00:01:18.640in a way that does not increase suffering?
00:01:23.040Because we know that by increasing suffering,
00:01:25.180we make everyone suffer and we eventually make ourselves suffer too.
00:01:38.480Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with
00:01:44.440Prentice Hemphill, author of What It Takes to Heal. Prentice, I'm really happy to be with you
00:01:52.980again. And I'm just really heartened to get to discuss your new book, What It Takes to Heal,
00:02:00.520with you today. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
00:02:04.480There are so many notes I have and places that I could begin. But when I was looking through my
00:02:12.880notes before we hopped on, I'm definitely in a question around the word heal even. And I think
00:02:21.020that's an interesting place for us to start. And in the book, you talk about trying to find a
00:02:26.380definition for healing, saying, quote, for a long time, I searched for a definition of healing.
00:02:32.640Most times what I came across in the world of psychology was the treatment of symptoms,
00:02:37.420not the root cause or healing as defined by the ability to get back in the saddle and become a
00:02:43.440more productive citizen. In other circles, healing was an escape, a disengagement from life,
00:02:49.340high-end retreats, and self-care classes where you could pay to temporarily keep the messy
00:02:54.580problems of the outside world at bay. Most of the time, we define terms according to our context.
00:03:01.480So it's not surprising that our terms for healing reflect the destructive, individualistic,
00:03:07.180and productivity-oriented tendencies of our society. End quote. So if we could just start
00:03:14.780off by pulling apart this word heal and how we can grapple with the ways our culture
00:03:23.020shapes our idea of what healing is and looks like. Yeah. I really like definitions
00:03:31.420as fleeting as they can be. I really like defining words or trying to understand
00:03:38.400what a definition is doing or how it shapes us in return. And, you know, when I think about words,
00:03:45.520I'm not a linguist, but sometimes I, you know, read linguists and get really curious about their
00:03:50.260field of study because we have these words that maybe have a meaning that they came with, or,
00:03:58.620you know, someone was like, something's missing here. We're going to create this word or repurpose
00:04:03.140this word. And then it starts to carry everything else that we put into it, things that are adjacent
00:04:11.240to it, things that, you know, our interpretation of it and the word gets kind of clogged in a way
00:04:16.740with our times and our uses for it. And so sometimes I like to, you know, pull some things
00:04:25.580out of it and say, is this what we mean? Is this what we really want this word to do right now?
00:04:31.000Because words themselves are imperfect. No matter how poetically we speak to each other, it's hard to point to the experience that I'm trying to language.
00:04:41.540So with the word heal, you know, I think in the last period, there's been injected into it all of our, like I said in the book, individualistic, but also kind of perfectionist tendencies, you know, like I'm going to get, I'm going to finally be good or better, good enough.
00:05:02.080I'm going to get it right. And I think a lot of us have held that word that way, that if we heal,
00:05:09.940then, you know, all of the bad stuff in us will be sloughed off or, you know, whatever it might be.
00:05:18.620It also then can be kind of co-opted in that way, especially when it has those kinds of
00:05:24.640of tinges to it. It can be co-opted in a way to sell you things, you know, to sell you more of
00:05:31.860something, the right potion, the right retreat, whatever it might be. But healing, I think when
00:05:41.780I get real close to the word and I look inside of it, I think what it offers me is actually a kind
00:05:47.920of circular understanding. When I let go of the destination or the purity-making aspects of it,
00:06:02.840I find something else. It's less linear, that is more of a process that points us in a direction
00:06:13.980or maybe points us towards a posture, a way of being with the world and what happens to
00:11:43.120part of me brings us up because i hear a lot of rhetoric of when we were dot dot dot or back then
00:11:52.840we were better or there was a time when we humans weren't so bad or something and i'm not saying
00:12:01.380there weren't moments or certain groups of people but the history that i've looked back at i'm like
00:12:08.220well, we've kind of always had as a species elements that are violent or intense or, you
00:12:18.180know, moving from places of stealing or scarcity or taking over or dominance.
00:12:24.620Like I'm not, not that I haven't found any, not that my research hasn't led me to some
00:12:32.160people somewhere. But I guess overall, I'm just wondering, does it, like, sometimes I feel like
00:12:39.560it, it hurts us now to somehow think that our species was better some other time, and now we're
00:12:47.860bad. Yeah, I'm generally not a very nostalgic person. I wish that I could, in some ways,
00:12:56.820subscribe to ideas that point us to some more perfect past. I'm not that person. And I say
00:13:05.960that humbly. There's a lot for me to learn, and it's not really my way of being in the world.
00:13:12.860And I will say alongside that, just to stay on the thread of nuance, is that I do think that
00:13:20.780it can be more or less. We can be doing more or less harm. And we can be more or less anti-aliveness,
00:13:31.880more or less geared towards suffering. And I think, yes, I think suffering exists. I think
00:13:44.420Like in a way, trauma and trauma in the sense of people being overwhelmed by an experience, their physiology being overwhelmed by an experience and that impacting how they live from, you know, into the next moment.
00:14:01.380I think that that is something that human beings have probably experienced for as long as we were human beings and maybe before.
00:14:11.280And I think that it can become intensified. Our lives can become less spacious. We can be as a species less attuned to that. We can create accelerated traumas for people, more intense traumas for people.
00:14:33.100I think that is also kind of an axis to which to examine this. And I think we are in a moment where the intensity, the acceleration, the force, the lack of attentiveness or care, I think that's some of how I would define this context.
00:14:50.900And I do think trauma has a way of multiplying itself. I think it's a little bit viral to me in that way.
00:15:03.100And when we concentrate it in this way, I guess I worry.
00:15:07.680I pay attention to how it will multiply and what the multiplication will mean if we don't have in our ways of doing, ways of being, rituals or ceremonies that can help us digest and process what it is that we are experiencing.
00:15:28.260So, yeah, I don't feel romantic about any past, and I feel like there is something to this moment, to this present, that feels like it has its own weight and intensity, and therefore, in a way, a lesson for us to learn.
00:17:49.280We become who we are in part because of the family system that shaped us, but we can become
00:17:55.300even more of who we are when we resist, when we take a look at where we're from, where we want to
00:18:01.560go, and then begin to transform our future, end quote. And of course, we could look at this as
00:18:08.420like our family, you know, our blood family, we could look at it as our even larger context,
00:18:13.800like world human family. I think about myself and my own family. I know that you have become
00:18:21.020a parent so have I so I definitely this is on my mind and there's a lot of questions that I have
00:18:28.720like I guess how do you navigate a world where it seems that hurt is inevitable especially as a
00:18:36.180parent and maybe how this has shaped your approach to healing how old is the person in your life
00:18:45.840a year and a half sweet yeah there's such a little comedian oh god that's so fun so fun
00:18:58.220it's so crazy and fun yeah oh yeah oh yeah um having a child has changed everything for me
00:19:07.500it's really changed everything for me I think um you know I was talking to a group last week
00:19:14.940And I was saying, you know, the thing that is actually impossible to teach someone else to do is so necessary for anything that we might call healing or transformation is the move of surrender, of surrender to, you know, in some ways one's own body, for the body to lead without us having to mechanically think through the body's next move.
00:19:42.720But for our own bodies to lead and to, you know, when I do body work with people to let your body shake or do whatever, you know, unwind.
00:19:53.320It's a struggle with people to surrender to those other ways of being.
00:20:00.440And that's not something anybody can really tell you how to do.
00:20:05.100I can just say there's a way that you let go and let something else lead.
00:20:10.160And parenting has taught me that in such a profound way.
00:20:22.420I mean, one, there's just like, you know, the connection between surrender and sacrifice.
00:20:28.480There's a lot that I have to just give and move out of the way of because there's this other life that is really dependent on us.
00:20:37.580And yeah, there's that piece. It's like, it's not so much, it's not as much about my preferences or what I think. There's something else moving. But there's also this surrender I found in parenting of, I have to live with a little bit, and I don't know if this is true for, I don't know who it's true for.
00:21:00.880It's true for me. But I sort of have to live with a little bit of heartbreak all the time as a parent because, you know, you watch the world, you know, where my child is three and a half and no questions about race are beginning to enter in.
00:21:22.640And to explain race and to reveal to a child, a black child, in my case, what this story means without trapping them in it, it's a heartbreaking thing to do.
00:21:46.080to say, there's this myth running around
00:21:52.260that involves you without knowing you.
00:21:56.860And you'll have to figure out for yourself
00:21:59.440through probably a bunch of painful moments
00:24:30.400I don't know that I answered your question, but what it means for healing.
00:24:37.060I guess what I would say what it means about healing for me, I write some in the book about
00:24:42.360how easily the things we carry get transmitted, how easily our own fears get transmitted,
00:24:49.180especially when you're with a young person who is still pretty open. They're receiving
00:24:56.180everything without a lot of story attached to it because they don't know yet what it all means.
00:25:01.380So they receive it and you can easily transmit something that you don't intend to transmit,
00:25:07.120but is a habit in you or is a fear in you. And you can really easily show them that this is
00:25:13.840the way we encounter the world or this is what we do when we have a big feeling or whatever it
00:25:18.980might be. And so it's called on me to bring more awareness to that. Even if it is still there,
00:25:25.600Can I talk to my kid about it, about what I am experiencing, what I see?
00:25:31.140It really shows me there's just so much in our interactions with each other, how we speak
00:25:37.680to each other, what we're bringing to the moment, and it sets the foundation.
00:25:42.700You know, in adults, it makes people, people are reactive to those things.
00:25:45.940In children, it's like I'm actually setting the emotional foundation for her.
00:25:51.880so how can I bring more awareness to that without becoming you know paranoid about how I am but
00:25:58.380just um softer for both of us sorry if I went on too too long no I'm I was in it with you
00:26:07.640every word I was following and and contemplating it's it's complex and it's also
00:26:16.620I can think about it, but then it's, it's life every day, every moment. And it's going so fast
00:26:23.360that I am just living it. I'm just practicing in the moment, every moment. I don't have too
00:26:29.560much time to sit back and let it sink in and like move from that place. I have really worked on my
00:26:43.500paranoia and I'm honestly very surprised that I'm not more paranoid about having a child or
00:26:54.440raising her or yeah I think my mom was very afraid and I then thought I would be afraid
00:27:02.520and that I would want her to be afraid of the same things in order to protect her and for her
00:27:10.640to protect herself. I think what you were talking about, the heartbreak, it's like really
00:27:15.060allowing the heartbreak to enter and surrendering to that heartbreak, to me, alleviates some of the
00:27:23.360fear and the paranoia because I'm not trying to escape it. Of course, I don't want her to get
00:27:28.780hurt, but I'm not thinking that there's a world where she won't. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
00:27:34.880Yeah, I never saw it coming until I'm here. And then I'm just like, oh, okay, this is what makes sense. And maybe going back to the quote I read earlier, I'm wondering, what does it take to be this, quote, transformational character?
00:27:50.540because I think that's kind of what we're talking about as parents like how to transform
00:27:57.320potentially the fears in us to not continue them on or it doesn't have to obviously just be fears
00:28:06.820but um yeah what does it take to be that character I think it's really just about
00:28:14.140being your own process, being in your experience of life and saying there are things that I
00:28:26.400intend to transmit and tend to do in the world. There are values that I hold. There are ways of
00:28:32.680being that I want to practice. And letting that be at the center of what you do, letting it be
00:28:40.420a little more felt in your relationships, that to me is what it means to be a transformational
00:28:44.740character. It means in part to know that relationships are where the action is and
00:28:50.900that relationships are the reality of our life on this earth, that we are related to each other,
00:28:58.320we're related to the trees outside, we are related in this ecosystem. It doesn't mean that we don't
00:29:04.520have hard decisions to make or that there is no pain, but to know that fundamentally we're related.
00:29:11.140And so the part of that relationship that is yours to create or to offer into, to do that
00:29:20.900with as much awareness and not awareness. Again, it's like finding that distinction
00:29:24.700that I hear you making around parenting. There's a distinction between awareness and a kind of
00:29:30.340hypervigilance. I can be with my child and be in a flow. It's like, we're playing. Okay,
00:29:38.780we're doing this. Okay, we're doing this. And there are moments where I go, I feel frustrated
00:29:44.780or something. And I can feel the choice point. I want to force something to happen because I have
00:29:54.840to go or because of whatever it might be. And sometimes that is what I choose. And then sometimes
00:29:59.820I go, what is it that you're trying to do? Because sometimes my daughter will be really
00:30:04.400working on something. I'd be like, okay, I've given you, I've let you know that we're going
00:30:07.280to leave soon and you're still kind of caught in this thing. And to turn towards her, to turn
00:30:13.300towards the relationship and be like, what is it that you're focused on right now? Is there
00:30:17.260something I can help you with? Rather than always going, I need you to come right now.
00:30:23.820You know, there are those choice points that I can I can find it because I know the alignment in myself.
00:30:30.120And when I feel off of my own center, I go, OK, what's the move that I make that not only is helpful to her, but it also recenters me to do?
00:30:43.020And I think that's those are the moves that a transformational character makes.
00:30:47.840They're saying in the systems, in the family, in the organization, in this ecosystem, all the places where I am participant, I want to be bringing some level of awareness and intentional practice to how I'm doing those relationships.
00:31:05.300i love hearing your personal stories because i really see myself in them and i'm like oh yep
00:31:14.060been there uh just an hour ago yeah i mean i could stay on parenthood this whole time
00:31:21.840but um i will i will move on to other things that i really wanted to talk to you about we
00:31:27.920kind of touched on or at least brought up the idea of healing within movements and
00:31:34.060and somatics beyond the individual and so I'd love to touch on your work thinking about healing
00:31:41.660within political spaces and social movements and there's a quote and you write getting involved
00:31:48.440politically opens us up to the messy world of other people which may seem frightening but we've
00:31:54.560seen that we need other people for our own well-being and we also need people for safety
00:31:59.600and for building power. We need people because we grow in relationship. When we dig in together,
00:32:06.080when our ideas are tested and held up to another's light, we become more than we could have been on
00:32:11.940our own, end quote. And I'm sure that right now, this is a really challenging thought process to
00:32:20.880people. It's, you know, a very divided space, especially in the United States. And so I'm
00:32:28.140wondering, how do our social movements mirror our lives? Are you saying how can they or how do
00:32:34.020they? Well, I was thinking do, but I could also go with can. Yeah, that's a good question. I think
00:32:39.220that our social movements are, you know, a great place to practice what it is that we want to live
00:32:51.480and we want to nurture in ourselves and in each other that maybe we're not very good at, or maybe
00:32:56.080we haven't seen modeled very much, or maybe it's like, there's just not enough room for this in
00:32:59.820the world. We can try out new ways of governance, of decision-making, of whatever it might be.
00:33:07.760So I think that's really the exciting part about building movements and building organizations.
00:33:16.140And they're also subject to everything that we've learned along the way that we haven't
00:33:20.420actually become conscious to the lessons around how we treat each other how we treat ourselves
00:33:26.240how available our imagination is our creativity our visioning how we do conflict
00:33:34.300is in there too how we've seen conflict modeled what conflict means to us
00:33:39.600we bring all of that to social movements and so we it ends up being a place of of promise
00:33:49.560You know, place of real practice, I think. And it can become mired in not only the human stuff, because I really think, you know, conflict, for example, is just going to happen. It's just going to happen. But we can become mired in the unconscious aspects of it. You know, what conflict am I really trying to address by having this conflict with you?
00:34:12.540And if I don't know that, we can become even more deeply entrenched and it can become a non-generative kind of conflict.
00:34:21.420So there's something to the how we do social movements that I think is one of the things I was trying to say in the book. It's important for us to look at these places of interface, these relational places, just to bring as much conscious awareness to those as possible because they can be really generative, transformative, or it can be the places where we leak power in a way where our power gets drained out.
00:34:46.920our movements can be stunted or destroyed or be more vulnerable if we don't have an
00:34:53.040orientation to those places of rupture and deepening as generative.
00:34:59.160So I think that's why, you know, I think they can be so many things, our social movements,
00:35:06.620because it's just about us kind of working through how do we want to live on this planet
00:35:11.820together and struggling through that and being affirmed in that and all the things that can come
00:35:18.500it's that's to me what the political realm is about it's like how are we going to do this
00:35:23.200there's finite resources there's needs that we have as human beings how are we going to make
00:35:29.000decisions in a way that does not increase suffering because we know that by increasing
00:35:35.600suffering we we make everyone suffer and we eventually make ourselves suffer too so
00:35:40.940are there ways that we can work through this very complex i mean i it's not all you know
00:35:46.600rainbows and unicorns being i say this often you know i live out in the country and living more
00:35:54.500rurally you are i mean there is a beauty and a brutality to the whole experience of being alive
00:36:03.820the paradigm that we're in on this planet, it's kind of a rough one. There is death, there is
00:36:12.160violence, there are all these things. And how do we structure our societies and our world in ways
00:36:19.400that don't amplify that, make it always the go-to? There are lots of ways of living.
00:36:33.820thank you for listening to the sixth episode of for the wild slow study series earthly reads with
00:36:54.880prentice hemphill this was the first 30 minutes of an over hour long conversation between ayana
00:37:00.700and Prentice. To get the full experience, join our book study, where we will gather with authors
00:37:06.580like Prentice, as well as Adrienne Marie Brown, Tricia Hersey, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Celine
00:37:12.560Simon, and Marsha Bjornrud for an even deeper dive into their recent writings. To learn more,
00:37:19.320please visit forthewild.world slash bookstudy or join us on Patreon. The music for this series