In this episode, you will hear from beloved Kintsugi Therapist Colltive members, who participated in a group discussion about what KTC is, why it is a community that matters so much to them and why our care worker collective is a critically important space that counterbalances the extractive nature of capitalism and toxic professionalism embedded in the mental health field.

(Thank you Luca, Alice, Margee, Dani, Bec, Sebastian and Leah)

About us:

We need not be fine: A manifesto for care workers who can't go on like this

KTC Offerings (Embodied Private Practice Cohort, Mending With Gold and Barriers to Nourishment)

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers in Western Massachusetts and England. Born in Brooklyn into Interlink Publishing, a family-run independent publishing house, she learned the power of literature at a young age. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books, March 2023). She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations.

Hannah's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannahmoushabeck/

Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (BUY NOW)

What’s been going on with Asher?

Asher's heart and soul passion project: 

https://www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com/embodied-private-practice-cohort

Asher's Private Practice Focus (Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy): https://www.asherpandjiris.com/workwithme

To support Kintsugi Therapist Collective: https://www.patreon.com/kintsugitherapistcollective

To read this episode, subscribe to my free newsletter: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/contact

All things Kintsugi Therapist Collective: https://www.kintsugitherapistcollective.com/offerings

In this conversation we hear Hannah and Zena talk about caring ferociously, macho homemaking, living life as a committed spinster, work as a trauma response and domestic embodiment.

Hannah McGregor is an academic, podcaster, and author living on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She co-hosts the podcast Witch, Please, a critical rereading of the Harry Potter series, and she is the author of A Sentimental Education (WLUP 2022).

Hannah's website: https://www.hannahmcgregor.com/

Hannah's favourite duet: The Confrontation (Les Misérables), by Colm Wilkinson and Philip Quast

Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist, and LGBTQ+ health advocate. She’s the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) and the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016).

Zena's website: https://zenasharman.com/

Zena's favourite duet: Stay by Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko

All the links/info about Erin and Fanny: https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/episodes/fanny-priest-erin-fairchild

All things Asher

Mending with Gold: Weekend Intensive

Embodied Private Practice Cohort

Embodied Testimony: Sick and Tired

Samantha Irby writes a newsletter called Bitches Gotta Eat. Her favorite duet is Patti Labelle and Michael Mcdonald's “On My Own.”

Marlee Grace is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Their practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses, and hosting artists. Grace’s Instagram dance project Personal Practice has been featured in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and more.

They have a newsletter that comes out every Monday called Monday Monday. Sometimes it comes out on different days but usually it comes out on Monday. It’s always free. If you love it and want to also read the monthly advice column YES YES you become a paid subscriber.

Marlee’s most recent book is Getting to Center: Pathways to Finding Yourself Within the Great Unknown. They also wrote the book How to Not Always Be Working. Their favorite duet is “Dilemma” with Nelly and Kelly Rowland.

Weekend Intensive: Mending With Gold

December 9-11, 2022

Join KTC’s co-directors for a virtual weekend intensive with a concentrated and highly personalized curriculum designed to support care workers*. We hope to challenge the unrealistic expectations of the care work industrial complex, nurture pathways for reconnecting with pleasure and develop enlivening professional practices/strategies.

Enrolling Spring 2023:

The Embodied Private Practice Cohort is a year-long mentorship offering for clinicians who are beginning or revisioning private practice with a focus on embodiment and sustainability. Combining reality-based, capacity-conscious clinical and business consultation, mentorship will focus on the ways that therapists can be nurtured by clinical practice, avoid burnout, and commit to sustainability, self care and healing.

$$Support$$ Living in this Queer Body Podcast

More about Joseph here

Always Coming Home

[audio transcription] STOP MEN.. I've been probably writing it and it's been a part of my work for about 15 years. During that Gay Shame time and during a lot of my protesting and, and engaging with the Mission Anti- Displacement Coalition for, you know, a couple of years and the Coalition on Homelessness and working for all these or organizations and advocating for different types of people and everything. Everything I did lost, you know, everything. Like every single fucking thing I participated in failed. Everything, everything. I like, if I breathed the thought, it would come back negative, like it was just like, wow, like nothing's coming. You know, nothing I'm doing is working in any kind of way or helping anything. I was like, what is this all about? You know? And I just basically like,  I don't wanna protest laws that are unjust to people and jails unjust to people and, and health as a right or not, you know, like I don't wanna protest a hundred things or question a million things. I just wanna go right to the source and who the fuck is running all this shit. And men are making all these decisions, creating this whole framework and are unchecked, you know, the most violent men, unfortunately, in the country are shaping our reality. And so I just really quickly was just like, oh, well stop men.  that's obvious, you know, I'm just like stop men is where I'm at with that. That's what I wanna say, which is stop men. All men need to check themselves. And so from there, and  I'm completely comfortable with that with myself. Like, I've been checking myself and trying to learn how to be a good, healthy person for luckily, most of my life, you know, not all of my life, but luckily, most of it. And the heavier way . . sometimes I have a little spit that I say, you know, which I maybe can't get through it perfectly, but a lot of times I answer like this, which is, uh, stop men is the avocation of silence of all men in regards to decision making and leadership over any and all other living things. And men are totally chill to do whatever over their person, you know, make any decisions you want over your person and whatever the fuck you wanna do, but in terms of making decisions or participating in decisions over other living things, it's, we're at a full stop right now. The planet is coming to an end and everything on this planet has been shaped by male violence. We're off that page and we're flipping that page, starting something new. And it starts with men being silent and dealing with listening and not making any decisions of power over leadership of anyone. And this is just like an immediate stop. And from there, I'm not really suggesting who is to take power or whatever I'm out of that, but I'm saying that that needs to happen and that if men are making decisions over other people, if they are forcing their opinion into a conversation, they are identified as non revolution. These are non revolutionary men that need to be stopped. -Xara Thustra on LITQB

Una Aya Osato (they/she/flower) is a performer, writer, sex educator, community CareBear, stripper, and clown from NYC. They are an award-winning actor and playwright who tours her original work nationally and internationally. Una is also a co-founding member of brASS: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque, a BIPOC femme burlesque collective. Una has been featured in the New York Times, Teen Vogue, NPR’s CodeSwitch, NowThis, and many other publications and platforms.

For more Una happenings find flower on IG @ThisIsUna & on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ThisIsUna/membership

We love you Una. Please consider supporting Una and their comrades via a one time or ongoing donation via patreon. It is so important. We also love all the bodies at the margins. We are listening.

Mentioned in the interview:

Una’s long covid comrade patreon:  BED COLLECTIVE

http://www.patreon.com/bedcollective

Sini Anderson Living in this Queer Body Episode:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/swimming-upstream-sini-anderson-on-late-stage-lyme/id1462086436?i=1000530764468

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/C/Care-Work

KINTSUGI THERAPIST COLLECTIVE

To apply for the Fall Embodied Private Practice Cohort: kintsugitherapistcollective.com 

KTC MERCH

If you are not a care worker, consider purchasing some Kintsugi Therapist Collective merchandise. When you buy a t-shirt, hoodie, or tote bag, you support the sustainability of this developing business that needs a bit of a nest egg so that we can offer scholarships, send our collective members to conferences and retreats and sustain and make actionable, the radical vision of this collective.

Thank you Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Bridget Bertrand and Dr. Jennie Wang-Hall who attempted to address the question:  What does it mean to be a care worker in the third year of this global pandemic?

Thank you for the additional question.....“What happens when we are reached for, and we are the alternative system, and we are completely tapped out?” (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)

and

thoughts on rushing towards denial, heartbreak, disability justice, "i can't go to your party," "no vietnam war memorial for the covid dead," deep grief, being in crisis and at capacity, stuck in trauma loops, building alternative systems care, hope in abolition, connecting in rage and grief and creating and joining collectives.

Kintsugi Therapist Collective

CARE WORK:  Dreaming Disability Justice By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

We discuss the priority of supporting the body, Jenna's history with disordered eating and overwork, their anxious brain, what they are learning from their morning body/mind assessment ritual, the importance of rest and WHY the ceramic french press is a game changer.