Trusting the Body’s Wisdom as Preparation for the End of the World

“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

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!

“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.