Episode Summary:

In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Walela Nehanda, a cultural worker, transplant survivor, and agender writer who created their debut book, Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir as an archive for Black, Young, and Disabled people. Walela helps us shift the narrative toward a world rooted in care, interdependence — and ultimately, revolution. How do we define our realities without molding ourselves into a presentation? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Cultural Worker x Transplant Survivor x Agender human using art and writing to push a revolutionary culture forward.

Question of the Week: When navigating through massive amounts of grief, how do we practice compassion without being rooted in ego?

Topics Covered:

• Walela’s definition of a “Cultural Worker”
• The key ingredients of culture from the lens of a Cultural Worker
• Survivorship: A new creation of what it means to be alive
• Walela’s relationship to their body as a cancer and transplant survivor
• How relationships can help us realize that we deserve care
• Interacting with the fluidity of feelings about your writing
• How we can make ourselves legible in response to feelings
• Four questions for our Seedling Round

Resources:

• Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals

Guest Info:

Connect with Walela Nehanda on Instagram. Support Walela on Patreon, and pre-order their debut book: Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir here.

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• Newsletter

Show Notes:

Walela Nehanda is centering self-acceptance as a means to a more supportive, nurturing future. Walela’s debut book, Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir is an archive for Black, Young, and Disabled people, where feelings can be validated in a way they didn’t think was possible. Walela is redefining the next era of the Black Arts Movement and exploring what key ingredients of culture can resolve conflicts in search of survival and progress. If art is a point of political struggle, is culture how we make ourselves legible to each other?

In December 2020, Walela underwent a stem cell transplant and spent 31 days in isolation. Walela helps us shift an overly autonomous narrative toward care and interdependence — and ultimately, revolution. They teach us why being patient with our bodies is proof that survivorship has no end date. Unfurling into (self-)acceptance of love.

Walela reminds us that within the mess there is creation — and it doesn’t have to be coherent. Within it, you can be responsible for the outcome and supported through the process. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Cultural Worker x Transplant Survivor x Agender human using art and writing to push a revolutionary culture forward.

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Episode Summary:

In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Shavon Swain, a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) with over 10 years of experience working in the mental health field. Shavon helps us understand that the layers of curiosity, imagination, and possibility are cultivating your innate wisdom. What does it mean — and feel like — to have the freedom and the expansiveness to try on all different parts of yourself? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be both a Black Woman and a Free Spirit.

Question of the Week: Why do parents put gift bows on household appliances in their homes?

Topics Covered:

• Questions around being a free spirit, imagination, and possibility
• How Human Design highlighted Shavon’s innate wisdom
• Permission to shift and change within career/identity
• Shavon’s formula for clarity + embodiment = authenticity
• Using somatics to sit with and understand emotion
• How Shavon channeled her intuitive gifts into a career
• How increased neurodivergence accessibility impacts therapy
• Four questions for our Seedling Round

Guest Info:

Connect with Shavon Swain on Instagram, The Healing Lounge Website, her personal Website, and Therapy For Black Girls Website. Check out Shavon’s NEW! Guided Journaling Cards here.

• Newsletter

Show Notes:

We get to choose how the layers of curiosity, imagination, and possibility integrate into some (or all) aspects of our lives. As a Black Woman x Free Spirit, Shavon utilizes human design, astrology, and inner child work as a permission slip to deepen her therapy practice while staying true to herself. But Shavon’s intent isn’t to make her work her sole identity. It’s a layered evolution, textures upon textures of the Self.

Shavon’s somatic-centered therapy practice helps her clients understand how emotions and feelings show up in the body. How can you become your own tool for self-compassion?

To embody self-awareness and understanding is to understand aspects of the Self. What does life look like when you believe clarity + embodiment = authenticity?

Shavon reminds us that there is freedom and expansiveness when we try on all different parts of ourselves. All the possibilities exist. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be both — a Black woman and a free spirit.

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• Instagram
• Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Summary:

In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Xenia Viray, Imagination Healer, Multidimensional Artist, and Community Weaver focused on facilitating workshops and writing. Xenia expands our perspective of relationship dynamics, interconnectedness, and imagination as the ability to wade through the depths of experience. Is it possible to see imagination simply as the way we think and process? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Poetic x Empathy-Driven x Curious Imagination Healer who believes in experimenting with the construction of correctness.

Question of the Week: If you were a climate or a landmass, what kind of land would you be?

Topics Covered:

• Questions around empathy-driven curiosity, personal stories, and being understood
• The psychedelic experience of being in the world and relationship
• Being poetic = Everything is made up
• How spirituality and mysticism helped Xenia understand her imagination
• Being unfamiliar with linear choice vs. linear experience
• Different levels of capacity concerning depth of experience
• Two questions for our Seedling Round

Resources:

• Crystal Bennett Harris

Arthur Vogelsang’s poem Help

Guest Info:

Connect with Xenia Viray on Instagram and her Website. Xenia Marie Ross Viray (she/they) is an imagination healer, multidimensional artist and community weaver with a focus on facilitating workshops and writing. Born as a brick-and-mortar business, Myths of Creation is a container for experiments, writings, and gatherings at the intersection of creativity and spirituality. Myth's core intention is to reconnect communities, ideas, and art forms that have been separated in order to enrich the pool of imaginal possibility. Xenia's 1:1 offerings Imaginal Temple and Heart Channel are designed to help unique creatives anchor the frequency of their natural genius.

Show Notes:

Everyone has a unique way of communicating, receiving, and interpreting language. With an infinite desire to understand individual experience, Xenia views the world from a dual, cosmic point of view: intrigued by the human experience and in constant observation. How does the construct of perspective help us be in relationship with each other and the universe?

Xenia’s newest offering, an “Imaginal Temple,” relates to her interpretation of what it means to be “an adult,” and a response to curiosity about the different layers within Self. When we view the world and ourselves as a desire for a relationship to experience, there is endless power — and an opportunity to create. In Xenia’s words, “My imagination is actually my energy. It's who I am without the constructions of the outside world.”

Xenia allows us to examine the world and ourselves — while also experimenting with its structures and interpretations. Expansion and contraction (as a sign of bravery) is beautiful. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be an Imagination Healer who believes in experimenting with the made-up construction of correctness.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.