Aries Jo
The Queer Death Daddy
Lived Experience Coaching, Death Education,
and Queer Relationship Support
Coaching or Therapy… What’s the Difference?
While therapy helps diagnose, treat, and work through mental illnesses and traumatic past events, peer coaching offers different benefits. Coaching helps you build mental fitness and work through current issues and problems. Lived experience coaches can’t diagnose conditions or prescribe medication. Instead, they provide safe spaces to be seen and heard, advice based on lived experiences, and validation and support for your emotions.
Coaches are great options for folx looking for a less clinical experience in their mental health journey.
What is Lived Experience Coaching?
Lived experience coaching is a type of coaching that uses the personal experience of living with mental health or substance use challenges to help guide people with mental health-related initiatives. Lived experience coaches use their professional training and experience, as well as their own personal experience of living with significant psychological and emotional distress, to help people.
Lived experience can also refer to knowledge based on someone's perspective, personal identities, and history, beyond their professional or educational experience. For example, peer trainers use their lived experience to develop and deliver training around relevant subjects.
ABOUT ARIES
As a bi/pansexual, polyamorous, trans and nonbinary, kinky, sex-positive, death care professional I’ve had a whole life of challenging and confusing experiences to understand and move through (and it’s a continuous process!) As someone who has also experienced family of origin trauma, LGBTQIA+ identity and family issues, stigmatized death of loved ones, and disenfranchised grief, I also understand just how dark and overwhelming life can feel when we think we are alone. However, working with therapists, peers, and deathcare colleagues has taught me that moving through grief with intention and plenty of community support can be a path to growth.
In all of my work, I am committed to anti-colonial practices and dismantling internalized capitalism. As a recovering perfectionist, I understand firsthand how colonizer ideals can be deeply internalized in how we see ourselves and move through the world. In all of my coaching and education practices, I use a queer-centric, intersectionally informed, anti-racist lens to help us decolonize ourselves and our relationships.
Fuck white supremacy.
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Fuck transphobia.
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Fuck fatphobia.
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Fuck homophobia.
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Fuck ableism.
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Fuck slut shaming.
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Fuck white supremacy. 〰️ Fuck transphobia. 〰️ Fuck fatphobia. 〰️ Fuck homophobia. 〰️ Fuck ableism. 〰️ Fuck slut shaming. 〰️
PHILOSOPHY
Aries belives that everyone deserves a safe space to be heard and held by someone who has been there.
As a peer mentor, I am committed to offering what I have learned from both my life experiences and professional training to help you feel less alone in your own journey. My most valued feature as a peer mentor is my ability to hold a space for listening that is free of judgment. I care deeply about helping folx from all walks of life find a safe space in which to be seen, heard, held and supported. My goal is to meet you exactly where you are in your unique emotional journey. Things are rarely perfectly linear and together we can learn to hold space for every twist and turn on your path to healing. A strong support system is vital to emotional wellbeing, and I am excited to be a part of that for you.
SERVICES
Ready to get the support you deserve?
Browse available services, then book a free consultation.
Why the Queer Death “Daddy”?
On the drag and burlesque stage, I’m known as Daddy Stardust, and I am a Daddy in my BDSM dynamics. The concept of “Daddy” in my identity relates to nurturing, caretaking, chosen family, and BDSM power exchange.
“Stardust” comes from my eternal love for the queer icon David Bowie. Discovering a David Bowie cassette tape in 3rd grade changed my life. Throughout my youth, Bowie was a guiding light in weirdness, androgyny, and authenticity. Bowie taught me that it’s ok to be my whole self, and that’s exactly how I show up on stage, and in my relationships.
—Aries Jo • Lived Experience Coach and Death Educator