MUM

In this MUM episode, medicine person Ekua Adisa shares about the conscious practice of skilled grieving and the 7 steps in creating a solo grief ritual (get ready to jot down notes!) that allows time and space for the body beyond verbal expression. Both Ellen and Ekua also discuss the non-linear, spontaneous experiences of grief in the day-to-day.

More on Ekua Adisa:

Ekua Adisa is a gender fluid medicine person at the intersection of Black Southern traditions and indigenous African practices that center ancestor veneration, conjure, earth magic, channeling, plant medicine, ritual, and community care. Ekua is also deeply influenced and inspired by the teachings of Native people indigenous to so-called North America, as well as various Buddhist lineages. As an intuitive medium, an energy worker, and a ritualist, Ekua’s pleasure-purpose work is inviting and supporting collective and individual grief work with ritual somatic practices, supporting people to connect with their ancestors for guidance, making and sharing plant medicine, and supporting the dead to transition with grace, elevation, and dignity. As a death care worker, they are excited to deepen into the work of supporting people to confront impermanence and prepare for their own eventual end spiritually and logistically. Ekua has twenty years of experience hosting and facilitating groups primarily in liberation movement spaces, and fifteen years experience as a healing practitioner practicing with various modalities.

Link with Ekua:

• Ekua’s 7 Step Guide


• Website


• Instagram @ekuaadisa

MUM is produced by Ellen Wong and edited by Stepfanie Aguilar. Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit tripwithellen.com to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“The presence of grief means that we need space, and our need for space means we need to honor our rest. We need to honor these natural cycles. And that is a key piece of our personal liberation effort.”

Welcome back to Season Two of MUM. We ended Season One early in response to the genocide occurring in Gaza.

As we return for this second season, MUM creator and host Ellen Wong reflects on the relationship between personal and collective liberation.

If liberation is being in right relationship with all that is and honoring the natural cycles that govern our bodies and world, then celebrating death and embracing grief must be part of our liberation efforts.

How are you focusing your energy and gifts in service of our collective liberation?

Ellen’s note – the documentary she mentions in the episode is called “Trees and Other Entanglements” and the story she tells is of Carolyn Finney, Ph.D., author and environmentalist.

Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit tripwithellen.com to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

"What does it mean to live uninhibited, especially knowing that your time is coming to an end? I held space for people who are my own age. I held space for people who were older than me. Numerous diagnosis also like Alzheimer's and dementia. And it really made me slow down and learn to be present. I would show up in these spaces. I'd be going into people's homes, I'd be going into skilled nursing facilities. And each experience was like its own container. And again, death is part of that container."

Stacey Schultz (they/she) is a board certified massage therapist and Rosen Method Bodyworker who has had experiences working with people at their end of life in hospice. And through her life journey, she has come to be an outspoken advocate for those who have experienced religious/spiritual harm.

In this conversation, we discuss the challenges of having religious upbringings, the process of questioning our beliefs, and healing from religious trauma. Stacey shares about her journey in leaving the religious community and discovering who she really is, and how that journey is now woven into her healing practice.

Learn more about Stacey at staceylschultz.com.

Follow Stacey on Instagram @stacey.l.schultz.

Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

"We hear celebration of life in reference to funerals when it comes to people's death. And I don't think we should wait until someone dies to celebrate their life. We should learn to celebrate now ourselves, the people we love. Also, why do I have to wait to die to rest in peace?"

Lily Truong is an existential Earthling existing as a first-generation Vietnamese-American queer femme, a squishy human with a squiggly brain psychotherapist, healing arts practitioner, coconut ninja, lover of life, companion of death, dot connector, community builder, rebel anarchist, cool rich auntie, and proud cat mum.

Lily's dad died when she was two. Her partner was murdered in 2020. And her mother died in 2021 on Mother's Day.

Lily has been walking with death her whole life. In this episode, Lily shares about her personal experience with grief while supporting her mother through her death journey, and how this experience has changed her perspective on life. She also talks about how her mother's unexpressed grief affected her understanding of death as a child.

Lily and Ellen discuss the importance of celebrating life now rather than waiting for death, as well as prioritizing rest and peace in everyday life. And they reflect on the transformative nature of grief and the need its expression.

About Lily Truong

Lily Truong is a pre-licensed therapist working in community mental health and private practice, whose ultimate intention is to share the transformative possibilities and benefits of counseling and communal care with those in search of healing. She operates through a social justice lens with the perspective of a first-generation Vietnamese-American queer femme weaving between the intersections of Eastern philosophies of mindfulness and contemporary depth-oriented theories in clinical practice. As a mental health counselor and healing arts practitioner, she is passionate about decolonizing and deconstructing oppressive ideologies; healing relational wounds and intergenerational trauma; reconnecting to ancestry to honor the lands and our lineages; merging inner worlds with outdoor environments by integrating nature’s healing into therapeutic practice; embracing life as an embodied experience; discharging shame for radical self-acceptance, bridging the interconnective synergy of mind/body/spirit through psychosomatic awareness and integration; and promoting diversity consciousness, community empowerment, and compassionate action.

Learn more about Lily's work at heavyhearts.club

Follow Lily on Instagram @cocolily.

Your support is greatly needed and appreciated!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

"If we can be with aging, we can also be with death. Right. Like, they go hand in hand. I feel like aging and death are sisters. They're sisters. One moves slow and one moves fast, but they walk on the same path."

In this episode, Xochitl Kusikuy Ashe – a 5th generation Peruvian medicine woman and Ellen's mentor – shares about her relationship with death and how it has been a teacher in her life.

Xochitl describes death as having sisters, which symbolize different aspects or ways in which death can occur. These sisters are metaphorical representations that help us understand death from various perspectives – the Sister of Aging, Sister of Illness, the Sister of Accidents, the Sister of Evil, the Sister of Suicide.

And just as there are sisters of Death, so are there sisters of Life. These sisters are associated with support and embrace for death. They may represent the transformative power of death and the growth that can arise from experiencing loss.

About Xochitl

Xochitl Kusikuy Ashe has been a teacher and guide in one-and-one mentorships, workshops, and ceremonies both in the U.S and internationally for the last 27 years. At 16 years old she became the first female of five generations of men to be initiated into the healing traditions of her Peruvian ancestral lineage. She is a Medicine Woman in the Peruvian Andean tradition and has worked with sacred plant medicines since the time of her initiation. For the past 23 years she apprenticed under her Godfather, a Mazatec Medicine Man of the ancient tradition of healing with the "Nti-si tho" "Santitos" or Psilocybin mushrooms.

She is a professionally trained herbalist, IFS Therapy Practitioner (Internal Family Systems) and specializes in the ceremonial use of Cacao and Psilocybin Mushrooms. In her practice, Xochitl focuses on the healing of generational trauma and the ways in which that trauma impairs our ability to thrive, create wealth, and have a positive impact on the world.

Founder of Magical Medicine Journeys, an Indigenous women owned retreat company, that offers legal Mazatec Psilocybin Mushroom Retreats in Mexico. Xochitl’s mission is to honor the traditional indigenous knowledge and ceremony of sacred plant medicine and provide the most authentic and powerful life changing experiences.

She is faculty at Esalen Institute, The Microdosing Institute and the Shift Network.

Learn more about Xochitl at Xochitlashe.com.

Follow Xochitl on Instagram @xochitlashe.

We're grateful for your support!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe