“We need to be working at the root. If we are unconsciously being ruddered around by our ancestors and by the patterns that our people have picked up, then the deeper work isn’t gonna happen. And then cultural change isn’t gonna happen.”

For our final conversation of the season, I talk with my dear friend and collaborator Stevie Joy Moss. Stevie is a Hakomi practitioner, ritualist, and doctoral student in decolonial depth psychology, and also the co-founder of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry.

We speak about the different shapes of protection and disconnection that we see arise for white folks, how divesting from whiteness actually asks us to turn towards it rather than away, and the role that belonging and joy play in untangling ourselves from domination.

The stories we tell about belonging shape how we live, organize, and imagine the future. If you’ve been searching for language around land, interdependence, and kinship as tools for collective liberation, then this conversation is for you.

Stevie is a Hakomi mindful somatics practitioner, cultural ecologist, and land-based teacher whose work centers around building belonging with land and place while critically engaging with the problems of ongoing settler colonialism and climate crisis.

Stevie is also a doctoral student at Pacifica Graduate University in the Depth Psychology with specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies program. They live at the southernmost tip of the Puget Sound in st̓əč̓as (Steh-Chass) in what is now called Olympia, Washington. When they are not working or studying, you can find them by the water singing to the the sea and the cedars.

RESOURCES:

weaverandrose.com

embodiedancestralinquiry.com

The Becoming

Instagram

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

We won’t be sharing a new glossary episode this week, but encourage you to listen to this one on Land Back if you haven’t already. We’ll be back next week with our final episode of the season!

This week our glossary entry is on Land Back.

Episode 2 of the podcast explores the relationship between cultural reconnection and solidarity activism. We reflect on our relationship with land as both settlers and descendants of land-based traditions that were nearly lost.

If you haven’t listened yet to my conversation with Ben Reid-Howells on how reconnecting with his Scottish roots was ignited by solidarity with Indigenous Resurgence on Turtle Island, you can go back and find it in episode 2 Deep Roots: Showing up to Justice Work with Cultural Grounding.

Links:

Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper

Rehearsals for Living

On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples

Unsettling the Settler Within - Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada

Ancestral Embodiment audio course

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

“One of the main tenets we want to teach people in somatics is to trust the body. And to trust that our whole selves know things that might have been pruned out of us, that might have atrophied, that might have been suppressed.”

This week I connect with Diné somatics practitioner Nazbah Tom for a conversation that travels from the body to the land to the end of the world and back.

We talk about trusting what’s been conditioned out of us, building relationship with our more-than-human kin, how to prepare for political and climate catastrophe, and what it means to re-situate somatics inside of far older wisdom traditions.

Nazbah Tom’s offer to community is a combination of their training as a drama therapist and subsequent training in somatics. They weave principles of practices from their lived experience with Diné community.

They work with individuals, offer healing/skills building groups, supervise practitioners, teach somatic courses, and work with organizations. Nazbah is grateful to live as a guest on Anishinaabe lands near Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. They humbly offer their work in the spirit of Indigenous resurgence.

Links:

IG: somaticswithnazbah

nazbahtom.com

Bodies of Medicine

Resources:

Yellowhead Institute

Kim Tallbear

Coyote Institute

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

We won’t be sharing a new glossary episode this week, but encourage you to listen to this one on Transformative Justice if you haven’t already. We’ll be back next week with a new conversation to share!

This week our glossary entry is on Transformative Justice.

Episode 3 of the podcast dives into learning to do conflict more skillfully and how this relates to a vision of community beyond punishment and isolation.

If you haven’t listened yet to my conversation with Brook Thorndycraft on growing our capacity for conflict and why it’s important for our communities, movements, and the planet — you can go back and find it in episode 3: Between Collapse and Emergence: Learning from Conflict in Turbulent Times.

We are an ad-free and member supported podcast. You can join us on Substack and pledge a monthly donation that helps us make Lost Together possible and sustainable. You can also like and review us on #applepodcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

LINKS:

https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/

https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice/

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

The Wetiko Legal Principles: Cree and Anishinabek Responses to Violence and Victimization

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

“Trauma healing is possible inside of violent conditions but we need to be doing it as a collective. What makes it work is that we are healing as a group together.”

This week I sit down with writer, somatics teacher, and fellow ex-therapist Kai Cheng Thom for a conversation about the possibilities that emerge when we stop trying to heal alone.

We talk about why we both walked away from traditional therapy, what the body knows that clinical models often miss, why shame can only mend in relationship, and how groups can metabolize rupture and come out more connected than ever.

RESOURCES:

ariseembodiment.org

kaichengthom.com

IG:@kaichengthom

Little Deaths Salon

Reconnecting with Land, Ancestors, and Liberation Through the Body: A Free Webinar for White Therapists, Healers, and Practitioners

Donate to Namaygoosisagagun First Nation wildfire relief fund

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

This week our glossary entry is on Healing Justice.

Episode 5 of the podcast touches on the intimacy of healing objectification through relationship — with land, ancestors, and each other.

If you haven’t listened yet to my conversation with Susan Raffo you can go back and find it in episode 5: Be Here Now: Land, Lineage, and Healing from Within the Wound

We are a member supported podcast. You can join us on Substack and pledge a monthly donation that helps us make Lost Together possible and sustainable and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, we appreciate all your support.

RESOURCES:

Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective

Healing Justice Lineages

Care Work

Healing Justice at the US Social Forum: A report from Atlanta, Detroit & Beyond

Remember, Repair, Reconnect: Extended Workshop with Susan Raffo

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

“The oldest meaning of neighbour is ‘all our relations’ — that which is alive, which is next to each other.”

How do we learn to practice relationality when we grew up inside a culture that taught us to treat each other as objects?

This week I talk with writer, bodyworker, and longtime healing justice organizer Susan Raffo from Minnesota Makocé, in a season when Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) had occupied Minneapolis.

This intimate conversation illuminates how our deepest wound often isn’t any single act of violence, but rather the habit of turning life itself into an object and inflicting that in myriad ways onto each other.

We explore how we can reclaim relationality through centring care in our organizing work, by building coalitions across deep political difference, and as lineage bearers in honouring the sharing of knowledge intergenerationally.

RESOURCES:

susanraffo.com

REP

Cara Page

Healing Histories Project

Remember, Repair, Reconnect Retreat with Susan Raffo + hosted by Marika

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

This week our glossary entry is on Whiteness.

Episode 4 of the podcast explores the terrain of building intimacy across difference, knowing ourselves and each other more deeply, and both the costs and gifts of living a life of radical self-honesty.

If you haven’t listened yet to my conversation with Prentis Hemphill — you can go back and find it in episode 4: Being in Relationship Across Difference in Power, History, and Identity

We are a member supported podcast. You can join us on Substack and pledge a monthly donation that helps us make Lost Together possible and sustainable. You can also leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

RESOURCES:

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903.

White Racial Identity Development Model (Janet E. Helms, 1990)

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (bell hooks, 2004)

Living in the Shadow of the Cross: Understanding and Resisting the Power and Privilege of Christian Hegemony (Paul Kivel, 2013)

Michael Eric Dyson

White Supremacy Culture Characteristics

Ancestral Embodiment Audio Course

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

“Sometimes freedom is like, can you hold me please?”

How do we build relationship and intimacy across differences in power, history, and identity?

My guest this week is Prentis Hemphill. 

Prentis Hemphill is the bestselling author of What It Takes to Heal, a groundbreaking exploration of healing, justice, and transformation. A therapist, somatics teacher, facilitator, political organizer, and writer, Prentis is also the founder of The Embodiment Institute and a leading voice in embodied leadership and collective healing. Prentis served as the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and was a lead somatics teacher with generative somatics and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). They hold an M.A. in Clinical Psychology. They are also the creator and host of the acclaimed podcasts Finding Our Way and Becoming the People.

Prentis lives on a small farm in Durham, NC, with their partner, Kasha, their child, and two dogs.

In this episode, Prentis and I talk about the practice of building relationship across difference without appeasement or defensiveness, how to let go of identities that have outgrown us, and what it looks like to turn toward each other, honestly, in a time when so much feels uncertain.

website: prentishemphill.com

Instagram: @prentishemphill

RESOURCES:

The Embodiment Institute

Embodied Ancestral Inquiry

Focusing Book

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.

This week our glossary entry is on Transformative Justice.

Episode 3 of the podcast dives into learning to do conflict more skillfully and how this relates to a vision of community beyond punishment and isolation.

If you haven’t listened yet to my conversation with Brook Thorndycraft on growing our capacity for conflict and why it’s important for our communities, movements, and the planet — you can go back and find it in episode 3: Between Collapse and Emergence: Learning from Conflict in Turbulent Times.

We are an ad-free and member supported podcast. You can join us on Substack and pledge a monthly donation that helps us make Lost Together possible and sustainable.

LINKS:

https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/

https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice/

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

The Wetiko Legal Principles: Cree and Anishinabek Responses to Violence and Victimization

Lost Together is produced by Marika Heinrichs and Becca Rich. Our music is by Cristoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Mixed by SC Dillon. Sound Engineering and Editing by Marika Heinrichs.