From What If to What Next: Episode 20

Welcome to Episode 20 of From What If to What Next. This feels like a bit of a landmark for us, our twentieth episode! Thank you for joining me on this journey. Do tell your friends to come join us… Any reflections on how you’re finding the journey so far are most welcome. Seems like a good moment for that.

The good news is that we have saved one of the very finest episodes to mark this moment. Today we are exploring the question of trauma, and I must confess that recording this conversation rather blew my mind, as it will no doubt blow yours. I had to lie down afterward and digest it for a while. I am joined by two amazing thinkers for this conversation. I hope you love it.

Susan Raffo is a bodyworker, cultural worker and writer. For the last 15 years she has focused her work through the lens of healing justice with a particular interest in supporting individual and collective practices of safety and wellness. This also means attending to how generational and historical trauma shapes the present moment, including both internalized and systemic supremacy. She spent her first seven years of adulthood living in Bristol, England, particularly shaped by the anti-imperialism and sustainability movements of the 1980s (the protests at Greenham Common being an especially life-shaping experience). She has lived in south Minneapolis in the US for 30 years with her awesome partner, Rocki, and their daughter, Luca.

Staci K. Haines is a national leader in the field of Somatics, specializing in intersecting personal and social change. Staci is the co-founder of generative somatics, a multiracial social justice organization bringing somatics to social and climate justice leaders and organizations. She specializes in somatics and trauma, and leads programs for healers, therapists, and social change leaders to transform the impact of individual and social trauma and violence. Her new book The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice (North Atlantic Press 2019) is based on that work. She is the founder of generationFIVE, a community based organization whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within five generations.

Both are phenomenal, and I am so grateful to them for coming on the podcast. My thanks as always to Ben Addicott for his production skills and our theme tune, to you for subscribing and making all of this possible, and please do leave your thoughts below. As mentioned in the podcast, Staci and Susan sent in the list of recommended readings, so here it is:

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping World, We will not cancel us, and other dreams of transformative justice and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown.

My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem.

Fumbling Towards Repair: A workbook for community accountability facilitators by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan.

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha and Ejeris Dixon.

The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice by Staci K. Haines.

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity during this crisis and the next by Dean Spade.

Love and Rage, the path of liberation through anger by Lama Rod Owens

Transform Harm: a website with many resources about Transformative Justice and ending violence

Finding Our Way Podcast, by Prentis Hemphill

Zehr Institute on Panel Transformative Justice with Ejeris Dixon, RJ Maccanni, and Nathan Shara. Video.

Zehr Institute on Panel Transformative Justice with Ejeris Dixon, RJ Maccanni, and Nathan Shara. Video.

Two Feathers Native American Family Services. “Healing the Soul Wound” with Dr. Eduardo Duran. April 10, 2020. His life’s work has been in Native American postcolonial psychology. Video.