Holding the responsibility of healing through the personal and the collective

Charla and I explore the layers of the personal and the collective and how we move through the "pearl necklace" of karma, which is the way we respond habitually through the lenses of trauma, ancestral gift, cultural worldview. We explore together what it means to belong, how we feel and deal with anger and where its expression belongs, performative belonging versus authenticity and the question of why is it important to have a voice? This is a quantum and personal conversation with a dear dear friend of 20 years.

Charla is concerned about the ways in which humans, both the collectivity and individual humans, are embedded in community and in larger systems, including the somatic, psychological and spiritual implications of that. As well, Charla tracks the sociopolitical consequences of: being embedded, being engulfed, being dissociated, or being conscious of one’s own role to play in this lifetime; the contingencies that led to the position one finds oneself in; and the ways in which their role and trajectory impacts the larger systems. They are concerned with the relationship between our responsibility to show up fully within larger systems and the knowing that there is a larger, vast, expanse in which these larger systems and our roles within them are playing out. Their work is an exploration of what it means to be able to hold both perspectives of personal and collective, and to show up in both ways for oneself, for other humans, and for the innumerable beings that live on our planet.

Charla is a psychoanalytic therapist living and working on Abenaki land, or New Hampshire USA, though strongly identified as a Californian. Though they work with all, they have a special interest and lived experience in trans-affirmative care, specifically focusing on work with queer and trans youth. They have practiced and facilitated rites of passage work, somatic healing sessions, sacred wilderness practices, are a longstanding practitioner of American Zen Buddhism. They anticipate entering into training for psychedelic-assisted rites of passage and psychotherapy at some point in the near future.

https://www.charlamalamed.com

Music: Carry this All by Ahlay Blakely

Alexandra “ahlay” Blakely is a descendent of Ashkenazi, Scandinavian, and British folk. She is an artist, singer-songwriter, communal grief tender, community organizer, facilitator, and ceramicist walking the path of ancestral healing and the reclaiming of lost cultural memory. Her community singing album Spells from the Unknown offers songs for collective transformation, inquiry, and living in service to the future ones. Her second album, WAILS: Songs for Grief, was recorded with a 200-person choir and is entirely dedicated to grief, inspired by the Whales of the Sea, the wails of our times, and Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow, especially “the five gates of grief.” Her forthcoming third album, Anthems for an Apocalypse, arrives September 2025 and explores themes of collapse, courage, and abolitionist love. Through her music and gatherings, ahlay invites people into deep feeling, collective remembering, and the restoration of belonging across time.

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Alicia and I speak about the intuitive, consciousness shifting jump of evolution in corn and these times. We speak about protection that is wise and the protective strategies that underpin modernity's violence. We listen in to who might guide us as we find our way through the "jump" that we now find ourselves in, between the old paradigm and the not-yet-born, the transformational space between what was and what comes- the present moment in which everything is possible and the guardians who are midwifing this dangerous and transformative time.

Alicia Enciso Litschi

Pronouns: she/her/ella

Website: www.conalmatherapy.com

Social: https://offeringsforcornmother.substack.com/

Alicia is a hybrid healer in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. She is part curandera, part psychologist. She finds great meaning in helping her clients restore their connections to ancestral wisdom and belonging to the land. Alicia is devoted to Corn Mother--one of the ancient Mothers of this world. Alicia loves to spread the practice of making offerings to the land. Guided by Corn Mother, she travels together with friends, making small offerings in service of connecting to the greater intelligences of Earth's Being.

My guest is Shaleah Dawnyel, founder of the School of Unlearning Berlin. We speak together in a brave space about what it is to be a portal person, the necessity of speaking about things that our very presence embodies which are often confrontative for folks. We talk about leaning in to the discomfort of this way of being that opens up both the heart and mind for what is possible beyond binaries and hierarchies. And how that in and of itself is the invitation for transformation, together.

About Shaleah Dawnyel: Jane of all trades and master of some, Shaleah Dawnyel escaped her origins in Los Angeles in 2009 and found their home in Berlin. After working for over 15 years as a strategy & marketing consultant for creatives, she recently co-founded the School of Unlearning in Berlin, dedicated to (un)learning the myth of separation that is destroying our world. When they aren't gesturing toward alternative futures, she enjoys wandering walks with their fur partner Harmony and exploring the best cheeses the EU has to offer.

https://shaleahdawnyel.com School of Unlearning Berlin