Healing Outside the Medical Industrial Complex
A list of healers, resources, and places to learn more
Malkia Devich Cyril Read: Grief Belongs in Social Movements. Can We Embrace It? + Loss Runs Like a River Through My Life)
Sobonfu Somé Read: The Spirit of Intimacy - Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships
Malidoma Somé Read: Of Water and the Spirit
Ellen Samuels Read: Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time
Thabiso Mthimkhulu Listen: Re-Defining Crazy
Francis Weller Read: The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Lashanna Williams and A Sacred Passing
Lana Smithner + her documentary film project, Death, Me, Dying Tree
Spiritual and Ancestral Healing
Check out this podcast episode featuring inyanga Thabiso Mthimkhulu (Re-defining Crazy & The Initiation Process) from Jazimine Russell’s Depth Work: Holistic Mental Health Podcast. You can also schedule sessions with Thabiso here and check out his Instagram.
You have a lot of sickness [in the United States] because people are trying to behave in a way that will look “normal,” but that’s one thing the body wasn’t created for: to behave, to be controlled, to live like you are in a prison.”
What if “going crazy” was part of a larger process? What if it was a message from your body, your ancestors, or a wisdom larger than yourself? Thabiso, a traditional Swaziland Healer who moved to the U.S. in 2020, shares his story about training as a healer in a context where madness wasn’t stopped or something to be fixed, but rather the sign of a bigger calling.
Dr. Jennifer Mullan (Decolonizing Therapy): AKA The Rage Doctor. Check out their offerings!
Dori Midnight: Community-based intuitive healing that weaves plant and stone medicine, ancestral and queer magic, and justice work. Dori also teaches Jewish Protection Magic with Herban Cura.
Susan Raffo: Bodyworker, writer (Read: Liberated to the Bone), healing justice practitioner. Two of my favorite pieces by Susan are at least two layers of support: an anatomy of collective care and building collective liberation: wondering about a protocol for healers
Marika Heinrichs (Wildbody Somatics): teacher and practitioner of somatics. Offering consultations and mentorship, and a course in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry (an experiential training for white people who want to deepen their capacity for working with other white people to unlearn and heal the embodiment of white supremacy).
Ryn Laurel: Clinical herbalist specializing in mental health and magical consciousness. Tarot, meditation, and energy work. Ryn offers holistic intuitive and healing services, combining their psychic skills, diverse trainings, and intuitive magic to provide a personalized healing experience. @laureltreehealingarts on Instagram. Sign up for a free 1:1 herbal consult Q+A.
Adaku Utah and Harriet’s Apothecary: Adaku is a political strategist, social justice facilitator, holistic healer, somatics coach, and ritual artist. Harriet’s Apothecary is an intergenerational, healing collective led by the brilliance and wisdom of Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors.
Camille Sapara Barton: artist, drug policy advocate and embodiment educator who explores creative interventions that sustain life. They authored this incredible ritual-based Grief Toolkit.
Books About Trauma (Beyond The Body Keeps the Score)
Held up as one of the most foundational and cornerstone books about trauma, TBKTS by Bessel Van Der Kolk has largely escaped any mainstream criticism. But some major criticisms from community members include:
Status quo politics; Western and Eurocentric perspectives on trauma
Lack of analysis around politics, oppression, identity, and trauma
Author is accused of various forms of harassment (including sexual harassment), and is kicked out of the organization he started
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and other women who wrote foundational texts prior to TBKTS are never cited
Zero preparation or container setting for triggering and terrible descriptions
Lack of racial + cultural container or analysis (ex. the first pages of book are about white soldiers with PTSD from killing/raping women & children in war)
Here are some alternative books to try:
Trauma and Recovery (Judith Herman)
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Pete Walker)
What My Bones Know (Stephanie Foo)
Healing the Soul Wound (Eduardo Duran)
The Body Remembers (Babette Rothschild)
Black Skin, White Masks (Frantz Fanon)
Decolonizing Trauma Work (Renee Linklater)
Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Susan Brison)
The Generation of Postmemory (Marianne Hirsch)
The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice (Staci Haines)
The Deepest Well (Dr. Nadine Burke)
My Grandmother’s Hands (Resmaa Menakem)
Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon)
Healing Resistance (Kazu Haga)
Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (Stef Craps)
It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Mark Wolynn)
Medicine Stories (Aurora Levins Morales)
Woman Who Glows in the Dark (Elena Alvia)
Waking the Tiger (Peter Levine)
We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health (L.D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh)
The Myth of Normal (Gabor Maté)
Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice (Dr. Jennifer Mullan)
Wild Indians: Native Perspectives on the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians (Pemina Yellow Bird)
How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind (La Marr Jurelle Bruce)