Being in Relationship Across Difference in Power, History, and Identity

“I kept looking for an explanation, as if I needed one before I could slow down. But my body was already telling me what I needed. I’m learning I don’t have to solve the mystery before I can just listen.” We close out the first season of Lost Together with a reflective solo episode about disability and changing capacity, over-productivity as a survival strategy, and how relationships can offer space for us to meet ourselves in new ways. I look back on the season as a whole, honouring the guests, the work of making the show, and the pause before whatever comes next. In this episode, I share some reflections on how uncertainty around my own health is inviting me into a kind of reckoning, and having to really look at my relationship with productivity, self-worth, and pacing. I also reflect on the podcast as a container for transformation, seasonal rest, and the need to close season one with intention and gratitude.

“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.

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

“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

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!