For this magnetic, insightful conversation, I am joined by Andrea Russel, your local artisan baker and somatic arts practitioner, who came on the show one moon ago to speak about exploring grace, place, and facing oneself through the lens of her thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. She curates the platform somahikes, where she has shared on instagram the living and evolving story of her hike that keeps growing into new seasons of life. 

Conversation outline:  

Why she hiked the Appalachian trail 5:54

How to hold yourself up when the major structures of your life literally disintegrate 7:12

Somatic therapy: (and pleasure activism) body-based approach of change and transformation on individual and collective levels through the realm of the experience 9:22

What is “wild”? What is “nature”? 13:35

Biggest surprises and lessons the trail served up 19:42

Who gets to belong in outdoor adventure spaces 26:28

Practical reflections on different parts of the trail (and which ones hurt the most) and how to get through them 30:45

Unlearning definitions of success and failure (38:09)

the necessity of periodic retreat from our edge, and why we have a winter. 48:30

Check out the article by Vanessa Chavarriaga mentioned at 28:00 https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/trip-reports/2021/7/30/the-case-for-not-reaching-the-summit

Other books: Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown Underland by Robert Macfarlane

Recipes are great, but one recipe can’t work for everyone, and that applies to the kitchen and to life. In Amanda Presgraves new book, The Nonrecipe Book: Designing for Whole Self Nourishment, she guides you through a thought process for following your senses and your imagination, to help you get confident feeding your belly and your self belief: of course, with the help of a little secret sauce. GET THE BOOK: http://www.amandapresgraves.com/thenonrecipebook

Let's talk REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE 5 months after Roe v. Wade was overturned with Steph Nash, Co-Executive Director of Movement Building and Engagement at Blue Ridge Abortion Fund. We'll talk about the personal and the political realities and histories surrounding access to reproductive healthcare, and how race, class, and religion play a role.

LEARN: Blue Ridge Abortion Fund 

GET INVOLVED: Volunteer to provide Transportation to and from clinics)

READ: Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery, Alabama

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, by Michele Goodwin

A nourishing conversation with Sam Weinberg, Dr. of Oriental Medicine, licensed acupuncturist, astrologer, and founder of Classical Chinese Medicine of Virginia-a classical acupuncture and herbalism clinic in Harrisonburg, Virginia. We dive deeper into this fascinating, complete philosophy on striving for wholeness through the modalities of acupuncture & acupressure, herbalism, our relationship to food, ourselves, and our deep spiritual callings that shape our health. 

Sam specializes in work with women's reproductive health, trauma healing, and adolescents-each areas where she sees acupuncture treatments and other modalities of Chinese medicine working brilliantly to facilitate healing.

Work with Sam and learn more about her work at: https://chinesemedicineva.com/

Support this work by becoming a patreon subscriber: https://patreon.com/wildhoneycollective?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator

Follow the podcast on Instagram @wildhoney.collective

And learn more about this work at wildhoneycollective.org

She’s back. This week’s episode with poet/philosopher/somatic practitioner/earth-to-my-water Andrea Russell is just a straight-up healthy dose of philosophical conversation about what it means to be whole in a dismembered society-exploring how we find our purpose, what it means to be and connect to wildness, and to hold the complexity of contradiction as we seek to stay true to relationship and the intrinsic beauty of our humanity.

"Let no one ever say that I fell in love; I rose in it." -Toni Morrison

TW: mention of childhood abuse. 

Choosing the people that become family, for those whose family backgrounds have warped the experience of being and knowing that you are loved, is a revolutionary, healing act. In this poignant conversation about rising in love, Navy Graber describes her experience of building chosen family across perpetual long distance relationships as an international student transferring across majors and universities in search of an educational and communal place of belonging-and finally arriving at a place that feels like home, even if that place continues to evolve and change. Building thriving, loving relationships that serve the life one wants for themselves requires intention, intimacy, and vulnerability. Navy speaks about her exploration of this process, and how sharing her story transforms her trials into transformation-for herself and hopefully others, too.

Talibah Atiya Najee Aquil is a multifaceted teacher, facilitator, artist, and healer,  but at the center of everything she does is a story of self and society-and helping others learn how to reclaim that story for themselves. This is getting to the root of healing work. Decolonizing perceptions, thoughts, and narratives about what it means to be Black in America, and in the world. She is founder of We Are Magic! Where she leads healing tours to Ghana for people of the African Diaspora to return to the place of their ancestral lineage and connect to their birthright to belong, be welcomed, and tell their own stories of their past, present, and future selves. Talibah graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre and earned her Masters in Conflict Transformation at The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She crafts and tends spaces for trauma healing with a racial justice lens on the level of self, community, and culture using restorative justice, circle processes, poetry, music, dance, history, and lived experience. Talibah is also a lecturer at The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at EMU, where she created a course entitled “Re-imagining Identity” that examines the intersections of identity, story-telling, dignity, and the arts; in this course she created safe spaces for student-teachers to explore the complexities of identity as it relates to oneself and others.

Contact Talibah: [email protected]

Christine Harrel is an ayurveda and yoga practitioner and founder of a mindful movement and leadership program for people who are incarcerated called Virginia Community Yoga. She also owns and operates an apothecary and spa called Apothecafe Botanicals, where she shares her passion for holistic natural healing and ayurvedic body treatments. This episode is all about empowering ourselves to find self-transformation through struggle; Christine speaks from her experience working with people in the jail population as well as her own experience to show that our greatest struggles are the source of our greatest healing.

Where does healing really come from, and how can we recognize it as a more holistic vision than the easily recognized signals of health or disease given by our bodies? Sia Alexander is a healer, an entrepreneur, a curator, and (you might say) a pollinator of spiritual consciousness. Her answer to this question takes the shape of Pure Lagos: an Afropolitan experience in Norfolk, VA. Weaving together her extensive training in herbology, nutrition, yoga and spiritual healing, she curates the art gallery, boutique, apothecary, and social hospitality space that is Pure Lagos. She argues that Lagos, Nigeria and Norfolk, Virginia are not so distant: these are key points of healing that connect a cultural history that has been separated, with the potential for deep healing. 

Follow Pure Lagos, find Sia's books, and work with Sia on spiritual and nutritional consulting at:

@Pure_lagos on Instagram

sialove.org

Also follow:

@wildhoney.collective on instagram

And wildhoneycollective.org