames her story around late-blooming queerness and the idea of "hetero complacency," the choice to follow the expected path because rejection by family and community feels more daunting than saying "I'm gay." 4. She describes a childhood in a town of 600 with high-school-sweetheart parents about to mark their 45th anniversary, then her marriage at 18 to a fundamentalist Christian man, during which she secretly loved her best friend and later served as that friend's maid of honor. 5. Her husband removed her birth control pills, so a female doctor secretly placed an IUD and kept prescribing pills, and Asteria divorced before turning 25. 6. After a pre-med degree she worked six years as a level one trauma center lab technician, where death was routine, until a 14-hour shift ended with her weeping in her car and deciding to quit and travel to Australia. 7. She explains that she became a stripper as "an act of reclamation," says it gave her control over her schedule, boundaries and money, and notes that Portland has the most strip clubs per capita in the United States. 8. She and the hosts discuss pole and aerial work, with Lauren describing a one-and-a-half-second heel hang on the lira and Asteria saying pole "forces you to trust yourself." 9. On mental health, Asteria recalls a Christian marriage counselor who told her the problem was that she was not "complacent to your husband," and says COVID ended her travels and forced her to face the depression she had avoided. 10. Suited to listeners interested in queer late-bloomer stories, leaving high-control religion, and body reclamation.

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