Lavender: Therapist by day, dancer by night.

Lavender is a well known burlesque performer and pole dancer based in Central Manchester, and one half of “the sapphic menaces. ” Vienna (the other half of sapphic menaces) and Lavender can often be found performing in Manchester's hottest underground events. I originally met Lavender at my very first zine exhibition, where they applied to perform for the cabaret show. Since then we have worked together on countless photoshoots and events, but by day lavender takes on a very different role.

Challenges of performing and being a therapist 

The thought of having two jobs that in nature are so opposite immediately drew up some questions for me about Lavender's work balance. Therapy being so concentrated around the mind, about taking information in, within a peaceful and calming environment. Whereas Lavender's performances are loud and all about projecting and expressing their energy outwards from the body. I asked what Lavender's typical day looked like, as bouncing between different energies sounded physically exhausting.

“I'm really carefully balancing lots of different things at the moment… So a typical day for me looks like working in my full time NHS role, and then in my spare time, is when I'm managing my self employed roles. So performing and the lavender therapy collective.  That's kind of on top of, a 37.5 hour week of a full time salaried role, managing the self employment side of things. A typical day for me is really busy and it's not to be underestimated how much work goes into, especially the initial startup of self employment… It is all up to you, you are the therapist, you are the performer, you are your own admin as well, and promoter and organizer and all the rest of it.”

Navigating personal and professional life

Lavender's life has been all go since I met them a few years ago, and although they're able to seemingly and effortlessly manage not two but three jobs, I wondered if it had always been like this. 

“I qualified as a mental health nurse at 21 so it's all I've ever known. My entire adult life has been like a meshed with being a nurse, quite a big thing, really. I was getting up really, really early hours in the morning to get several buses to get to the ward rounds on time. And I didn't know I was autistic at the time, so the change was really hard, and the kind of routine and just constantly having to switch quite regularly to, oh, it's a different place now, new people and yeah, but I got through it and qualified.”

Is your autism something your current job role caters to, or do you still have to fight to be catered to like neurodivergent people often do? 

“I haven't told them. I've never really spoken about it at work, purposefully. My concerns are that I think people who are best assigned female and presented as femme can be quite infantilized as autistic people.

And I've worked really, really hard to be successful in my career, and I've done really well at kind of becoming really successful quite quickly. And my worry is, if I say I'm autistic, that people might treat me in a certain way. I'm still unpicking whether that is the right or wrong thing to do, and whether that's from my own internalized ableism at not sharing that because I would never say that to anybody else, and as a therapist, I would never say that to anyone. It's just my own worry.”

Managing misogyny and backlash

“There have been occasions where there's been comments made about dancing, and I think for that reason, I tried to keep quite a clear separation between performing and my therapist role, because unfortunately, there's a lot of negative association with performing and people taking their clothes off and what have you. I'm such a huge advocate of supporting sex workers, and our roots come from sex workers to be doing pole and to be doing burlesque, those things aren't divided. So I don't ever want to present myself as a purified version. Because I've had those comments made before, there's been people that have come to see burlesque, and they've made comments about, “oh, well, you know, you're not a stripper, you know, like that makes it okay to watch burlesque.” And actually, I'm always very vocal about it. We don't use that language here. 

I work with children and young people, so I think there is a very understandable element of separating those roles, and it's not appropriate to be talking about that necessarily at work. But we're all entitled to our private lives. And actually, the 18 plus events that I perform at, kids wouldn't be coming to them anyway. So, you know, who cares what your therapist does in their private time? I'd rather my therapist had a very varied and active life.”

Community and professional boundaries 

“I really like the lavender therapy collective, because I'm working in my community. So a lot of people do know who I am, or if they don't know who I am, then it's not hard to find out. But I also perform, and because Manchester is a small queer world, I've had to navigate, kind of, how do I feel about that? And what boundries do I want to put up? We might see each other at Riot, or, you know, any other various kink parties and stuff like that. And how do we navigate that? Because it's just life, isn't it? It's just normal. Might also see you at the shop, because I do my food shop as well, like they are all very normal parts of life.”

So you'd be quite happy with the lavender therapy collective to blend a little bit into the community that you're dancing in. Would you be happy with those worlds crossing over?

“They already do. So I've already written some stuff about that on my website for the lavender therapy collective, and I've done some Instagram reels and posts about it as well. Like, what do we do, you know, if you see me out and about? And my disclaimer is that I would never out somebody… I would always let them come to me. So it's in their control completely. But I am very happy for people to do that it's not something that I'm embarrassed about or ashamed about. I think where I have to draw a boundary is it is difficult if I'm out and about either having, you know, having a drink, like having a good time with my friends, or I'm performing, or I'm at like, a sex party or something, then obviously that isn't an appropriate time to start having a consultation. And I think those boundaries are more about professionalism. When is it an appropriate time to have a consultation? That's probably not going to be when I'm in my lingerie. And also there's the awkward part, which is there's a monetary aspect to it, and we all deserve to be paid for our labor. So I'm not going to start giving out free consultations over a drink at a party, but those are the boundaries that are being established as a way to get more experience with this kind of private practice.” 

Marketing and growth of the Lavender Therapy collective 

How is the lavender therapy Collective going? Is it taking off as you wanted it to?

“Yes it is! I am still navigating the marketing side of things, being really honest, how real do you be? Do you give off a persona that you're doing well or, you know, or do you be honest about it? And like, it's so hard to know, isn't it? Or do I market myself better? Because I've never done a marketing course. I've no idea what I'm doing, and like, navigating social media is a whole other thing as well. But I'm learning as I go, that is often, you know, late at night before I'm going to bed, or first thing in the morning if I'm going to work, you know, trying to kind of do it all and kind of teach myself. But I guess the other aspect is, if I do want to kind of start reducing my NHS hours and increasing my private practice hours, then I do need to think about, kind of, how do I slowly and quite steadily increase a wait list? And I'm not too sure how to navigate that, because I've just never had to do it.

 I think for me, it's going as well as I would expect it to be going given that I am so incredibly busy and it's such a specialist, kind of, you know, niche area, and I think that I only have so much time, so at the minute it's slow and steady like I'm having regular sessions.”

Advice for new therapist's and performers 

What would you advise to someone going into your line of work? 

“I think my advice would be to find a good community, because you're going to need it, particularly with therapy. You know, there's lots of inbuilt structures, supervision and whatever kind of therapist you are, there'll be networks and, you know, communities, unions and what have you.

I think those things are just absolutely valuable, because there'll be people who have got so much experience, and we can learn from that. Just take all the bits of information that's helpful from those different sectors, but also just manage work life balance.

Like the world won't stop turning if you dont leave on time, and actually, if you start work early and you leave work late, what you you what you're creating, (certainly in kind of public sector jobs,) is this idea that its sustainable, and it's absolutely not, and it shouldn't be.

It's not the expectation, and that's something I wish somebody would have told me sooner, because I burnt myself out, and it's embarrassing now looking back thinking about the hours that I work for free, just because I really, genuinely thought that's what I had to do. I thought that's where my value lay. But these are underfunded services. Chronically, purposefully underfunded, one nurse staying in later is not going to impact on the whole NHS. It's just not. I just really wished somebody would have told me that sooner.

And then with performing just the same, looking for a community and seeking out that support, because, again, I think we need it, there's so many times where I've really, really valued, particularly with you Pidge and other people who've been just so lovely and supportive throughout my journey.  Sharing an opportunity or offering support or turning up to events, and probably, quite importantly, as well, safeguarding wise. We're our own safeguarding support, if something's happened in a certain space, or what have you, we might just need to know that information, and you don't know that without knowing the community and knowing the spaces so, really, really helpful.”

If you're interested in seeing more of Lavenders work you can find her at @mslavendermenace or @thelavendertherapycollective on Instagram.