We Heal For All: The Collective Healing Podcast

We live in a world built to take — a culture running on greed and extraction that keeps asking more of us. For those of us wired to give, it's easy to feel responsible for being the counterforce: to give and give until we end up burning out and needing to step away from the very work we love. In this July reflection, I explore why it’s so important to become an exquisitely skilled giver in these t...

You have one of those friends where as soon as you open your mouths or sit down with each other you just go deep? That, my friends, is Michael Stern for me. With this month’s theme being about integration and maturity — the evolutionary draw towards social-spiritual maturity, and how that naturally moves us away from black and white approaches to… everything, and towards a more integrated, integra...

These times we live in are awakening much-needed cultural conversations about what needs to change. Unfortunately, though, the loudest versions of these cultural conversations tend to be the oversimplified ones. There’s a tendency within the cultural dialogue that happens around social change to swing hard in the opposite direction of what we want to fix. To see a deficit within society, and to co...

In this conversation, I sit down with Embody Equity founder Rie Algeo Gilsdorf  to explore what it actually means to be in a body, and why that matters for — for us personally and for the work of changemaking. We unpack what embodiment is , really, in a culture that's still new to using the word. And how it isn’t just a practice or tool you do once in a while — like breath work — but is more of a...

We are taking in more of the world right now than at any other point in history — and it's doing something to us. Not just overwhelm and fatigue, but something deeper and more alive. A new kind of social consciousness is bursting forward, trying to take root. What helps this new consciousness actually land, take form, and become something we can live from. In this episode, I explore how embodiment...

In this episode, I sit down with Fi Kahani — poet, digital nomad, and host of The Sound of Listening podcast — to talk about the practice of not knowing. Fi is someone whose worldview has been scrambled more than once, and instead of retreating, she's made that scramble a way of life. We get into what happened when people she respected came out as Trump voters, what it cost her when a close friend...

Grounding… have you heard of it? My guess is that you have. Maybe in the form of a practice, like a grounding meditation. Or maybe more as a quality: being grounded in how you move about the world. Grounding is so important for the times we live in. But as much as I see it espoused and thrown around ( including by yours truly ), I don’t see a lot of deep dives breaking down exactly what it is and...

Our fast-paced, ever-changing world can leave so many of us internally scrambled — without stable footing, unsure of where we stand or where we belong. Maybe that looks like pulling back because you don't think you know enough to participate. Or maybe it looks like the ground shifting under a worldview you've held for years, rocking your sense of self and who your people are. Either way, not knowi...

In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Ning Nintendo — grief specialist, dream yogi, and founder of Multidimensional Mama — whose work helps name deeper layers often held in pain that conventional ways of thinking about emotions often miss. Together we explore the ancestral, intergenerational, and historical dimensions of what so many of us are feeling from the world these days, and ways...

So much of what you’re carrying right now about the state of the world lives in your body — in your chest, shoulders, belly. And so often, we either push it down or get swept up in it. There's not a lot of support for the in-between: learning how to actually be with what yo’ure holding, on your own terms, without being consumed by it. This guided somatic (fancy word for body-based) meditation give...

Are you feeling overwhelmed and burnt out by world events and political stress, and wondering why it all feels so heavy?  In this episode, I explore the often unspoken phenomenon of how our own personal pain can get caught up in and mixed up with the world's pain–with the political breakdown and suffering we see around us–and how all of that can merge into something bigger and harder to navigate t...

Sending you big love from my home in the Bronx. I’m really excited to share this with you — It’s my first big interview of my new book, When the World Hurts ! I had the pleasure of joining Moments with Marianne , an ABC Talk News Radio affiliate that airs in Southern California, last week to talk all things collective healing. As a literary publicist, Marianne hosts authors and leaders to talk abo...

With this month’s theme being about soul connection—specifically this idea that the times we live in and all of the pain and muck they’re filled with, have the potential to bring us closer to our souls—I knew exactly who I wanted to have a conversation with. Shawna Emerick is so many things—1000+ hour trained yoga teacher, trauma-informed and somatic integration facilitator, Thai body work therapi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wehealforall.substack.com Welcome to this month’s supportive practice in my Reflect-Practice-Conversation series . These practices are offered as part of my paid subscription here. Try out a free 7-day trial. --- The upheaval and pain we’re in the midst of as a society right now can so often feel like an end. But in traditions across ti...

What are you praying for these days? Is it to end violence? To stop genocide and war? Peace for all people? Yes, of course, those prayers are there, but there's something even deeper my heart is longing for. It's the prayer that all we're experiencing right now—the despair, the terror, the confusion—may it bring us closer to our souls. May it help us know ourselves and this world at a soul level m...

What happens to a person whose job it is to sit with other people’s pain day after day? And what might that teach the rest of us about living in a world that brings us face-to-face with so much suffering—through the news, social media, current events—without ever being taught how to process it? That’s what I wanted to chat about with my husband, Dr. Anees Benferhat , a healing-centered therapist a...

“I don’t know how everyone else is just living their lives right now.” Camila said to me as we pushed our kids’ strollers down the snowy sidewalk. “I look around and people are just smiling and laughing and acting like everything’s normal. Like everything’s fine! But it’s not.” Her voice got loud and her body got big, and then shrank back down. She went on, “I don’t know. I don’t wanna sound like...

Sending warmth from my home in the Bronx. I saw our first snowflakes today! Cozy season is upon us. Forgive me for sending out another thing related to my book. I’m in the midst of doing some behind-the-scenes work in prep for the new year and a new phase of work that’s brewing post-book launch. I promise I’ll be getting new, fresh pieces out shortly! In the meantime, for those of you who—like me—...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wehealforall.substack.com What is your soul’s vision of the world? In these upside-down times, when so much is breaking down, what can we turn to for guidance? When our impact assessments fail and our political narratives implode, what sources of ‘knowing’ can we lean on? Social change is always a moving target, but especially so now. W...

This question might sound metaphorical: What's your relationship like with the world? "You mean, like, theoretically?" But what I’m actually asking—and what I invite you into in today’s episode—is what’s yours like for real, for real? What’s it like to be in relationship with the world these days—in very practical, everyday life kind of ways? How is the world impacting you? And how does that affec...

Ooph, just re-reading that subtitle "...do politics differently" does something for me. Politics feels so inherently stuck these days. And not just on Capitol Hill—but for us as a people. Our ability to relate to each other—to neighbors, to family members—has been seriously tested in recent years. It’s a waste of pixelated ink to write about how frequently relationships implode because of politics...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wehealforall.substack.com The theme of loss has been alive for me lately. Two people in my life passed away last week— Joanna Macy , renowned eco-philosopher and activist behind The Work That Reconnects (foundational work within the field of inner-outer transformation), and Andrea Gibson , prolific poet and queer voice I’ve followed sin...

This week’s episode’s a special one. I'm reaching back into the vault to a recording I made in August 2022. It’s one of my many attempts to put words to the moment we’re living in . Even though it's a few years old, and some framing and nuance has shifted, the core ideas remain the same and central, and are at the heart of my upcoming book . The recording dives into a smoldering questions that’s b...

If you've ever spent any time diving deep into emotions, you may have come across the term: core emotions . Core emotions are often thought about as the bread and butter of our emotional landscape—our anger, sadness, disgust—and they're often contrasted against what can be called inhibitory emotions like anxiety, or shame, or guilt. If this way of thinking about emotions is totally new to you, no...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wehealforall.substack.com Collective wounds come in all shapes and sizes.   Some are specifically held by certain communities and family lineages due to histories of conflict or oppression. Others are shared across a whole country, such as experiences of war or pandemic. And then others are held by identity groups that span across local...