EPISODE 1: Welcome to the Come Back to Care Podcast!

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:15] NV: Sawasdee ka and welcome to the Come Back to Care Podcast. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatics and social justice practitioner and founder of Come Back to Care, a dot connector, norm agitator and a lover of liberation. If you’re on a journey to transform your daily parenting into a social justice practice that nurtures your child’s development and promotes intergenerational family healing, I am so glad that you’re here.

On this podcast, we explore how social justice, child development science, parenting and family systems intersect with one another. If you’ve been looking for ways to align your parenting with the social justice values, you’re in the right place. Together, we find our way back to our true home. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineage and come back to care together. Come curious and come as you are. Let’s move at the speed of care and let’s do this.

Before we get to today’s episode, I just want to say that I am so glad that you’re here. Please be sure to go to comebacktocare.com/newsletter to join the Care Collective newsletter, and receive hope filled and hopeful information about decolonized, embodied and intergenerational parenting every Sunday. Again, you can be a part of our community of liberation-minded parents by signing up for the Care Collective newsletter at comebacktocare.com/newsletter.

[EPISODE]

[00:02:19] NV: Welcome to the first episode of the Come Back to Care Podcast. I’m very excited to hold the space of care for you and me to talk about the things that get in the way of your parenting. The two invisible roadblocks that might be in between you and your best parenting intentions, if you will. They are intergenerational family trauma and internalized oppression. Let’s break that down together.

When you start your family, there’s so much hope there. Hope that you can raise your child differently from how you were raised and break that cycle of family pain. Hope that you can carry on your ancestor’s legacy that you feel deeply connected to. There might be some anxiety there too, because this transition to become a parent is so significant and full of uncertainty. Grief may resurface, where you grieve for the kind of childhood you wish you had and you grieve what could have been. With all of these emotions that you might be experiencing, you might set goals and intentions on the kind of parent that you want to be. But you don’t need me to tell you that getting from here to living and embodying that parenting intention that you set is quite a journey. No doubt you love your child, yet you find yourself getting out of bed each morning and unknowingly or perhaps out of the necessity of survival, contorting, conforming and performing your parenting to fit with what capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism and white supremacy are asking of you.

As you try to squeeze your brilliance and authenticity to fit this tiny “good parenting” box, you drift further and further away from the parenting intention that you set. And you know, those days when you feel like you’ve figured this parenting thing out, you might say to yourself, “Okay, I got this. I don’t know what I did, per se, but okay.” There’s still a tiny part of you that’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, but overall, you feel pretty good. Then you accidentally snap and scream at your crying toddler in the checkout line at Target, and you have the, “Oh, shoot! I just sounded it exactly like my mom” moment, and you just finished reading about toddler brain development and attachment the night before. Mind you, with a full-on color-coded highlighting too.

It’s as if the family patterns that you grew up with, and that have been passed down across generations keep creeping up on you and holding you in place as you’re trying your hardest to get to the parenting intention that you set. We all want to love our children with all that we know, can and have. However, the invisible hands of intergenerational family trauma, and internalized oppression are consistently getting in our way of realizing our parenting dreams to the fullest potential. Are you still with me? It happens across cultures and classes. 

I believe that getting to intentional parenting isn’t about figuring out another parenting hack, doing more, getting more productive, push, push, push. There’s certainly time and space for tips and tricks. There are already lots of good resources out there for that too. That’s why I want to dedicate this podcast to be about addressing these two invisible roadblocks of intergenerational family trauma and internalized oppression, so that you can come back to your true home and be the imperfectly intentional parent you know you can be. All so that you can pass down a legacy of compassion and liberation to your future generations.

This podcast is a playground for you to unlearn, unsubscribe and uproot the patterns that are not fitting with the parent you’re becoming, whether those patterns are regifted in your family across generations or programmed into your autopilot from oppressive social norms. This podcast is about coming home so that you can be the parent you know you could be for your tiny, immediate family, as well as the big family that is your community and larger society. This podcast is about slowing down, taking a moment to pause and asking questions. We’re not just building our parenting knowledge, we’re building our parenting wisdom too.

No matter where you are in your parenting journey, or how savvy you are about social justice practice, or how many times you’ve read how to be an anti-racist, welcome. I also welcome parts of you that are curious, parts of you that are tired, parts of you that are hurting and parts of you that are hopeful. The fact that you’re here tells me you’re already thinking about the possibilities of breaking free from generations of trauma, and dysfunctions in your own family, and from the injustices of capitalism, colonialism and other systems of oppression. It also tells me about your commitment to raise a human being that’s free to show up exactly as who they are meant to be. It’s my wholehearted honor to support you to show up as the parent you want to be, instead of the one you are “programmed” to be by past family patterns or instead of the one you were, “conditioned” to be by present societal oppression. Now, we get to do all of this work with you every month via this podcast, on a stolen land of the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi nations or Chicago. I am just deeply grateful for the land and for my ancestors. Wow! And for you too.

This show is an every-other-week solo show, so you can expect a new episode every other Tuesday. I have never done podcast before. As a therapist, my job is more about listening than talking. I am putting myself in my discomfort with you. I am practicing being imperfect with you too. Even though it’s just me talking to you, I’ll bring lots of stories and lessons that I have learned from the parents and children that I have served, so it will be a lot of fun. Since this podcast is about your exploration of decolonized, embodied and intergenerational family building, I do not want to be an expert who gives you tips, and tricks and replicates the dominance and power hierarchy. However, I would love to present information from areas of social justice, child development science and family systems. And together, you and I will connect the dots to see how equity and liberation can enrich and deepen your parenting practice. That’s more fun, right? I’ll leave you with some reflective questions at the end of each episode, so that you can play, experiment and discover your own action that’s aligned with your values.

Now, before I hit that stop recording button and go hide my introverted self under a rock, I just want to say this, the ways you were raised aren’t always going to be the ways you raise your baby. The dysfunctions in your history are not destinies. The ways you’re building your family don’t have to perpetuate the oppressive norms of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy and white body supremacy. You have a choice of what kind of legacy you want to pass down to your child despite and because of systemic oppression. You have an opportunity to do the healing work that your ancestors could not have done, so that you can heal seven generations backward and seven generations forward. It’s possible because you are exactly that possibility.

[OUTRO]

[00:11:31] NV: Before we jump off here, who needs to hear this episode? I invite you to think about the people in your life that are also looking to align their parenting with social justice values and share this with them. It might be just the thing they’re needing to here today. This helps us get the word out about the show, but my hope is to really support as many people as possible to transform from autopilot to bold, conscious and decolonized family building. You already know, it does take a village. With your help, together, we can make that happen.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, and have the energy to share with another person you love, I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. You can find all the resources, links and complete show notes over at comebacktocare.com/podcast. If there’s something you want to check out, you can find it at comebacktocare.com/podcast. As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, take care.
[END]