Conversations With a Wounded Healer

I'm happy to be in 2023, and one of the reasons is…. (drum roll please!)... I've stepped down from my duties as president of Head/Heart Therapy and I am launching a new business called Head/Heart Business Therapy!  The mission is to work directly with individual therapists, group practice owners, and larger healthcare and mental health organizations in order to transform through heart-centered and business-minded practices. I want to help therapists heal and I think that needs to happen at a more collective level.  Don’t worry! Conversations With a Wounded Healer podcast isn’t going away. In fact, we have some cool sh*t coming up this year! So stay tuned… Meanwhile, listen to this short solo episode to find out what the tarot cards had to say about the show for 2023. Thank you so much for being here. I’m curious to see what’s coming this year and I hope to see you in one of my upcoming groups to support you in your professional healing practice. Support for mental health workers: If you work in the mental health field and are looking for support from like-minded people, check out our third installment of the Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect.  Virtual community for group practice owners: I offer a working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places… Website: www.headheartbiztherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartBizTherapy/ Instagram:  @headheartbiztherapy

Fans of the pod already know that I fangirl hard for Dr. Jennifer Mullan and Decolonizing Therapy, the global movement she created to “radically reimagine the old mental health paradigm. If you’re new here, allow me to introduce you to the future as envisioned by this badass author, speaker, organizational consultant, teacher, course creator, and community builder. Dr. Jennifer describes herself as a mixed-race Black woman with lighter skin privilege and a bigger-bodied, neurodivergent cat mom with East Coast roots and West Coast devotions who believes that accountability coupled with community is the answer. Dr. Jennifer holds space for the really big, complex emotions that block our progress. She also provides an access point: a reintegration and re-remembering that she calls knowledge-with-a-capital-K.  MENTAL HEALTH WORKERS Check out our Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect. GROUP PRACTICE OWNERS I'm offering a working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders. GUEST BIO Dr. Jennifer Mullan is the author of the forthcoming book Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma & Politicizing Your Practice, and is highly sought after international speaker. She is also an organizational consultant, teacher, course creator, community builder, and decolonized mental health movement starter. In December 2017, Dr. Mullan created the Decolonizing Therapy Instagram, which has grown a large, enthusiastic following and profoundly shifted the world’s understanding of therapy and mental health. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

Onyx Fujii’s contribution arrives by way of the Kintsugi Therapist Collective (co-founded with CWH guest Asher Pandjiris), and I’m in awe of what they have created: a virtual community offering “embodied care, support, wisdom, and resources to trans and non-binary, BIPOC, chronically ill, and disabled mental health providers.”  One of this conversation's “off-camera” revelations is that Onyx joined me from their bed. It’s a small win for Onyx, allowing them to honor the day’s physical and mental limits. While Covid exposed cracks in overburdened systems, societal acknowledgment of our vulnerability (and interdependence) remains non-existent. Even in a field supposedly aligned with self-care, productivity remains paramount. MENTAL HEALTH WORKERS Check out our Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect. GROUP PRACTICE OWNERS I'm offering a working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders. GUEST BIO Onyx Fujii, LCSW, is a queer, non-binary, chronically ill, mixed-race licensed clinical social worker. They are a home-owner and multiple small businesses owner, living and working on unceded Lenni Lenape land, colonially known as Philadelphia, PA. They are a trauma-informed psychotherapist, a clinical supervisor, an intersectionality-focused cultural humility consultant, and the co-director of the Kintsugi Therapist Collective, LLC. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi  

If the Moon could speak, what would it tell us? Creative Lunar Guide April Miller McMurtry says that the great orb is transmitting intel to us all the time; we just need to become more fluent in its language. Her work speaks to the part of me that loves it’s-okay-to-say-witchy mindfulness.  April’s tools for engaging with energetic patterns are more robust than a daily tracking log and more inclusive than calendars that chart menstrual cycles. Her goal was to bring about more intention to how we experience our inner and outer lives, with the Moon reminding us that everything happens (or should happen) in phases.  MENTAL HEALTH WORKERS Check out our Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect. GROUP PRACTICE OWNERS I'm offering a working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders. GUEST BIO April Miller McMurtry, MAT, is a Creative Lunar Guide who supports people on their path of growth and transformation through the simple yet profound practice of self-study in relationship with cycles. April is the founder of THE MOON IS MY CALENDAR and has independently published the New Moon Calendar Journal since 2014. With a Master of Arts in Teaching and a background in expressive art, yoga, and meditation, April loves to share the language of the Moon to help people access their inner wisdom - inspiring us all to take better care of ourselves, each other, and the Earth!  For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

The last 2.5 years (and counting) have opened floodgates of reckoning, especially within therapeutic spaces, and I’m so here for it! So, too, is Asher Panjiris, who rightfully points out that our profession is overdue for an overhaul. Yasss! Asher claims a lot of different identities: psychotherapist, queer parent, human to two dogs, and the host of Living in This Queer Body. They’re also co-founder and co-director of Kintsugi Therapist Collective, a community space dedicated to helping therapists build embodied and liberatory care practices. The Japanese art of kintsugi, or golden mending, is a perfect metaphor for the reparative work needed: more grace for therapists as we embrace our flaws and imperfections and heal our wounds––in full view of our clients. Sound scary? Freeing? Asher says it's a bit of both. And that’s ok. MENTAL HEALTH WORKERS Check out our Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect. GROUP PRACTICE OWNERS I'm offering a working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders. GUEST BIO Asher Pandjiris is a chronically ill, white, non-binary psychotherapist, clinical consultant, podcaster, and co-founder of Kintsugi Therapist Collective. They are a queer parent to a super-rad human and two dogs and reside on stolen Nipmuc and Pocumtuc lands. Join Onyx and Asher March 3-5, 2023, for a virtual weekend intensive, during which you will experience a concentrated and highly personalized curriculum designed to support care workers.  We hope to challenge the unrealistic expectations of the care work industrial complex, nurture pathways for reconnecting with pleasure, and develop enlivening professional practices/strategies. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

Happy anniversary! You and I have gone through a lot over the last five years. Progress! Stagnation! Rage! Exhilaration! And, would you believe, 200 conversations with wounded healers? A line-up of humans so generous of spirit that their insights echo throughout my body long after the recording session ends. There’s something to this idea of embodied wisdom, the way we physically understand what our minds can’t (or refuse to) comprehend. Somatic Experience Practitioner Sarah Wolfman (one of my first guests ever) calls it the power of our bones. So what do these old bones know now? Sarah returns to help me sift through the transformative lessons of the last five years.  GUEST BIO Sarah Wolfman is passionate about embodiment as a tool for transformation. By attuning to the body's natural rhythms and sensations, her clients master their nervous system's ups and downs, creating space for empowerment, resilience, and vitality. Sarah specializes in transforming trauma and chronic pain through Somatic Experience Practice, functional & dynamic movement, somatic touch, cranial-sacral techniques, and mindfulness. NEW: Virtual community for group practice owners Starting in January 2023, I offer a new support/working collective for group therapy practice owners who want to lead from the heart while building a thriving, ethical business. Join us at Wounded Healers as Leaders.  CONNECT: Support for mental health workers If you work in the mental health field and are looking for support from like-minded people, check out our third installment of the Wounded Healers Virtual Group. It’s a juicy, sweet, and really cool place to connect.  For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

College. If your origins story includes a collegiate stint, the word either ushers in a flood of autumnal-toned nostalgia or overwhelming anxiety. Which camp you occupy depends, in part, on the support you received from professors and administrators while attending school. Wouldn't it be great if all guidance counselors approached their task as Carrie Young did when she occupied the office, full of heart and candid intel on career paths?  Luckily for millions of students, Carrie has traded in one-to-one academic advising for guidance on a grander scale. As host of the Paths In Progress podcast, she presents a more transparent take on life as a working adult, highlighting rather than downplaying all of its roadblocks, u-turns, and serendipitous detours. Carrie invites her guests (yours truly included), who pursued various majors, to reveal how they navigated all the twisty post-collegiate turns they took to become who they are today. GUEST BIO Carrie Young is a classically trained musician and experienced higher education administrator and educator. Throughout her work with students, she prioritizes mentorship and relationship-building. With her new podcast Paths in Progress, she wants to help students and recent graduates learn about the education and career paths of professionals across various fields who had challenges, pivots, and roadblocks along their path. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

Are you now, or have you ever been disabled? That's not a trick question. Artist, art therapist, and disability activist Bri Beck asserts that disability exists along a complex spectrum –– visible, hidden, physical, developmental, temporary, persistent, evident at birth, resulting from trauma –– rather than a simple binary. And yet… Even with close proximity to it, so much uneasiness surrounds disability and those for whom it is a fact of life. So, what's up with our everyday ableism, especially in therapeutic spaces? "There's always a very strange weirdness, and I find, at least in my experience, that it's like, people are trying to show you, 'I'm cool with this. I'm gonna make sure you know I'm fine!'" says Bri, who lives with pseudoachondroplasia, a form of dwarfism.  Bri navigates a world where well-meaning folks can quickly cross the line. "As somebody that's apparently, outwardly, disabled, I have people touch me all the time, strangers that just don't know me, and that's so much, like, boundary-crossing." Bri's experiences don't end with touching. They often include a blatant disregard for her agency. Out-maneuvering such ableism is exhausting, says Bri, and puts me in mind of the tiresome intent of "good white people." Both broadcast their opposition to -isms through actions or language so beyond what is necessary that their efforts* become caricatures of authentic human interaction. *Insert face-palm here because we can all recall a situation (or many) in which we've overcompensated for our discomfort in exactly the same cringe-worthy manner. GUEST BIO Bri Beck is a disabled art therapist and disability arts and culture maker. Bri sees individuals in private practice and also works part-time with Access Living of Metro Chicago, where she facilitates the peer wellness program. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

Dropping this convo alongside recent pop culture reminders (hello, little mermaids and Emmy Award-winners!) that representation matters because it heals. Rico Ricketson created an entire platform around that idea. He’s the founder and CEO of MH3, a subscription-based resource that partners with corporations to provide mental health education featuring the voices and experiences of diverse health and wellness experts. “We provide credible mental health education so that employees can learn how to catch changes in mood, energy levels, and sleeping patterns before they become something more serious,” Rico says of the company he founded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Rico’s professional credentials are massively impressive, it’s his personal motivations for creating MH3 that I find so profoundly moving. As a minority, a survivor of domestic violence, and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, finding credible mental health information from experts with whom he shares similar lived experiences isn’t easy. He designed MH3 to deliver that vital life-saving mental wellness support through engaging interviews featuring voices not often represented in corporate wellness programs. “The only thing capitalistic about MH3 is that I hope millions and billions of people get to heal from stories.” GUEST BIO Rico Ricketson is the Founder & CEO of MH3, Mental Health Education for the Mind, Body, and Spirit. When Rico learned of Covid-19's spread throughout Italy in March of 2020, he used his passion and desire to help and save lives. Rico took his 20 years of healthcare advertising experience and combined it with his expertise in human-centered design and his Master's in Biology/Neuroscience to create MH3 so he could do something to help. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi

I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of amazing folks. Believe me when I say there's something special about the frequency from which Rusia Mohiuddin operates. She's tapped into a universal rhythm that, in simplest terms, is the deep understanding that people are the source of all power. If that level of embodiment comes across as too lofty for the "average" person to access, allow Rusia to share another vital facet of her being: "I have a potty mouth like a true New Yorker as well." That's what showing up as your whole self is all about. As founder and principal of Universal Partnership (UP), Rusia combines her vast experience as a master trainer, facilitator, and somatic coach with generational wisdom––the lived understanding that social movements require holistic foundations to achieve healthy momentum. Rusia centers on the cooperative rather than the singular: "If everything, all the ecosystems on earth, are reliant––our bodies and the ecosystems within them are reliant––why would all this reliancy then create societal systems that are unaligned and not reliant on each other, that's actually reliant on the suffering and the oppression of most of us?" Hell if I know, but here we are, in the wake of every -ism coming before us. There IS one -ism that can save us: collectivism. Us. The people with the power. It's a lesson handed down to Rusia through her elders, and we all have access to similar wisdom––if we commit to relearning its language.  GUEST BIO Rusia N. Mohiuddin is a master trainer, facilitator, & somatic coach who pioneered the integration of somatics into an organizing framework. Her current mission, through Universal Partnership, has been developing a holistic model for social justice change work that places in its center the necessary transformation of social change agents. For full show notes, resources, and links to connect with our guest, visit: https://www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast *** Conversations with a Wounded Healer is a proud member of @mhnrnetwork. Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places... Website: www.headhearttherapy.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WoundedHealr/ https://www.facebook.com/HeadHeartTherapy/ Instagram: @headhearttherapy Twitter: @WoundedHealr @HeadHeart_Chi