Reading

1. The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate


2. Soulcraft, Crossing into the mysteries of Nature and Psyche, Bill Plotkin

3. Attuned, Thomas Hubl

4. If Women Rose Rooted, Sharon Blackie

5. The Five Invitations, Frank Ostaseski

6. Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life: Sharon Blackie

7. Belonging, Toko-pa Turner

8. Transitory Nature, Sue Hunt

9. The Soul’s Code, James Hollis

10. Healing the Core Wounds of Unworthiness, Adyashanti

11. It didn’t start with you, Mark Wolynn

12. Trauma and the Embodied Brain, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

13. Greater than the Sum of Your Parts, Richard Schwartz PhD.

14. The Heart of Trauma, Bonnie Badenoch

15. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate

16. The Zen of Therapy, Mark Epstein

17. Life on Land, Emily Conrad

18 .Sacred Medicine; a Doctors Quest to Unravel the Mysteries of Healing, Lissa Rankin

19. The Wild Edge of Sorrow; Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred work of Grief, Francis Weller

Authors I love

Loch Kelly, author of SHIFT into Freedom:

Rick Hanson, author of Resilient

Adyashanti, author of falling into Grace

Andrea Gibson, You Better be Ligntening

Kristin Neff, PhD, author of Self-Compassion Step by Step

Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child

Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand, rewilding the Sacred Masculine

John O’Donahue, the invisible world

David Whyte, author of the House of Belonging

Mark Nepo, the Book of Awakening

Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Self-Acceptance, True Refuge

John Prendergast, author of the Deep Heart

Judith Blackstone, PhD, author of The Realization Process

Gabor Mate, When the Body says No, In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts

Carolyn Myss, The anatomy of Spirit, Sacred Contracts, Why people don’t heal

Robert Preece, Feeling Wisdom

A Helpful Resource For Seniors Experiencing Loneliness and Isolation

https://www.caring.com/caregivers/help-for-seniors-experiencing-loneliness-and-isolation/.

SOCIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES:

Confrontation with the Shadow

“This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly difficult, because it not only challenges the whole [person], but reminds [them] at the same time of [their] helplessness and ineffectuality.” –C. G. Jung

Dear embodied souls,

Deep tender breath. Embrace the discomfort. Stay with it like a devoted friend. Confronting the shadow is doing anti-racist work without and within.

This is how we access and activate wildness. Wild power. The decolonized, undomesticated, depoliced, queer, erotic, subversive, life affirming, revolutionary force of your being. That which is other than the fences of meaning erected on skin color, gender, arousal, love, economics, cultural inscription, traditions of oppression, systems built to deforest your bodysoul.

Listen in

to Resmaa Menakem, therapist and trauma specialist, discuss race and healing on this On Being podcast. Go deeper with his practice offering here.

Also to Brene Brown’s interview with Ibram X. Kendi. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-ibram-x-kendi-on-how-to-be-an-antiracist/

And READ his book, How to be an Anti Racist.

For a Jungian perspective, listen to this interview with Dr. Fanny Brewster about her newly released book The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race.

Journey through

this reference list of anti-racists resources 

As you move through this work, keep a journal by your side. Track what comes up. Notice what happens in your body. Breathe into it. Learn/feel/recognize the full complexity of your current story with racism. Experiment again and again with the gestures, utterances, beliefs, feelings, sensations, embodied acts of anti-racism.

Here some resources from Rabbi Tirzah Firestone


1. Self-Education: This is an amazing Op-Ed from the LA Times by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge." And an indispensable essay, "On American Racism" by my friend Rabbi Mordechai Liebling. I am also engrossed in these books: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, and My Grandmother's Hands by my friend and colleague Resmaa Menakem. Also check out this great resource list of articles, films, and more from At The Well.

2. Donate directly to the Movement for Black LivesNational Bailout is an important Black-led and Black-centered collective of organizers, lawyers and activists who help people facing pre-trial detention and mass incarceration. Use ActBlue's secure donation link here to simultaneously send money to up to 39 (and counting) nationwide bail funds. 

3. Take a few minutes to truly FEEL what is going on within and around you.
To HEAL the world we must FEEL the world!Then please write, call, and contact the people who can help us make a difference. Click here for the most needed calls! And take five minutes to send petitions to key decision makers. 

The only journey is the one within.
— Rainer Maria Rilke