Irresistible (fka Healing Justice Podcast)

Resilience is deeply necessary for us to survive and thrive, but it can often be imposed, distorted, or misunderstood. So we wanted to hear from our people what it means to them, and how they cultivate it for themselves.

This past June, our podcast volunteer team from all over the country took a trip to Detroit together for the 20th Annual Allied Media Conference (AMC), and hosted a workshop called Healing Justice Podcast Story Lab. We set up recording booths and asked participants to share the experiences, practices, and relationships that sustained them in their justice journey on the mics. In this episode we invite you to listen in and reflect on these many voices in their own words.

Check out our Instagram Story Highlight from AMC for visuals to accompany these stories here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17937918448104448/

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ACCESS TEAM

Join our new Access Team to help us embody our commitment to disability justice, and specifically to volunteer transcribe all of our episodes from this past season. Sign up at www.tinyurl.com/hjptranscript

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RESOURCES

You heard Myra, Parke, and Rachel refer to the following Healing Justice Podcast episodes:

-- 07 De-spa-ifying Healing & Accessibility with Third Root Community Health Center (Geleni Fontaine & Emily Kramer)

-- 22 Sustaining Ourselves when Confronting Violence with Black Lives Matter Global Network & Black Visions Collective (Miski Noor & Kandace Montgomery)

-- 03 Practice: Journaling Our Identity with Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

Learn more about Allied Media Conference and their chrysalis year at https://www.alliedmedia.org/amc

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JOIN THE COMMUNITY

-- Become a sustaining member at www.patreon.com/healingjustice

-- Find us on Instagram @healingjustice, like Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, and tweet at us @hjpodcast on Twitter -- and check out our Instagram Story highlight for visuals from the workshop!

-- Learn more and sign up for the email list to hear when new episodes drop at www.healingjustice.org

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THANK YOU to:

-- Rachel Ishikawa, Myra Al-Rahim, and Parke Ballantine for the creative direction and production of this episode, and your leadership at the workshop at AMC.

-- Marcia Lee, Justin Campbell, and Kate Werning for co-designing and co-facilitating the Healing Justice Podcast Story Lab workshop at AMC in June 2018.

-- Miriam Zoila Perez and JD Davids for being an essential part of the production team at the workshop.

-- Kirin Kanakkanatt, Brittany Koteles, Charlie Bruce, Nat McClellan, and Josiah Werning for your volunteer support at AMC.

-- Zach Meyer at the COALROOM for mixing and final production, Josiah Werning for graphic design, and Danny O’Brien for intro and closing music.

AND THANK YOU TO OUR GUESTS: Each of these folks and many more attended our Story Lab workshop at AMC and generously shared their brilliance with us. The voices you heard include Chimaera Bailey, Hadassah Damien, Jekaren Olaoya, Symone Johnson, Nada Beydoun, Isis Rose, Rajelin Escondo, Vern Plotkin, Lydia Nylander, Sarahlyn Pablo, Unny Nambudiripad, Frankie Mastrangelo, Chaz Barracks, and Carlin Christy.

In this practice, Rhiana Anthony of The Icarus Project offers us a concrete tool called "Mad Maps" to help us develop a plan to support our own mental health. Use this worksheet to follow along and participate: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I2vtfT-j1R4KcA5F710YvD9XiVB8xpjv/view?usp=sharing

In the previous episode (Destigmatizing Mental Health), we talk with Agustina Vidal and Rhiana Anthony of The Icarus Project about everything mental health: why mental health is stigmatized in the first place, how it interplays with systems of oppression, suicide, ableism, medication, hospitalization, and more.

The Icarus Project is a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We advance social justice by fostering mutual aid practices that reconnect healing and collective liberation. We transform ourselves through transforming the world around us. http://www.theicarusproject.net

Rhiana Anthony (she, they, boo) is a queer black girl magician working toward collective liberation through community organizing, soulful facilitation, and healing justice. Her roots run from the Third Coast of Houston, TX and the Piney Woods of Marshall, TX. Rhiana currently works as the Icarus Project webinar coordinator and facilitator, founder/consultant of Conjure Community Healing Arts, and trainer for The Isaiah Young Institute.

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JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

Sign up for our email list to receive occasional communication from us with resources for your work and wellbeing. Sign up here: http://www.healingjustice.org

Talk with us on social media: Instagram @healingjustice, Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, & @hjpodcast on Twitter

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SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

Please follow / subscribe, rate, & review in whatever app you are listening, and SHARE this resource with everyone you know who could benefit from it!

Help us keep making this podcast by becoming a sustainer - and check our new community levels and rewards launched just this week!! - at www.patreon.com/healingjustice

You can also give a one time donation here: https://secure.squarespace.com/commerce/donate?donatePageId=5ad90c0e03ce64d6028e01bb

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Thank you to Rachel Ishikawa for audio editing and production, and Zach Meyer at the COALROOM for music and mastering.

Welcome to a very special New Years practice with adrienne maree brown, where she'll guide you through writing and casting a spell for yourself and your community to help transition us from 2018 to 2019. You'll need 30-90 minutes, a clear space, something to write on, and something to write with.

** If it helps you to have the prompts adrienne uses visually, scroll all the way to the bottom of these show notes for a list of the key questions for this practice. **

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THE REMIX

This practice was originally posted last year, so some of you have already done this with us! If you have your spell from last year, we give instructions in the first 10 minutes about how to release and transform it so you are ready to create a new one. (Thank you to Mya Spalter, author of Enchantments, for her recommendations.) If you want to skip right now to where the 2018-19 instructions begin, jump to about 17 minutes in.

You'll also hear us release our COLLECTIVE SPELL FOR 2018 that our community wrote together at this time last year! Follow along to see words and images from our community (it's so awesome) at http://www.healingjustice.org/spell

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SHARE YOUR SPELL! We'd love to hear from you about the spell you've written to transition into the new year. Share a selfie, the full text, one line, or your reflections on what it was like to do this practice on social media with us - let's see what our community is conjuring for 2019! Find us on Instagram @healingjustice, like Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, and tweet at us @hjpodcast on Twitter.

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MEET OUR GUEST:

adrienne maree brown is the author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is a writer, social justice facilitator, healer/doula, and pleasure activist living in Detroit, and co-host of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World.

KEEP LEARNING WITH ADRIENNE:

How to Survive the End of the World podcast

adrienne’s blog

Read - Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

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WILL YOU HELP US CONTINUE IN 2019?

So many people need this support to help sustain their liberatory work, and these practices and this wisdom are not ours to sell. We have radical faith that we can sustain this project on a gift economy, with the generosity of our community as our fuel. Please give what you can to our Facebook fundraiser here before midnight on 12/31: http://www.tinyurl.com/hjpgive

OR donate via the links on our website: http://www.healingjustice.org

Learn more and sign up for the email list to hear when new episodes drop at www.healingjustice.org

THANK YOU!
This podcast is mixed and produced by Zach Meyer at the COALROOM
All visuals contributed by Josiah Werning
Intro and closing music gifted by Danny O’Brien

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REFERENCE NOTES FOR THE PRACTICE:

You'll need: 30 minutes, pen/pencil, journal or paper, a clear workspace, and a tarot deck if you already have one and like to use it (optional). /// 2018 Free Write Prompts: - Were there things in this year that felt too heavy for me to carry? - Were there things in this year that I learned about myself, about movements for justice, about how I want to be? Lessons that I want to carry forward? ///
Reflecting on the Present: - How do I feel like I am in my power and in my dignity in this present moment? - Where do I feel like I want to grow my power or dignity in this moment? /// Looking Forward to 2019: - What does liberation mean to me? - What can I practice in this next year to increase my liberation and the liberation of my people? /// Writing Your Spell: - 1st stanza: What you’re letting go of and what lessons you’re carrying forward - 2nd stanza: The power you’re standing in and what you want to lean into more - 3rd stanza: With your eyes on liberation, what are you going to practice?

We made it through to November 7th! Come get through your midterm election adrenaline/terror hangover with us. The world is drowning in spin and hot-takes, so we're holding a different kind of vulnerable, real-talk space to process the results and work to understand what comes next for our movements as we take stock of both our wins and our losses.

Let's hear about how fun Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory party was *and* recommit ourselves to the long-game work of building a multiracial populist movement for liberation.

We're joined today by Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell, longtime organizer Barbara Dudley, and Alexandra Rojas of Justice Democrats.

With the whirlwind of the 2018 US midterm elections, Healing Justice Podcast brought you the SURVIVING ELECTIONS miniseries to help us all survive this political cycle together. Learn more & check out the complete series at www.healingjustice.org/elections

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COME PARTY WITH US!

Healing Justice Podcast is turning 1 year old! We’re having a birthday party & hosting our first *live show* on December 11, 2018 in Brooklyn, NY... and you're invited: https://tinyurl.com/hjparty

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This miniseries is sponsored by Groundswell Action Fund, resourcing visionary political organizing led by women of color, low-income women and transgender people across the country. This week, we're joined by Managing Director, Charlene Sinclair. Pitch in to support Groundswell's critical work here: bit.ly/groundswellaction

Partner with us: If your foundation or organization is interested in a partnership sponsorship for season 2 of the podcast to celebrate your work and spread your message like Groundswell has so wonderfully done here, reach out to [email protected]

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MEET OUR GUESTS:

Maurice Mitchell is the National Director for Working Families Party (WFP) and has over two decades of experience in political and community organizing. Before joining WFP he co-founded Blackbird, a movement-building organization that offers communications services and has worked closely with Black Lives Matter Global Network.

Barbara Dudley has been a movement activist for 50+ years, but only in the last ten has she engaged in electoral politics, via the Working Families Party. She was a lawyer for GI’s resisting the war in Vietnam, for tenant unions, and for unionizing farmworkers, she went on to serve as Director of the National Lawyers Guild during the Reagan years, then Director of Greenpeace US, and then Director of Strategic Campaigns for the national AFL-CIO during the Clinton years.

Alexandra Rojas is the Executive Director at Justice Democrats (JD), an organization founded by former staff of the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign in order to transform the Democratic Party into a party that works for its voters, not just its corporate donors.

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JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

Sign up for our email list to receive occasional communication from us with resources for your work and wellbeing. Sign up here: http://www.healingjustice.org

Talk with us on social media: Instagram @healingjustice, Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, & @hjpodcast on Twitter

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SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

Please follow / subscribe, rate, & review in whatever app you are listening, and SHARE this resource with everyone you know who could benefit from it!

This podcast is 100% volunteer-run. Help cover our costs by becoming a sponsor at www.patreon.com/healingjustice

You can also give a one time donation here: https://secure.squarespace.com/commerce/donate?donatePageId=5ad90c0e03ce64d6028e01bb

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THANK YOU:

Mixing and production by Zach Meyer at the COALROOM & Katie McCutcheon
Music by Danny O’Brien & Zach Meyer
Production support from Parke Ballantine, Jillian White, & Guido Gigenti
Visuals by Josiah Werning
Maurice Mitchell photo by Rafael Shimunov

This week we’re talking with psychotherapist Mark Fairfield about the central role of connection in our lives and lethal individualism. We learn about relational culture, factors for resilience, his work supporting caregivers in the AIDS movement, how bullying is a euphemism, and failure.

Download the corresponding practice (“Sharing Resonance”) to learn an amazing exercise to help build connection in your life and your community.

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AFFIRMATIONS

Each week we feature community voices uplifting people, organizations, and communities that embody the values of healing justice. Submit your own personal shout-out to spread love on the airwaves here: https://healingjustice.typeform.com/to/YjvuU2

This week’s AFFIRMATIONS come from:

Mary Ann thanking the Women in Power Community in the UK & the FRIDA Young Feminist Fund, and Marcia uplifting Siwatu-salama Ra in Detroit (email [email protected] to join Siwatu’s Freedom Team). Thank you both for sharing your commitment to your communities.

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ABOUT OUR GUEST: MARK FAIRFIELD

Mark was the Founder and Executive Director of The Relational Center, a nonprofit community organization that exists to rescue and preserve the important social ties humans depend on for health and well being. He is a leadership coach, consultant, and psychotherapist. His experience in ACT UP helped him understand how movements with strong emphasis on collaborative action and wider-thinking, can catalyze vitality and wellbeing by supplying a social infrastructure that encourages people to look after one another.More about Mark at http://www.markfairfieldlcsw.com/ , learn about The Relational Center in LA at www.relationalcenter.org , & learn more about Relational Uprising training for organizers at http://relationaluprising.org/
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JOIN THE COMMUNITY:

Sign up for the email list at www.healingjustice.org

Social media: Instagram @healingjustice, Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, & @hjpodcast on Twitter

This podcast is 100% volunteer-run. Help cover our costs by becoming a sponsor at www.patreon.com/healingjustice

THANK YOU:

Editing by Yoshi Fields
Mixed and produced by Zach Meyer at the COALROOM
Intro and Closing music gifted by Danny O’Brien
All visuals contributed by Josiah Werning