We Are Magic

Beloved friend and fellow clinician, Ana Ruth and I discuss re-connecting to the home space, grieving loss of self and welcoming in new identity during COVID times.

Ana’s Bio: Ana Ruth Yela Castillo is a Muralist and Clinical Art & Family Therapist in San Diego County. She’s new at being a mom but has over 20 years of empowering youth through leadership development and supporting them to access higher education. She became an art therapist to continue being of service, healing families on an intergenerational level, and merge it all with her passion for art. Connect with Ana at www.anaruth.com

Content Warnings: Covid-related so illness, death, loss, change, domestic violence, homelessness.

Some of my thoughts as a therapist, as a survivor, as a human, about navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. We cover topics such as honoring your feelings (specifically your fear) practicing regenerative self care and how important grief work will be for the foreseeable future. If you take away nothing else: You are not supposed to know how to navigate a pandemic, honor yourself and your needs at this time. I hope to release more episodes with colleagues and survivors alike about how they are navigating this pandemic.

Megan bravely explores the intersections of Method Acting, #MeToo and the intensely vulnerable spaces created within performance art. Megan’s story focuses on her own experiences enduring intensely physical, sexual and emotional abuse within her home as well as a space that was supposed to be safe and sacred, her theater.

Content Warning: Traumatic birth, physical, sexual and emotional violence including, nonconsensual sex, and kissing, manipulation, mind games, domestic violence.

Katherine talks about the non-linear path of healing after her own experiences of being abducted at just 12 years old. Katherine’s story touches on the often not discussed aftermath of trauma and how we learn to thrive again.

Content Warnings: Child abduction, physical assault and rape of a child, complex discussion about the aftermath of being the victim of crime (going to trial, exploring PTSD)

Whitney bravely explores her experiences with intimate partner violence and how it can affect the body, mind and spirit as well as distort our ideas of how we give love, exist in relationships and even talk ourselves out of safety.

Content Warnings: depictions of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse, threats and intimidation, being held at gunpoint, manipulation, slander, mentions of eating disorder.

Neha explores her journey to becoming an art therapist, artist, and educator who explores the vast intersections of the healing process-with her most recent work titled “I can’t be Both” examining “the duality of being a survivor and perpetrator of sexual violence in one body.” Neha’s deeply important perspective tackles many subjects within the trauma field, specifically the rigid binaries inherent in our conceptions and solutions in the “system” of healing. This episode is rich with both story and information!

Content Warnings: Mentions of a child being sexually harassed, intimate partner violence, unconsensual sex, trauma with no accountability.

Episode 2: Fee Fromkin | “Let’s Just Call That One Freak”

Fee explores her journey of learning to embrace her inner creature when at age 14, she was deeply depressed, suicidal and eventually involuntarily hospitalized in front of all of her classmates at her middle school.  Her story touches on the stigmas and realities of mental health, never letting go of who you are, and learning to use the body as a canvas for her art.

Content Warnings: Depression, Self-harming, Suicide Attempt, Involuntary Hospitalization, Bullying, Minimizing of mental health issues by family, Homelessness.

Jasmine Mckay dives deep into exploring how her identity has been shaped by growing up as an African American woman in a fundamental Christian family, and her complex relationship with her mother, and deciding she wanted to know who she really was outside the context of the story that was written for her.

Content warnings: Religion, Feelings of suppressed identity due to religion, child abuse, neglect, complex relationships with our parents, substance abuse, miscarriage, mentions of homophobia and racism.

In the first ever episode of We Are Magic, we briefly discuss what this podcast will cover, the ever-changing nature of this project, how this podcast came to be and the power of storytelling. Thank you so much for listening!