Clapp with Jane with Jane Clapp

Brace your hearts and buckle up for a conversation with Kathy Ramsey, a human who shares honestly about the complexity of both physical and emotional trauma recovery.  

Kathy was run over by a truck 2.5 years ago which broke her back, pelvis, all her ribs, her left leg and shoulder and had a stroke due to massive internal blood loss. By the time she arrived at the hospital via ambulance, they were unable to get a blood pressure reading as she had so little blood left in her body. 

Kathy Ramsey has lived many lives: reporter, refugee lawyer, mother, trauma survivor. 

As a journalist, she covered intrepid subjects such as the Yukon Quest, a 1,000 mile dog-sled race from Dawson City, Yukon to Fairbanks, Alaska. She then decided to go to law school at McGill University during which time she became involved in a volunteer coalition that helped get 100s of Palestinians in Montreal legal immigration status. A few years after law school, she moved to Toronto for love, opened her own immigration and refugee law practice, had 2 children, and was thrilled to get a position at the Refugee Law Office of Legal Aid Ontario. And then on August 31, 2017, after a long day at work, she was riding her bike to meet her husband and children at Christie Pitts pool when she was run over by a dump truck in downtown Toronto. She spent nearly 5 months in hospital, and has spent the last 2 years navigating the peaks and valleys of recovery, finding community in a group of fellow women trauma survivors who have helped her to feel not so alone in the crushing isolation of trauma recovery.

While in law school, she lived and worked in Bourj el Barajneh and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and interned at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She's been involved in migrant justice work in Canada, with Solidarity Across Borders and the Immigration Legal Committee.

Thank you Kathy. I'm so glad you're here.

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Join me and meet my friend Jeff. He's leading a very important conversation:

‘Thoughts for Men on coping with Social Distancing and Isolation’ : A look at ways men can work through the (e)motions of the COVID19 Pandemic and isolation: we can name what we are feeling, work towards healthy vs violent conflict with those we isolate with, and build connection with other men. 

Since 2008, Jeff Perera has been working to build bridges of understanding across our oceans of difference, having spoken to tens of thousands of people across North America about our ideas of being a man today and empathy-building. Jeff works to help inspire new models of possibility for men and young men where we work, live, play, worship or study.

Jeff has delivered interactive talks for team leaders and groups of all genders, fields, creed and faiths.
You can read written pieces, listen to other podcast conversations, and watch interviews with Jeff over at HigherUnlearning.com, which is an online space exploring how limiting ideas of manhood impact us all in everyday life. Jeff’s work is to help nurture brave spaces for real discussion, inspiring people to challenge our gendered ideas of success and failure, and to be the lesson in action.

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Join me for heart medicine with...

Dr. Jennifer Mullan (Pronouns: She/ Her) creates spaces for people and organizations to heal.  She believes that it is essential to create dialogue to address how mental health is deeply affected by systemic inequities and the trauma of oppression, particularly the well-being of Queer Indigenous Black Brown People of Color (QIBPOC).  

Dr. Mullan has earned her Doctorate of Psychology in Clinical Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies; a Master’s in Counseling & Community Agencies from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education; and her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and Elementary Education, from New Jersey City University.  She notes that her dissertation: “Slavery and the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma in Inner City African American Male Youth: From the Cotton Fields to the Concrete Jungle,” has been a primary foundation for her current work in furthering emotional wellness on a larger collective scale for communities of color. 

​Dr. Mullan is currently a full-time Psychologist at New Jersey City University’s Counseling Center, facilitator for the campus LGBTQIA+ Support group, Coordinator of the University’s nationally recognized Peer Education program (Peers Educating Peers), Instructor for Graduate Counselling courses, and a proud LGBTQIA+ Gothic Knight Ally Safe Zone Trainer.  

She has almost 15 years of experience in clinical practice, higher education, teaching, and grant writing.  She is passionately committed to solidarity work that effectively addresses inequities based on race, gender, class, ability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Her professional research and clinical interests include complex and intergenerational trauma, group psychotherapy, LGBTQIA wellness, spirituality & mindfulness practices, racism as trauma, healing in therapeutic settings, self-love as a revolutionary act, and the process of decolonizing mental health. 

Social Media has been a primary platform for Dr. Mullan’s current work in politicizing therapy and emotional health on a larger collective scale, with over 53K followers on Instagram.  In 2019, she founded Decolonizing Psychology, LLC. They seek to create spaces to “call mental health professions IN” (rather than call people out).  Dr. Mullan believes it is essential to ask mental health professionals to reassess their education, “whom they are serving? “and begin to question the relatability of the mental health industrial complex to the People they serve.  It is her belief that we can tend to our emotional/ mental health AND hold systemic oppression accountable.  You can frequently hear Dr. Mullan stating, “Everything is political!”  

Dr. Mullan also centralizes Historical and Intergenerational Trauma, which she identifies as Ancestral Trauma, at the crux of decolonization work. Through the movement of Decolonizing Therapy, Dr. Mullan can be found providing international keynotes, holding Radicalizing Rage workshops, doing Coaching sessions while un-training mental health professionals, providing Ancestral healing sessions, or spending time with her Goddess cat, Isis.  

MY PATREON PAGE

FIND DR. MULLAN:
WEBSITE
INSTAGRAM
CALGARY JOURNAL ARTICLE FEB 2020

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My conversation with Kai Cheng Thom left my heart full and my commitment to my integrity during the COVID19 crisis galvanized. I am so grateful for her time and energy sharing her personal and professional reflections about the end of the world as we know it.

Kai Cheng Thom is a Canadian writer and former social worker who has dual master's degrees in social work and couple and family therapy from McGill University. She has published four books to date: the novel “Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir in 2016 (which Emma Watson named for her feminist book club), the poetry collection “a place called No Homeland in 2017, a children's book, “From the Stars in The Sky to the Fish in the Sea” in 2017 and “I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World” in 2019, a book of essays centred on transformative justice. She is a storyteller in the lineage of change-makers, and her message is simple: we need to discover a revolutionary love. She speaks this message in poetry, in song and movement, in words delivered straight from my soul.

Kai Cheng is also a facilitator, consultant, and sensitivity reader and has been featured in Teen Vogue, the CBC, and The New York Times, CTV and the Social.  She offers DEEP LOVE, not tough love advice in her Daily Xtra Column, “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse” to help you survive and thrive in a challenging world.

Find Kai Cheng:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
A list of her books with purchase links
Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse

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Welcome to the first episode of Clapp with Jane!

In this episode, I speak with my dear friend and colleague, Yvette Lalonde, about resilience in the middle of a world health crisis.

Key topics:
1) One thing to do if you're an introvert during a pandemic.
2) The personal definition of safety and the ways we each try to find our ground.
3) What can happen when we start to feel stronger in our bodies.

Yvette is a trauma psychotherapist that specializes in addressing emotional, physical and spiritual injury through movement and relational dynamics. 

She offers private and group sessions supporting others to connect with and understand their nervous systems so that they can feel more embodied and resilient in their life.

You can find her on her website at: https://innerflowcounselling.com/
On instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/innerflow_wellness

Here are Yvette's two songs playing on repeat right now:

Pxssy Powah!

Sampa the Great - Energy (feat Nadeem Din-Gabisi)

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