Ep 46: Integrating Lessons from Season 4

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to episode 46, the final episode of season 4 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. This episode is also the podcast’s two-year anniversary. I cannot thank you enough for tuning in, writing to me, sharing this podcast with your loved ones…and most importantly doing this unlearning and healing work together for our next seven generations. 

If you’ve been listening to me for a while, first of all thank you so much… and second, you already know that the final episode of each season is all about a quick recap and review of the season’s main themes. As a dot connector, I deeply value connection over content. So instead of grinding and churning out new content, I’d love to take a time machine back to May of 2023, the beginning of Season 4, and recap episodes 31 to 45 with you. Although we’re reviewing the same content, we’re going to look at it from different perspectives to keep it fresh. I hope you’ll discover new things to unlearn and new layers to dig into. May your curiosity and sense of awe and discovery lead the way. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started.

When I was mapping out season 4, I wanted the season to reflect the central question I ask the social justice curious families I work with. And that is: how do we stay in the struggle for liberation and shape the liberated future for our children to grow up in amid climate catastrophe and systemic oppression? How do we keep going without blowing our pain through others or giving in to despair, cynicism, and burnout? How do we keep building the liberated future we want when we only have a vague idea of what that might look like? How do we honor the uncertainty and complexity of our liberatory practice in a culture that demands that we find the single, holy grail, evidence-based solution that comes from a top-down expert?   

And after two decades of social justice organizing and a decade and a half of serving families and children, I’ve never seen a single one-size-fits-all parenting script or strategy that’s going to get us to that destination. Rather, it’s parenting agility that helps us stay in the struggle. This agility supports us in doing the healing work we need and taking social justice action. To say it differently, this agility helps us stay nimble so we can heal as we get free. This agility has its own rhythm: going inward to heal our inner child wounds and internalized oppression wounds, resetting our nervous system, realigning our actions with our values, and refilling our cup. And when our cup is a little fuller, we get back out there and take actions like demanding a ceasefire in Gaza or organizing against antisemitism…in solidarity not saviorism. The rhythm of parenting agility is like hokey pokey. Going in to do your inner work. Then going back out to advocate for social change. Going in to heal. Going back out to build a liberated future with our community.  

In this season, the hokey pokey goes like this: the inner healing work is from episodes 31 to 41. Then, when your cup is a bit fuller from the healing work, you plug back into your community and advocate for change and that’s episodes 42 to 45. 

So, I’d love to structure our recap and review into two sections to reflect the hokey pokey of inner work and outer work. Let’s start with the inner work from episodes 31 to 41.

Episodes 31-41

I organized episodes 31 to 41 by the topics that parents often share with me as the barriers that keep them from showing up as their full selves. 

These topics go from self-judgment and inner critics in episodes 31 and 32; to people pleasing in episodes 34 and 35; to control, coercion, and power-over domination in episodes 36 and 37; and lastly abandonment wounds in episodes 40 and 41. 

Because healing from these wounds is a lifelong journey done in a community, I hope for episodes 31 to 41 to be a healing balm slash companion for you to keep coming back to when you need it. When your child grows and develops, their new behaviors might push another parenting button you didn’t realize you had. For example, you’ve been actively working on your survival strategy of people pleasing. Then, your child becomes more verbal and independent (disagreeing with you, talking back, saying no…you know how it goes). You might notice that you might unintentionally use power-over in parenting more often to get your child to listen to you, obey, or quote unquote “be polite and respectful.” And that shows our human growth, doesn’t it? As we heal one wound- say people pleasing- we have more capacity to notice the other wounds and we’re more ready to heal them. My Classical Chinese Medicine teacher taught me that this continuous healing work indicated growth, in its nonlinear glory, which is different from what capitalism teaches us, right? That growth looks like you check off one thing, move on to the next, and it’s a linear progression. 

I know for myself, I keep coming back to the people pleasing episodes. I’m doing this work right here with you too. 

Then, you can see how these healing puzzle pieces fit together for Sylvia as she’s raising her bi-cultural and bilingual 8- and 10-year-old mixed race children in episode 38. I love sharing these interviews with parents to show that we’re in this together and healing looks so different for each family. You’re not doing this work alone. 

Alright, a quick recap: episodes 31 to 41 are about the healing you’re invited to experiment with so you can show up with your whole self to both parenting and social justice advocacy. The topics are self-judgment and inner critics, people pleasing, control, coercion, and power-over domination, and lastly abandonment wounds.

No matter which healing topic you’d like to explore first, the most important thing I’d love for you to stay anchored in is this…your stress, anxiety, depression, and feelings of being overwhelmed are neither your fault nor yours to fix alone. All of them are likely to be byproducts of constantly trying to perform the impossible-to-achieve good parenting script written by white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy. How can you and I not be stressed and overwhelmed when our food, housing, and healthcare can disappear when our bodies can’t function, work, and produce?

I had a beautiful conversation with a listener who emailed me, which I absolutely love and they gave me permission to share. They asked me which somatic practices were best for abandonment wounds: tapping, dance movement therapy, or sound bath meditation? And I understood where the question was coming from. This parent loved their three children and wanted to find the right medicine for their wounds so that they didn’t unintentionally pass the abandonment wound to their children. Does that resonate with you? 

But we can’t dance capitalism away. We can’t tap or sound bath white supremacy, colonialism, and patriarchy out of our nervous system either.  

So, I shared with this amazing parent that it’s whatever somatic practices that help you survive this Hunger Game of Capitalism we’re all in. But that wasn’t it. These practices- in an ideal scenario- might help you build a community with other families and together you do this survival together- share meals, arrange carpools for school pickups, plan playdates, do toy swaps, and so on. Then, you hokey pokey back to taking actions and changing the conditions of your collective struggles like joining the school board and demanding interpreters for the families for whom English isn’t their first language or teaming up with your local mutual aid networks to take action with them while sharpening your political analysis. 

Still with me so far? I’m saying this to say that episodes 31 to 41 aren’t individualistic self-help or self-improvement work you need to do to be more productive at work or to be a perfectly healed parent. Rather, we do our healing work with a clear analysis of what’s at the root of our struggle: on one hand, that’s white colonial capitalist patriarchy we live with today, and on the other hand, that’s the white colonial capitalist patriarchal norms that trickled down into the home you grew up in as outdated family rules that inflict your inner child wounds. This is how we connect the dots between psychoeducation and political education together.

What this integration may look like in action is this: you love your child so much and you want them to be able to get good grades, get into good school, and get a good job…essentially surviving the Hunger Game of Capitalism. But you also know that you and your family value interdependence, cooperation, kindness, and community care too. So your hokey pokey of parenting might look like balancing between preparing your child for the Hunger Game of Capitalism and modeling that kind of community care…most of the time. When these two practices aren’t balanced, you might be stuck on autopilot teaching your child to perform and produce for capitalism 100% of the time. You want them to be prepared and survive. And I know you know this: If you control and coerce your child to perform and produce to prepare them to survive capitalism 100% of the time, your child will unintentionally practice perfectionism and obedience 100% of the time. Nick Montgomery and carla bergman wrote in Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times quote “to be constantly mistrusted and controlled is also to be detached from one’s own capacity to experiment, make mistakes, and learn without instruction or coercion” end quote. Many families in the In-Out-N-Through program -- the 7-week decolonized parenting and inner child re-parenting cohort I facilitate -- often share that the balance between preparing their children to survive and modeling to their children their social justice values is unique to each family. 

One family uses the rush of the morning routine to instill the value of being on time. Then, they balance it out with bath times and mealtimes where they actively practice cooperation and interdependence where their children pick the toys, take the lead, and center play. With this intention in mind, this family is trying not to be so hard on themselves when they take charge and act more stern (and a little less patient) during the morning routine because being on time is the lesson they want to teach their children. 

So, what might balance look like in your family?

And when you miss this balance and make mistakes which is likely to be 70% of the time, how will you recalibrate, release that shame, and reconnect with your child?

We actively heal from shame, inner critics, people pleasing and so on as a way to radically reclaim parts of ourselves we had to disown because they are too much for the oppressors or not enough for those who raised us. We heal so we can feel more. We heal so we can reclaim our power to be with discomfort and uncertainty. We heal to move towards liberation with our community at the speed of care. 

Episodes 42-45

Now let’s recap and review episodes 42 to 45. After we’ve done some inner healing work and refilled our cup, these episodes invite us to hokey pokey back to advocating for justice and change. 

We use different body-based tools to recenter ourselves before taking actions in episode 42 whether the action is demanding a ceasefire in Gaza or holding space for deep intergenerational grief with your Jewish community members. 

Then, we figure out our unique rhythm of social justice hokey pokey together in episode 43 so that you know when to hokey pokey back to refilling your cup…so that you know when your cup is fuller and you feel safe enough again to hokey pokey back to taking action with your community. 

As these two episodes were being recorded, communities around the world are standing in solidarity with Palestine, Sudan, and Congo and against the colonial violence of war and genocide. So I wanted episodes 44 and 45 to reflect the joy and creativity that ignites solidarity and collective movements that tell those in power enough is enough.

We explored a political messaging strategy that we can use to communicate our values and hold our boundaries in episode 44. The joy of holding our boundaries and staying anchored in our values can be compassionate and sassy!

Lastly, in episode 45, we find the roles we play in liberation both in the home and in the community. When our tax dollars are being used to fund colonial violence, calling Congress and state representatives to demand a ceasefire in Gaza might seem small or even insignificant. I want this episode to highlight the power in small actions during bath times, snack times, and other ordinary parenting moments as a concrete reminder that you’re not powerless. Plus, there are 10 specific roles that you can play in your community too. 

And that’s a wrap for our fourth season. It’s been a sacred honor and a true delight to do this political education and psychoeducation with you. Our podcast is very niche and specific and knowing that you and other social justice curious families are doing this work with me brings me so much hope. Thank you from my whole heart. 

I’ll be going home to Thailand from February to March. So I’ll be back for season 5 in late March 2024 but I’ll drop bonus episodes here and there too.

Instead of ending the season with a teaching from organizers, I’d love to share loving words from our community member, Safficakes, from the Apple Podcast review quote:

“If you’re a parent looking to turn the tide of intergenerational trauma, Nat offers wisdom that goes far beyond pop-psyche sound bites. Each podcast episode is rich with empathy and understanding and disarmingly playful humor. She offers solid and memorable takeaways with actionable next steps that you can start using today to be a better and more present parent for your child.” End quote. Thank you Safficakes for being so kind.

If this episode fills your cup, I’d be so grateful if you can help me with a rating and review on Apple Podcast and Spotify or by sharing this episode with your loved ones or becoming a Patreon member. Either action helps other families do this liberation work with us and helps me sustain the hard work of making each episode with love.  Please visit comebacktocare.com/support for more details. I’m deeply grateful and humbled that you’re here.

If you have questions or suggested topics, please feel free to email me at nat@comebacktocare.com. I’d love to hear from you and learn with you. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until Season 5 in March 2024, please take care.