So Many Wings, a flock of misfits and changemakers, is a podcast that draws on our backgrounds in transformative mental health and social justice organizing to gather our people and share stories and visions as we struggle for collective liberation. This project is a node in the growing network of creatively maladjusted folks who are rising up and capturing the imaginations of people who are ready for change. We chose the name So Many Wings because there are so many ways to get free, and because we can only get free together, as a flock of misfits and changemakers moving through the world. We hope you’ll join us.
Join Sascha Altman DuBrul and Jacks McNamara for a wide-ranging conversation with therapist and author Laura Mae Northrup on her new book Radical Healership. Topics we cover include:
-The path and calling of being a healer, and the complexities of using the term “healer”
-The nuances of boundaries inside healing work
-Desire and living our values
-The “shadow” why - trying to heal your own baggage through getting your clients to heal
-Class, grief, and building a financially sustainable practice
-Healing as threatening to the abusive power structure of capitalism
About Laura:
Laura Mae Northrup, MFT is the creator and host of the podcast Inside Eyes, a series that explores the use of entheogens and psychedelics to heal sexual trauma. She is the author of the book Radical Healership and is a practicing psychotherapist and educator in Oakland, CA. Her work focuses on defining sexual violence through a spiritual and politicized lens and supporting the spiritual integrity of our collective humanity. You can learn more about her at www.lauramaenorthrup.com.
Find Laura online:
Applies to print, e-books, and audio
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and websites
Jacks McNamara’s website and social media:
Sascha Altman DuBrul’s website:
Can survivors be therapists – and even be better at it? Jacks McNamara – poet, trauma healing coach, and co-founder of The Icarus Project – joins Will Hall - advocate, counselor and founder of Madness Radio - to discuss the calling to become a therapist/counselor/coach inspired by their own struggles and survivor mutual aid. Topics discussed include -What makes a “good therapist”?
-Is mutual aid and friendship enough or do we need professional healers?
-How does sharing your trauma and oppression with clients affect working as a therapist?
-What about licensing and credentials – can they get in the way of truly helping people?
-And is a therapist at heart a wounded healer?
Find Will Hall and Madness Radio online:
Find Jacks McNamara online:
The Big Queer Poetry Class
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with Vesper Moore. Topics we cover include:
About Vesper:
Vesper Moore, is a mad liberation activist, trainer, writer, and psychiatric survivor. They have been advocating as a part of the mad movement for several years and have been the recipient of many social justice and diversity awards.
Vesper has brought the perspectives of mad people, disabled people, and psychiatric survivors to national and international spaces. They have experience working as a consultant for both the United States government and the United Nations in shaping strategies around trauma, intersectionality, and disability rights. They have been at the forefront of legislative reform to shift the societal paradigm around mental health. Vesper as a mad queer indigenous person has made it their life’s mission to rewrite the narrative psychiatry has enforced on our society.
Find Vesper online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with somatic trauma therapist and educator Andrea Glik. Topics we cover include:
About Andrea:
Andrea Glik, LCSW is a somatic trauma therapist, supervisor, and educator. Andrea specializes in treating trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and PTSD, prioritizing women, survivors, and queer & trans folks. She utilizes neurobiological, body-based and feminist therapy practices to help clients feel safe in the present and come home to themselves. Andrea practices online, lives on stolen Osage & Sioux land at the confluence of the Missouri, Mississippi, and Illinois Rivers. She can also be found on Instagram @somaticwitch and at andreaglik.com.
Find Andrea online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a conversation with Tehseen Noorani and Erica Hua Fletcher where we discuss the origins and highlights of the Psychedelics, Madness, and Awakening Conference, as well as each interviewee’s personal research and links to these subjects.
Topics we cover include:
About Tehseen Noorani and Erica Hua Fletcher:
Tehseen is an independent researcher in the final stages of a five-year postdoctoral project documenting how 'psychedelic' and ‘psychotic’ experiences, practices and histories are connected. This has involved an ethnography of the overground and underground experimentation happening with, (1) psychedelics, including leading qualitative research with the psychedelics research team at Johns Hopkins University, and (2) madness, including as a long-standing ally of the Hearing Voices Network, and more recent membership of the Hearing The Voice project. His book - planned for publication in 2021 - puts these twinned sites into conversation, locating their joint possibilities within the raced and gendered politics of contemporary drug-taking and spirit-making.
Erica is a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the co-chair of the Society for Medical Anthropology's Mental Health Interest Group. Over the last decade, she has worked closely with community members, peer support specialists, and community health workers on collaborative alternatives to traditional psychiatric treatment. Erica writes about contemporary mental health social movements, community health and healing, and carework; her scholarship spans the health humanities, social medicine, and mad studies.
About the Conference: Psychedelics, Madness, & Awakening: Harm Reduction & Future Visions
To watch recorded presentations and panel discussions with the Psychedelics, Madness, and Awakening’s conference, check out the PMA website: http://www.psychedelicsmadnessawakening.com
Find Tehseen online:
Find Erica online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a conversation with T. Aisha Edwards where we discuss recovering from complex trauma, somatics for liberation, Radical Rest, and so much more.
Topics we cover include:
About Aisha:
Aisha Edwards, LMHC (xe/she) is a somatic trauma therapist, healer, writer, performance artist and fire breathing light warrior. She uniquely weaves Gestalt, Somatic Experiencing, early developmental movement, Neuro Emotional Technique, ancestral healing and concepts from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Herbalism into a holistic approach to emotional and spiritual health that fosters the sovereign relationship with the body as the vehicle to wellness, wholeness, connection and liberation from all forms of oppression.
Find Aisha online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Today Jacks shares a mini-episode update on how they’re handling pandemic fatigue and parenting burnout, grieving the loss of things like getting fancy before a live audience, hoping we all get to feel more radiantly alive sometime soon, and why they’re taking a little break from releasing podcast episodes.
Links to relevant resources:
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Join us for an interview with Wheels Darling where we discuss her path towards becoming an acupuncturist, herbalist, and health educator with an anti-oppression analysis.
Topics we cover include:
About Wheels:
Wheels Darling is a queer acupuncturist, herbalist, body worker, healer, educator, witch, and collaborator of educational projects. They are based in the place currently called Portland, Oregon. Wheels is particularly excited to work in the places that are in between, the liminal spaces between what was, what is, and what could be. She uses this imaginal vantage to dream up educational programs, treatment plans for her patients, health equity plans of action, intimacies with her family, friends, lovers, communities, the larger world of humans, and all that is other than human.
Wheels' specialty is that she is a generalist. She's studied literature, political economy, herbalism, East Asian Medicine, queer and feminist theories, revolutionary and radical movements, ways of honoring each of the beings of this planet, histories and stories of those not represented in normative history books, magic, euro-pagan-earth-based spirituality, somatic healing, creative writing, and many other forms of Liberation Studies.
Find Wheels online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with Crystal Davis of Blooming Fire Healing where we discuss how magic helps us survive, becoming a BIPOC healer, and much more.
Topics we cover include:
About Crystal:
Crystal Davis (she/they) is an intuitive empath, healer, and magic maker living in Portland, OR. She moves through the world as a queer Black cis woman. The alchemy of her interests, experiences, and survival have led her down this winding road of exploration, reflection, and the path of the witch. She found her way to metaphysics in her hometown of Richmond, VA. After beginning her Reiki training, Crystal was called to the Pacific Northwest to continue her study of alternative healing and magic.
Healing is a journey - one step inevitably leading to the next. Her perspectives on healing have been informed by her lived experiences, work with youth, and individuals surviving houselessness and poverty at Sisters of the Road. She is an alumni of the Blue Iris Mystery School and a Holy Fire Reiki Master/Teacher. She is a volunteer practitioner with healing justice organization Radical Rest which provides mental health and wellness services to support BIPOC organizers and activists in their continued work of liberation.
Through Blooming Fire Healing, she offers tarot, energywork, and monthly BIPOC healing circles to support the healing and magic that her clients bring into the world. She believes that when individuals are in full bloom they give a gift to their entire community.
Find Crystal online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a conversation with Ahjo Sipowicz where we discuss their path into radical embodiment and the creation of their book EarthBodyBoat.
Topics we cover include:
About Ahjo:
I am a white, non-binary, neurodivergent, pansexual, elemental creature, residing for 30 years on Tewa land at O’gha Po’oge—White Shell Water Place—Santa Fe, New Mexico. My ancestors, primarily Lithuanian and Norwegian, migrated to the Chicago area where I was born and raised. In 1989 I studied the Life Art Process at the Tamalpa Institute with Anna Halprin. The values of the Life Art Process continue to guide me—including creative process over end product, creating dialog between expressive mediums, communicating with the self, life through ritual, performance, and art making.
I call myself a “somatic earth artist,” one who is in apprenticeship with both the personal and earthly soma, and expresses both the conflicts and the Eros of these relationships through art. My art arises out of my InBodyNature practice, in which I actively dialogue with nature—communicating, performing, witnessing, and creating in collaboration. I bridge these experiences with writing, video documentation, and visual art through the technology of iPhone apps and composite photography. I am a self-published author of the newly released memoir/artist journal, EarthBodyBoat: Queer Journey of A Somatic Earth Artist.
Find Ahjo online:
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Join us for a conversation with Israel Francisco Haros Lopez where we discuss how art saves lives, how ancestors help us, the evolution of the Alas de Agua Art Collective, and much more.
Topics we cover include:
About Israel: Israel Francisco Haros Lopez was born in East Los Angeles to immigrant parents of Mexican descent. He brings his firsthand knowledge of the realities of migration, U.S. border policies, and life as a Mexican American to his work with families and youth as a mentor, educator, art instructor, ally, workshop facilitator and activist. He studied at U.C. Berkeley and received a degree in English Literature and Chicano Studies followed by an M.F.A in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. At formal and informal visual art spaces, Israel creates and collaborates in many interdisciplinary ways including poetry, performance, music, visual art, and video making and curriculum creation. His work addresses a multitude of historical and spiritual layered realities of border politics, identity politics, and the re-interpretation of histories. He was formerly the Highschool Homeless Liason at SFPS Adelante and is one of the founders and forces of energy at Alas de Agua Arts Collective and the New Mexico Murals Project. In 2020 he began working with YouthWorks, Reunity Resources, and Mother Nature Center to grow food for the community on county owned land at San Isidro Crossing
Find Israel online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Today So Many Wings’ host Jacks brings you up to date about why Sascha is on leave from So Many Wings, and discusses topics including centered accountability, navigating harmful behavior, forgiveness, transformative justice, and love.
Links to relevant resources:
Find Jacks online:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a conversation with Danni Biondini where we discuss her path from radical mental health activist at the Icarus Project to becoming the Chair of the Community Mental Health Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).
Topics we cover include:
About Danni Biondini:
Danni Biondini is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in San Francisco, and Assistant Professor and Chair of the Community Mental Health program at CIIS. She is the Director and Supervisor of a psychodynamic therapy program at Francisco Middle School, overseeing the therapy services provided to kids at the school. As a longtime school-based therapist, she has a major interest in how to intervene on schools as sites of socialization. She came to the field with a background in radical mental health, as a member of the Bay Area Icarus Project in its heyday. She brings a radical mental health lens to her work, trying to build communities of therapists working within the system to change it.
Find Danni online:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a multi-faceted and life-affirming conversation with writer, writing mentor and independent scholar Meg-John Barker where we discuss their wide ranging thoughts on gender non-conformity, plurality, consent, ‘anti-self help,’ and participation in queer and other subcultures.
Topics we cover include:
About Meg-John Barker:
Meg-John Barker is the author of a number of popular books on sex, gender, and relationships, including Queer: A Graphic History, Gender: A Graphic Guide, How To Understand Your Gender, Life Isn’t Binary, Enjoy Sex (How, When, and IF You Want To), Rewriting the Rules, and The Psychology of Sex. They have also written a number of books for scholars and counsellors on these topics, drawing on their own research and therapeutic practice.
Find Meg-John online:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for an intimate and far reaching conversation with scholar, educator, and media producer Erica Hua Fletcher where we discuss contemporary mental health social movements, community health and healing, identity politics, and the rise of Mad Studies.
Topics we cover include:
About Erica:
Erica is a scholar, educator, and media producer based in Los Angeles, California (Tongva land). She currently serves as a co-president of the Anthropology and Mental Health Interest Group, in association with the American Anthropological Association's Society for Medical Anthropology; and this fall, she is starting a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, where she will be doing research on issues related to veterans recovery and resilience. Erica writes about contemporary mental health social movements, community health and healing, and carework; her scholarship and course offerings span the health humanities, social medicine, mad studies, and social work. She has taught at four public universities, most recently at the University of California at Irvine.
Find Erica online:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a wide ranging conversation with Dick Schwartz where we discuss everything from the origins of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model to the role of Self-Leadership in contemporary social justice movements.
Topics we discuss include:
About Dick Schwartz:
Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called “parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s.
IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms.
In 2013 Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where he is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Find Dick online:
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Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
Join us for a conversation with Issa Ibrahim where we discuss how racism has affected his experiences of madness and institutionalization, and how radical creativity and underground community led to his escape.
Topics we discuss include:
About Issa:
Issa Ibrahim is an artist, writer, musician and filmmaker born in 1965 in Jamaica, New York. He has been the Artist-In-Residence at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s Living Museum since 1992. Issa is also the author of the 2016 memoir THe Hospital Always Wins, published by Chicago Review Press.
Issa’s artist statement: “My interest in the politics of race, mental illness, and popular culture informs my range of subject matter. I am telling a parallel narrative. My life as a psych patient, a flawed Superman, learning to navigate the many identities I had to assume in the system in order to survive various barriers to freedom, in addition to exposing the Everyman in the world at large. We are living in a comic strip, with plenty of super villains and heroes, love stories, cliffhangers, absurdist comedy and heartbreaking tragedy. With equal parts whimsy and warning, I use familiar icons in historical settings as reflections and metaphors for our own bankrupt culture.”
Find Issa online:
On the web: Http://issaibrahim.com
On instagram: @issaibrahim065
On YouTube: Http://YouTube.com/c/issaibrahim
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a conversation with Laura Mae Northrup where we discuss her podcast Inside Eyes and the therapeutic use of psychedelics and entheogens in healing sexual trauma.
Topics we discuss include:
About Laura Mae Northrup:
Laura Mae Northrup is the creator and host of the podcast Inside Eyes, a series that explores the use of entheogens and psychedelics to heal sexual trauma. She is a practicing psychotherapist and educator. Her work focuses on defining sexual violence through a spiritual and politicized lens and supporting the spiritual integrity of our collective humanity. She is a champion of living more fully engaged and responsible lives through the healing use of entheogens and psychedelics. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.
Find Laura online:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a powerful conversation with bilingual art therapist Isabel Ribe on her work inside and outside of US detention centers, her poetry and painting, and frontline community organizing to build a more just world.
Content warning: There’s a beautiful and powerful poem at the end of this podcast that has descriptions of gender based violence.
In this episode we discuss:
About Isabel:
Isabel Ribe is a Bilingual Counselor and Art Therapist providing trauma therapy and case management for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers throughout New Mexico as well as remotely in detention centers around the country. Isabel did her clinical training at Solace Crisis Treatment Center, Esperanza Shelter and with Gerard’s House’s Nuestra Jornada Program. She also served for many years as a case manager and family advocate with the Santa Fe Public School’s Adelante Program. She is passionate about providing culturally competent, Spanish language mental health services to the immigrant community. Isabel is also a poet and artist and member of Santa Fe’s Alas de Agua Art Collective, and enjoys life on her farmstead in Pojoaque with her husband and four legged family.
Find Isabel online:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a wide ranging conversation with Clare Bayard where we discuss her 20+ years of organizing in grassroots multiracial struggles for collective liberation, and the role of somatic healing work and the importance of mentorship for intergenerational movements of resistance. Content warning: interview includes mention of sexual trauma and white nationalism.
Topics we discuss include:
About Clare Bayard:
Clare Bayard has organized for over 20 years in grassroots multiracial movements for collective liberation, and co-founded Catalyst Project, a movement building center supporting white anti-racist organizing. Clare is an organizer and a parent, a direct action trainer with The Ruckus Society, a writer, and a somatic healing practitioner who focuses on working with survivors of sexual assault and war. Clare's training comes from coalition and campaign work in many movement sectors, particularly in migrant rights, global justice, housing rights and anti-displacement, Palestinian liberation, anti-imperialist struggles against US wars and G.I. resistance, post-Katrina Gulf Coast Reconstruction, and climate justice. Demilitarization and connecting struggles against US empire at home and abroad are at the heart of Clare’s political work. Clare is active in the War Resisters International Network, served in board and staff positions at the War Resisters League for over a decade, and has worked closely with About Face (formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War) since soon after its founding.Clare’s writing has been published widely including the Guardian UK, Z Magazine, Alternet, Common Dreams, The Hill, and the recent anthology We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st century America.
Find Clare online:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a conversation with L.D. Green, in which we discuss their contributions in radical mental health movements, the anthology We’ve Been Too Patient, which they co-edited with Kelechi Ubozoh, and their practice as a writer.
Topics we discuss include:
About LD Green:
LD Green is a non-binary writer, performer and educator. They have been published in Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Mad in America, TruthOut, and elsewhere. They co-edited and contributed to We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model with Kelechi Ubozoh published by North Atlantic books and distributed by Penguin Random House in 2018. A former member of the Icarus Project and a former poetry slam champion, they are a Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction and write and enjoy science fiction and fantasy. They are assistant professor of English and creative writing at Los Medanos College in the Bay Area of California.
Find LD Green online:
On the web:
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a conversation with emiko yoshikami where we discuss her contributions to The Icarus Project, her practice of Buddhism, and her work in surrogate partner therapy. Topics we discuss include:
About emiko:
emiko lovingly identifies as a queer, crazy, half-breed, ho. She is interested in how our lives are made meaningful through language and the stories we tell. Through Buddhist wisdom and political engagement, emiko is committed to co-creating a more just and compassionate world. She lives in a small flat in San Francisco with 3 other housemates.
Find Emiko online:
On the web: healingintimacy.org
Links to relevant resources:
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for a conversation with Kanchan Dawn Hunter about the trajectory of her decades of social justice work, raising children, and specifically the ways mental health, racial justice and urban agriculture are all intertwined. Kanchan talks with us about her work to support black and brown women in farming and herbalism, and her efforts to lift up black boys and men in the face of increased targeting of their lives. We had this conversation a few months ago, while sitting around a table in Kanchan’s beautiful tiny house with a view of the San Francisco Bay, as her puppy was running around our feet.
About Kanchan:
Kanchan Dawn Hunter is a parent, an educator, and the Director of Community Outreach at Spiral Gardens Community Food Security Project. For more than 30 years she has been engaged in work at the intersection of community building and racial and environmental justice. Kanchan has worked with Hand in Hand Parenting, the Berkeley Ecology Center, World Trust, and Spiral Gardens, as well as helping to develop the breakthrough curriculum “Healing the Hurts of Racism” and the film “Making Whiteness Visible.” Her deep commitment to healing her own internalized oppression made it possible for her to intentionally reach out to black and brown men and boys in her community as a way to actively show support for them in the face of increased targeting of their lives. Since transitioning into environmental justice work, Kanchan co-founded Soil Sistahs with Doria Robinson, a gathering of black and brown women that meets at Spiral Gardens monthly. Through this gathering, women of color are able to meet in a safe space connecting with the soil through meditations, garden projects, and plant study. The purpose of this gathering is to ensure that we have equal access to local soil and growing our food together in it, as a way to deepen our connection to the planet, ourselves….. and each other. Soil Sistahs inspired her to co-create the 1st and 2nd Annual California Women of Color Herbal Symposium, an event that spanned an entire weekend sharing and learning from multiple teachers and each other on the beautiful Navarro River.
Find Kanchan online:
On the web: http://www.spiralgardens.org/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kanchandawnhunter
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mamakanchan/
Links to resources that were mentioned:
Spiral Gardens Food Security Project: http://www.spiralgardens.org/
Soil Sistahs: https://www.facebook.com/soilsistahs/
California Women of Color Herbal Symposium: https://www.facebook.com/CWOCHS
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
Join us for an epic conversation as Jacks and Sascha interview David Treleaven about his work in the realms of trauma, mindfulness, and social justice. Some of the topics we explore together include:
About David:
David Treleaven is a writer, educator, and trauma professional whose work focuses on the intersection of trauma, mindfulness, and social justice. He is author of the book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing which has been incorporated into a number of meditation teacher training programs around the world. 60% of the proceeds from David's book are being donated to three organizations that are challenging systemic conditions that create and perpetuate trauma: generative somatics, the Sogorea Te Land Trust, and Black Lives Matter.
Find David online:
On the web: https://davidtreleaven.com/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trauma.sensitive.mindfulness
On Instagram: https://instagram.com/trauma.sensitive.mindfulness
Podcast: https://davidtreleaven.com/podcast-2/
Links to resources that were mentioned:
generative somatics
Sogorea Te Land Trust
Black Lives Matter
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast
In this episode, Jacks and Sascha interview Pınar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd from Queer Nature. We discuss everything from mythological remediation, challenging the colonial psychopharmaceutical system, and experiencing parallel realities to mystery as a primary need, ecological ancestral co-regulation, and that true identity can only be found in the collective. It’s a really exciting interview!
About Queer Nature: Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Place-based skills include naturalist studies, handcrafts, “survival skills,” and recognition of colonial and indigenous histories of land, and are framed in a container that emphasizes deep listening and relationship building with living and non-living earth systems. Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs. We carry the story and hope that these spaces create resilient narratives of belonging for folks who have often been made to feel by systems of oppression that they biologically, socially, or culturally don’t belong.
Bios of featured interviewees
PINAR (THEY/THEM)
Pınar is an Indigenous multi-species futurist, mentor, consultant and trans eco-philosopher; co-founder of Queer Nature, an “organism” stewarding earth-based queer community through ancestral skills, interspecies solidarity and rites of passage. Enchanted by the liminal, Pınar is a future transcestor with Huanca Quechua, Turkish and Chinese lineages. A central prayer that guides them is envisioning decolonially-informed queer ancestral-futurism through interspecies accountability and the remediation of human exceptionalism in the Chthulucene. Their relationship with queerness, hybridity, neurodivergence, Indigeneity and belonging guided their work in developing Queer Ecopsychology with a somatic and depth approach through a decolonial lens. As a survival skills mentor, one of their core missions is to uplift and amplify the brilliant “survival skills” that BIPOC, LGBTQ2SIA+ and other intersectional systemically targeted populations already have in their resilient bodies and stories of survivance. They are a member of Diversify Outdoors coalition. Follow their work on IG via @queerquechua + @queernature
SO (THEY/THEM)
Sophia ("So") Sinopoulos-Lloyd (they/them) is a white queer Greek-American who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of Alnobak territory (central Vermont). So is a nature-based educator, wilderness EMT, and writer. So worked as a seasonal shepherd throughout college and considers their life path(s) to be deeply inspired by the resilience and tenderness of cloven-hooved beings, who inspired them to study the earth more closely. In 2015 they founded Queer Nature with their spouse Pınar which offers nature-based programming for LGBTQ2SIA+ people with a focus on nature-connection, place-based skills, and transformative experience through queer and decolonial prisms. The soul of So’s work is animated by studies of identity, place, notions of the sacred, and interspecies relationship within contexts of colonization, globalization, migration, and climate crisis. So holds an MA in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University, and has had their writing published in The Wayfarer and Written River. Their special interests are being a spouse to their beloved, wildlife tracking, practicing survival skills, emergency medicine, dogs, and helping preparing their communities for uncertain futures. Follow their work on IG via @borealfaun + @queernature
Find Queer Nature online:
Queer Nature’s website: https://www.queernature.org/
On Instagram: https://instagram.com/queernature
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/queernature
On Patreon: www.patreon.com/queernature
Links to resources mentioned:
Loam magazine, where their upcoming essay will be published: https://loamlove.com/
Links to So Many Wings’ social media and website:
On the web: https://somanywings.org
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somanywingspodcast
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somanywingspodcast
On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/somanywingspodcast