[BONUS] Ep 48: Why I Love Working with Parents & Young Children
[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 In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too.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 another bonus episode, my dear co-conspirator. You know, as a woman of transgender experience, being seen and sharing my story have not always been safe for me- physically or emotionally. So, I tend to hide behind teaching, organizing, and taking care of others. But not today. Today, I’d love to share my story with you in this special conversation with a fellow somatic abolitionist, Dr. Sonali Deepika, in her wonderful Burn the Box Podcast.
In this episode, you’ll hear about how I started social justice organizing back in 2007, how I’ve learned to love and trust myself in the world that simply hates that I exist and look fabulous, and what made me fall in love with serving young children, parents, and families aka you.
I know how precious time is for you. Bows of gratitude for taking the time to witness me and hear my story. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started.
Sonali Deepika: Welcome to another episode of Burn The Box today. Beautiful friend and colleague, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, known as Nat, who would have had such a pleasure to actually meet in person in Chicago when I was visiting.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you, Sonali for having me.
Sonali Deepika: Thank you for being here. I'd love to know what's alive for you around this concept of burning boxes, expanding out of places that feel constricted and contracted , or anything related.
Nat Vikitsreth: For me, it’s that richness of my exhale, when I see myself stopping, contorting my body into a tiny box of social identity, whether that is the Asian identity, the immigrant identity, the gender identity of trans experience, and again, just burn all of them and let that fire alchemize migration into my liberation. And I can just expand and take up that space.
Sonali Deepika: Change your life, the word came through with the full permission, giving yourself to burn all those boxes to be who you are to express your true essence in the way that you choose. That doesn't fit into any one. Probably so many boxes, but the three that you've mentioned.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes. Ah, it feels good to share that with you. Thank you for asking.
Sonali Deepika: Is there one of these boxes that's really feeling very present right now? Or was it maybe the hardest one to navigate? Or what comes through about these three boxes?
Nat Vikitsreth: I feel like I'm happy to burn them down at any moment, gladly. Gladly ready to do it. So I have in my purse, man got boxes, just in case I need to put myself back in those boxes for safety.
Sonali Deepika: Yeah.
Nat Vikitsreth: I might have to put myself in the transwomen box and use my cisgender passing privilege to appear very feminine, very pretty, to be and be perceived as non threatening to the person in front of me. So when I need to protect myself to code switch, and stay alive, I'll just go back to my backup box. Man, when I feel safe enough and connected enough with the person that I'm with, like you right now, I can just put my backup box in my purse and just be me
Sonali Deepika: It sounds that you're speaking to us that we can have the backup boxes that we can do, we can choose when we want. We don't even want to but when we need to, when we have to, when it's about survival, when it's about protecting ourselves, when we need that extra armor extra, kind of like a buffer there. We can choose it but then we can put it away because we want to burn it.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Because when I was a young trans woman, my life was all about what would I wear that morning? To look feminine? What lipstick color, how I'm going to wear my eyeliner. And that was all my life was. And I don't want my life to be just about the lipstick color and what mascara to wear, I want to live. So the ability to be able to put the box back and put myself back in it.
Sonali Deepika: And like you said, choosing just feels really good. There is a spaciousness about that, and expansiveness and an aspect of liberation, where we can sometimes choose to go back into the box or to present in a certain way, when it best serves us but to know that we are not that box, or that we don't belong in that box. With us. We are so much bigger.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes. When I work with parents to weave social justice action into their day to day parenting, we always talk about that contortion that we all have to do as a part of our survival strategy. Yet surviving, it's not all of who we are, we are so much more.
Sonali Deepika: Yes, so much of our, what comes with these boxes, right? The conditioning, and the defenses that we have created, we need for survival out of self protection, so much of that, it's just so good to know that we can choose, that we don't have to have all of that we don't have to live in that way that there is a choice that there is discernment.
Nat Vikitsreth: Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like I just had a conversation with a close friend that we're so quick to label. “Oh, that person is so anxious, that person is depressed”. And then that's the end of the journey. And we forget that, oh my gosh, that label gets so decontextualized. There's so much more about why that person has to use that anxiety as protection or survival strategy. And what's the totality of the humanity of that person? It's so much more than that anxiety, so much more than that label writing.
Sonali Deepika: Yeah, as you're sharing what was coming to me is like, the layers, right, the depth, and what we uncover when we peel back layers or kind of go to excavate these aspects of it? Yes, anxiety is a surface thing. And it's something that showed up in response to who knows how many different experiences and what's happened with our nervous system, what's happened with our defenses. They're also what you refer to earlier about the lipstick color and stuff like what people see and something to reflect how you wanted to appear. But there was like so much more to that whole experience that was like just this.
Nat Vikitsreth: Absolutely, absolutely.
Sonali Deepika: I'm curious a bit more about the work that you're doing with that. You mentioned social activism and parents.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you for that curiosity.
Sonali Deepika: Because it does sound like that's burning boxes in the way, these cans
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes The imagery that's coming to me, I had each family, a box of matches, and a little bottle of kerosene. And I'm just like, “Here you go. It's a gift. Burn your boxes when it's safe”.
Sonali Deepika: So that you have permission to burn your boxes.
Nat Vikitsreth: Like, “Here you go”. Started in 2007. I was in Thailand, and I was working on the street as a sex worker with my trans sex worker colleagues at the time. And we started socially organizing to protect ourselves and for safety. Looking back right now knowing more about social justice, we were practicing harm reduction and transformative justice. Before we knew what those terms were,
Sonali Deepika: Before there were any boxes, just like you were doing it, wow.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes, we found ways to keep ourselves protected, safe and connected. Then I started working with parents and children, mostly children on the spectrum. And I just love it. I feel like in the children on the spectrum that I was working with, I get to see different aspects of their behaviors that were often misunderstood. And I gotta really be curious about what you are communicating? And what are your unmet needs right now underneath the hand flapping underneath all the humming, that their parents did not understand.
And then there's tension there. And I got to be the children's advocate, supporting parents to understand who their children were underneath all of the behaviors. That's when I fell in love. Mostly Sonali, to be honest, I think, supporting parents to love their children, when they didn't fully understand their children just yet. I saw parts of myself in those children, that I was not ready to laugh at, parts that are too much, too masculine, too different.
And supporting parents to love those parts and their children. I got to use that with that permission. I think that's what it was. To love parts of myself too.
Sonali Deepika: It’s so tender.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you. I feel it. In my chest. Yeah. Feel the warmth? Yeah.
Sonali Deepika: Oh, feeling an expansion that I was feeling tears in my eyes. And I was feeling like, and we each do that for ourselves. Like really growing to be curious. And to look, to witness and to see if we can love all these different parts of ourselves.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes. Just witnessing how they love their children in their own ways.
Sonali Deepika: Now, it's making me curious, because I was looking at some of your work, through your Instagram, I noticed, I became very curious about this reparenting, social justice, parenting or social. It was a reparenting, something of that nature that I saw there was like, “Oh, I'm really curious about that”. And as you're mentioning now, like how this came from that parenting of, of children on the spectrum, and I do have behaviors that are exempted and are not conventional. They're not acting the way we think a child should be acting. Yeah, I'm really curious about how this, if you could speak to that a little bit or how this evolves, because it does feel really tender. How that allows you to look at parts of yourself and the reaction I had because clearly there are parts of myself, like, “Oh.”
Nat Vikitsreth: Yeah, and that's when I started to see that, oh, my gosh, of people who are raising children, in addition to surviving, they have to do so much of their own healing at the same time. And I'm just so in awe, by how much love they put into their children and in exchange into their own inner children, parts of themselves that they had to leave behind, to blend in and belong in their family.
So people raising children are at such pivotal, there is a strategic point in their journey to heal and become whole again, and to take a step further to practice social justice and model that to their children who would have a better fertile ground to plant seeds of social justice in the next generations than those who are with children. So I'm humbled, deeply, deeply humbled Sonali, to support parents and caregivers to do this work, I owe it to the Disability Justice movement, who taught me to respect the mad, the crippled, the disabled, and not just stop there. But to really kick ableism in the butt and see that those quote unquote non desirable or undesirable bodies are not disposable. That can be a beautiful portal for our healing and to transform transformative justice for sure. Even that into my work, it's, it's everything I hear my ancestor says, “It’s about time”. So stop there.
Sonali Deepika: You hear you share about your work and how you've allowed yourself to, start somewhere with these children to allow that to impact you, with their parents to look at parenting in such a way, a one is beautiful, but it's also, a truly transformative process. If the parent can really engage in what's happening between them and the children. And this, as I say this, it's like I'm brought back to my previous life when I was in Chicago, working with a lot of children and families, because I don't have children myself. But it is like, if a parent is open to allowing their child, everything that comes with that child, which is challenging, and testing and triggering, and all those things, if they can allow that they can stay with that and be curious about their own process and allow themselves to change and shift and look at what they're holding. What they have brought to this. It's so powerful.
Nat Vikitsreth: It is. It really, really is and it's so juicy and complex and nuanced and challenging. And I love every second of it. You're right, that I just want to be grounded in reality, right? I talked about the intentionality behind the work. It's what my ancestors wanted me to do. But at the same time, the parents that I work with, they tell me that okay, now that it's all beautiful, I want to do it. And I have five minutes waiting for my child to finish pooping on the toilet. So what social justice action can I do? Right?
So they have limited time. Big intention, right, and sometimes limited resources. When we get it done. We peel those layers, we get to the root of it. We talk about capitalism and colonialism and white supremacy, and patriarchy, reshaping how you're parenting your child. And slowly we unlearn. We drop into the body and we notice different cues and we do it five minutes at a time while other kids are pooping. We do it.
[MIDROLL]
Speaking of deconstructing the good parenting script…would you like to dive deeper into this unlearning process at your own pace…for 9 minutes a day? I have micro audio training for you. You’ll have reflection prompts and diagrams to check when you’re unintentionally performing capitalism’s script for example. Then, you select more liberatory alternatives to try instead. You’ll have real-life parenting examples to build on and make your actions very concrete. You’ll also explore how each of these liberatory parenting alternatives specifically promote your child’s brain development and emotional resilience. This way you’ll find your own balance between teaching your child to be street smart, surviving under systemic oppression and teaching them to be liberation smart, thriving with their chosen families. I’m excited to share this Social Justice Parenting Playbook Party with you. This micro training is a beautiful introduction to putting all our discussions in this Podcast into action during morning routine, mealtimes, play time, and so on. It’s child development science and real-life parenting examples and political education all in one series and it’s 9 minutes per lesson. It comes with a transcript and downloadable guide too. Please visit www.comebacktocare.com/party to write your own parenting playbook today. Alright, back to the episode.
[EPISODE]
Sonali Deepika: For anyone who thinks that change isn't possible, or social justice isn't, they don't have time or something that you just shared. It's like there's time. You got five minutes. Yeah, you got five minutes while you might be moving yourself…
Nat Vikitsreth: Exactly. We find possibilities together. We struggle together and we find hope together in this tiny daily practice of social justice in the home Sonali. I see parents turn on the news now and they're stuck in that freeze mode of the “Holy…”. I don't know if I can swear in your podcast. Holy shit, right? I'm raising my kids during this racial awakening, pandemic, climate, apocalypse, violence everywhere. They're in this freezing state and these tiny actions get them to mobilize and metabolize whatever stops and then when they get to zero it's manageable. That is a simple act of shifting power over to power with my child, right or with myself first and telling my child that what I see you When I hear you, but I just need three seconds to take one full breath, because I'm about to pop off. Do you want to do that with me? If not, just give me three seconds, then we can go fix your dinner. Right? That's being your own self ally, that's modeling to your child, how to not be a savior, but how to be in solidarity with yourself. And that little action, Sonali. It's what keeps us going, and what keeps parents and my community going.
Sonali Deepika: I was just talking to another coach and someone I've just connected with on Instagram, an Indian coach who, just like yoga or your data, and we just said, one of those things, most of social media, I'm not usually intimate, I'm there. But I love when you can connect, that's fun to me. And we went back and forth, because she had some questions about the work she's doing and things like that. But this concept came up when it comes to making change, which is what you're giving examples of, that I have learned from another teacher some years ago, from Japan, it's a Japanese concept of Kaizen, like taking, making the smart, if there's a big change, okay, if that big change may be like, there's so much resist, it's so hard to make a big change, I'll just give us these simple example of, you're waking up. I'm waking up in the morning at eight, but I want to wake up at six.
But my gosh, that's like a huge change. So the best idea would be like, “Okay, we'll wake up at 7: 45 and start there”. And I'm just hearing that concept and what you're doing with these parents, because it's like, change is possible. Change is available. And with social justice, which is huge. You can do it in these little pieces.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes. I often think of Toni Cade Bambara, always when they talk about making the revolution irresistible. It's irresistible and juicy, yummy in these tiny steps. Tiny, tiny steps were very potent and very intentional. Like our teacher Resmaa Menakem talks about getting those reps in there. That was, yeah, I talk about it with parents all the time. And you can tell that I don't work out because I do reps like this. Yeah, it's in these little things, right? Yeah.
Sonali Deepika: I love that you're teaching that and then you're getting to see the change. That's happening, the impact? What's happening to do these small things? Can you? Is there any example of that that you can share?
Nat Vikitsreth: In a family maybe? Definitely, definitely. No,
Sonali Deepika: I'm just asking, putting on the spot. But it's just like, I'm kidding.
Nat Vikitsreth: I can share that right now. And to your listeners, I promise I'm not saying this to buy time for me to find the answer for Sonali and you. I feel the pressure in the front part of my body. Do perform, and perfect example, to showcase my work to show you that I'm legit and valid, right?
Sonali Deepika: Thank you for naming that.
Nat Vikitsreth: Exactly, exactly. And it has to sink back into my seat a little, like bouncing on my seat just to feel my sitting bone on the chair. And remind myself that, I trust whichever family comes to my mind, and they're coming, right? It's the right one for this moment.
Sonali Deepika: That's right. And we're talking about these little changes like five minutes here, five minutes there. So anyone that you're working with, will be next.
Nat Vikitsreth: Definitely. So there's a dad that I used to work with, in my seven week social justice parenting and inner child re parenting program. And he's just exquisite in his awareness. He's beginning to name little things that he's noticed sitting in his body, he feels the urgency as like, heat in the back of his neck, when the words that are about to come out of his mouth was, you must to his toddlers that you must clean up after eating dinner, you must go to bed at this time and have a bedtime routine, you must you must, you must. And once he begins to notice, the little bodily cues leading up to you must hold so much urgency and pressure and charge.
That gives him a cue to work with me and pause and be curious. Where did that you must come from? And he's like, “Okay, I grew up in a very strict household. And there were rules that as a child I needed to follow. So I want to pass that on”. “Okay, great”. What else? And we reflected back, “Huh, where do you think your parents got these rules from in their generation? And we think about the broader social political context?” And he was able to reflect,“Oh, you know, they grew up in the Jim Crow era, in the deep south”. So these rules that centered on obedience and compliance, are there to make sure that everyone in the family is protected and safe from racism, as much as it could be. And racism is still here. And we could reflect together that oh, so there's the real intergenerational family need to prepare and protect your children, your little toddlers? How do you want to do it, now that you get to write your own parenting script. And he said, “You know what? I'm going to achieve that you must, because that's important”. But I want to add my own flavor to this script of parenting that I'm rewriting. Want to make sure that my two toddlers know that I'm not just here enforcing rules, when they're sad, I want to tell them that if I were you, and I couldn't eat ice cream during dinner, I would feel sad about something that he didn't get to hear from his parents. But he wanted to break the cycles, right and make it his own way. So those little things. Sonali, in this example, was starting from noticing some cues in the body as a way to pause and reflect on the intergenerational family patterns, and perhaps internalized oppression wounds and start to heal those wounds, rewrite some family scripts, and find ways to realign the stats parenting with his own values.
Sonali Deepika: It's so powerful, for sure.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you for holding space.
Sonali Deepika: I just suddenly had this, I mean, I've left. I'm not going back also, to my former career. But if I were that, it would be so beautiful to collaborate, this is the work that you're doing. It's so healing from intergenerational trauma. It's like taking it to the small, small sub which appears small, but it's really huge to read, to guide a parent to slow down enough to witness and have an awareness of war. This was what was coming because that came from my parents and probably their parents and probably their parents, it came down this way. And I have that power to be able to share that gift to the children not having to hold all of that for most of us.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yes, yes. And I like the 15 years of doing this work. So naturally, I feel like we want to prepare and protect our children. The ways that we had to over learn when we were little, how to prepare and protect ourselves from our caregivers rejection, humiliation, criticism, right? And also racism, oppression of isms, you name it. And sometimes it comes across as you must obey and do it. And I feel like the honor of my work is simply holding the mirror for parents to see. Oh my gosh, you love your child so much. So, so much. And I wonder if we can find a way for you to love your child from the scar and not from the wound?
Sonali Deepika: Yeah, it's amazing. I feel there's something that comes out of joy. It is again, like a heart center and expansive, but a joy that I feel for all these parents who are working with everyone who's getting to experience it. What your lived experience, including all the somatic abolitionism journeys that we've been on.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yeah. I feel excited. So now you're like, how can I not. Love the parents I'm working with, right? they're raising their kids in a pandemic and with all the uprisings and all of that, I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah. It's an honor to be a trans auntie in the village and supporting them, you know? Yeah.
Sonali Deepika: Yes. Oh, I love that so much. The village. Yes.
Nat Vikitsreth: Yeah. And the somatic abolitionism piece that you just mentioned. Wow. To hold space for parents to just connect with their body for three seconds and then shake it off. Right. And then we do it in small bites. Mm. That was so transformative.
Sonali Deepika: Thank you so much. Just really enjoyed it. Well, I really enjoyed getting to meet you in person, and really enjoyed getting to connect here. And I'd love for you to share where people can find you and if there's anything that you want to share about your work that you're offering to invite.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you Sonali, for asking for all of my information. All of my information is, I had to think about my website for a second, is at comebacktocare.com, including the seven week program that I hold and do online with a small cohort of social justice curious families and also my Come Back To Care podcast, where I talk about social justice.
Nat Vikitsreth: Reparenting inner child applies to parents taking social justice organizing. It's really fun.
Sonali Deepika: And we'll have all of this. All of your information in our show notes, but I'm so glad you went just to share that. So anyone is listening to, to be able to get it.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you Sonali for holding space. And for your curiosity and kindness and reflecting it back, what I do and what I embody.
Nat Vikitsreth: I wish everybody had that. That person to reflect back and hold that little mirror, right? Look at your own divinity and beauty. So thank you for doing that.
Sonali Deepika: Thank you. Thank you. And just an awareness that you're doing that for so many people as well. It's beautiful. It is a way of allowing people to see their expansiveness. And that they don't fit into, we can choose to fit in boxes, like we said, but they're not a box. They're not in a box. Their essence is far, far bigger.
Nat Vikitsreth: Thank you from my whole heart for being here and raising our next generation to be heart-centered together, my dear co-conspirator. I hope this conversation inspires you to burn some boxes today. If one of those boxes are outdated parenting scripts from the oppressors, please head over to comebacktocare.com/party and do it together.
As always, in solidarity and sass. Until Season 5 in late March or possibly more bonus episodes before that, please take care.