CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

 [Theme Music]  
 
This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  
 
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Bianca: Hi Jennifer. I'm so, so honored and excited to talk to you. We've been behind the scenes getting together, [Jennifer: Likewise.] but I'm really just so grateful that you're here. So, we're just going to hop right into it. So, I'm going to just throw several questions at you, you get to choose which one you want to answer. Like, who are you? Who are your people? Where do you join us from? What's the story of your name? And who might show up in a cameo today? 

Jennifer: [laughs] I love it. Well, I'm gonna answer the last one first because it's my favorite. So, greetings everyone. I'm Jennifer, as you've heard, and I would say that you're going to probably get a cameo from my amazing goddess cat Isis. She has been making little cameos. She's really interested in some of the equipment. So, for all you cat lovers or fuzzy animals out there, don't be surprised that, so that's one, the other is I'm coming out of Hudson County, New Jersey. So, we are… hoot-hoot, yeah? So, representing Jersey City in the house. We are right across from the New York area. So I was, I had the privilege to grow up with like New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, as my playground as a teenager and a youth I will say, I'll leave that there. I'll just say that. [laughs] 

Bianca:  Awesome. Thank you, Jennifer. So, I'm just gonna hop right into it because I know people are really interested in what you have to share and your path towards healing that you're really identifying and like, a decolonial framework. So, one of the first things that I always think about as someone who is Puerto Rican, whose homeland is still a colony of the United States, I'd love for you to share with us, your thoughts about how you're defining the term ‘decolonize’ when you use it. I've seen so many people use it as like a buzz word without giving it a good context or definition and I think people are using it without understanding if there's a shared definition. So, I'd love to hear yours, for our time together. 

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, as I have to say, like as someone who comes out of, well, my people, let me let me bring a little bit of the last question into this one. Part of my experience has been of feeling constantly othered. I will say right off the bat that I have a great deal of privilege, so I can locate and identify myself as a cis-gendered woman. I locate myself as a light-skinned Black Panamanian woman. I locate myself also being mixed heritage and there's privilege in that. I have much proximity to whiteness in many, many ways. And you know, definitely having a doctorate also adds to that, right, but what doesn't add to it are the invisible disabilities, are the ways that I identify as on the queer fluid spectrum or kaleidoscope, as we like to say, the ways in which I definitely am othered and treated and seen as a woman of color depending on where I am. I'm definitely racialized, yeah?  

So, nine times out of ten, I'm walking into spaces clearly feeling the difference, right? I don't know about you, but I can feel the room. I can feel, not virtually always, but I can definitely, when walking into spaces, when people are feeling intimidated just because I have a serious face on or if I do decide to speak out what comes up and what comes around, but my first experience is as a very little kid 14, 15, 16 years old going to Panama. And so that's where my mother is from and that's where my family is from and there was so much anti-Blackness. Although there's so much Blackness in my family, right?  

So, we are of all different shades and colors and because of my ancestry and my family coming over—actually, not coming over but being kidnapped and forcibly enslaved and being made to create the Panama Canal, many of my ancestors as well as the other half Indigenous Kuna Indian. So, I was thrusted into this rite of passage at a very awkward age of like 12 or 13 years old and part of that experience, A) was super uncomfortable for me because I was so Americanized, right? And I had such a privilege of this like American perspective, even though we grew up at the poverty level. [Bianca: Mmm-hmm.] But there was also this energy in this experience of being drawn into the things that I couldn't explain, being drawn into the areas of places in the spaces in which I wasn't allowed to talk about at home, right? What I was seeing, or you know, “hey, wait, isn't that great grandma” or “who's this” or “that looks like the person in the picture” and I was having all these experiences and it was only when I was able to slowly thread together some of my own Indigenous ancestry and then for years, grapple with whether or not I have a right to claim it. You know like, this struggle, that is when I think I was able to see clearly or little bit clearer because I'm still not clear. Let me just say, I don't know if we ever are. Just the ways in which colonization had also taken over Central America, over the islands, over every single, almost every country throughout the world.  

So, for me, colonization has been an act of extraction an act of taking language, customs, belief systems, land, without a doubt, but even people, yeah, and the ways in which we engage with one another. Taking away a humanity, a dehumanizing of a people, of a place, and of a land. And so, part of my work, working in inner cities within Newark or Oakland, had worked down in… no, up actually because I'm thinking of where y'all are, like Vacaville in California…you know, is this realization that the mental health system was continuously colluding, right, with this larger systemic beast with so much violence.  

So, for me, the decolonization process is about extraction and is about the extraction of taking out the whiteness and the Eurocentricity from situations, places, and belief systems. I would also dare say that my definition of decolonization is very much about giving back land. Right, right. I work with a lot of organizations. I am also a community organizer. So, a lot of the places and spaces and accountability spaces that I have involved the Indigenous peoples of the land. So, although I'm a settler in New Jersey. Yeah, definitely. But also, some of my people were forcibly brought to New Jersey without, or brought to the US or brought to the South without our consent. So, I think that it's a complicated dance.  

What I believe decolonization is not is a buzzword. I believe it is not another word for social justice. I don't believe that it's another word for us just simply wanting to do better although I appreciate the sentiment. I really think it's about a returning to our ancestral ways while keeping in mind with the future, right, because there was no Instagram back when we were younger. [both laugh] 

Bianca: We did not grow up with the Internet. It's so true. And you know, I hear you also saying that there is a reclamation of our humanity, that you’re really centering and trying to shift from the way that we've been trained to dehumanize each other and the way that we've been socialized to do that implicitly or very specifically depending on you know, how we grew up and how we were raised. And I think you know, I see it in my own family as well, we have a lot of similarities and overlaps. And I also think a lot about how chattel slavery shifted, a lot of how we understand capitalism today. I'm just, dehumanization in a whole other level, and I really appreciate you bringing in like your Panamanian heritage because you know, when I show people like a time-lapse of kidnapped Africans who come across the Atlantic, they're not landing in the United States primarily, you know, they're really showing up in Brazil [Jennifer: Yes.] and parts of Central South America [Jennifer: Yes.] and the Caribbean. [Jennifer: Yeah. Cuba, Puerto Rico.] Yeah, right? And then to hear that our families are really, you know, buying into this assimilationist, white mis-ideology of like, you know not claiming our ancestors who like fought hard for us to be here. You know, I really, I really… that's…you’re singing my song, Jennifer. [Jennifer laughs] So, I’m wondering, you know through your therapeutic training and work, have you seen colonization show up specifically in therapy practices or even in trainings? And what does it mean to decolonize therapy to you?  

Jennifer: Yeah. You know, to be completely honest, I, with my knowledge, right, with the education, I feel like I have received an amazing amount of education from like community organizers. I have received education on people's floors that I, you know, they're sleeping on floors and I'm like, wait what I'm watching my privilege sort of like “ahhh! I can't do this!”, you know, checking myself and what I want to say before I forget, is that I want to also honor every single teacher I've had along with every ancestor that I've had so I would be remiss, so I'm throwing that in there because as I'm speaking, I'm also hearing them. I'm also hearing their teachings. I'm also hearing the beautiful conversations I've had with people that I've served, that have allowed me to work with them as a therapist as a psychologist and I also want to honor, for any of the therapists out there thinking after I'm going to say what I say, how am I going to do this or how does this work? This is too big. This is too much. That we have to start somewhere, and we have to do better once we start evolving and becoming conscious. I believe that I also engaged in harm without my realization prior to really having an analysis.  

So, I think that we all start somewhere. Yeah, and my starting somewhere was attending too many Black and brown youth’s funerals. My somewhere was really having a difficult time following plan and doing CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and you know, trying to be psychodynamic and looked back at dreams and systems and the ways that I was taught, and I appreciate the ways that I was taught. However, it wasn't putting food on the table. It wasn't addressing the neoliberalism and higher education, yeah? It wasn't addressing the ways in which imperialism and colonization, it's all over the world. And when I speak of colonization, I need to also say it's global for me. You know, I do honor Turtle Island and what has happened in North America. But you know Philippines and the level of colonization and forced migration and forced contractual relation that has occurred. Well, when we look at Australia, Aboriginal population, we could keep going, so I also want to say that decolonizing is the psychological and emotional embodiment of reclamation. And so that's what decolonizing therapy in many ways is for me. It's a sort of midwifery into ancestral healing. It's a return to ancestral healing while at the same time holding these institutions of Eurocentricity accountable.  

And so, I love being a therapist. I love being a psychologist, and I love, kind of stepping into my power and being able to like serve people. What I didn't appreciate was not hearing about Dr. Frederick Hickling out of Jamaica, who's been talking about decolonizing mental health, and I only found out after he passed on and became an ancestor. Like, I was only hearing about Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary when I was digging into my dissertation on intergenerational trauma. So, the name, the identities, the theories are predominantly Caucasian, cis-gendered, of an older age bracket, and are generally out of touch with the people that I was serving and definitely out of touch with me. And where I see colonization show up in a lot of the one-on-one work or the group work because group is my primary modality in the work that I do, is in disconnect. Yeah? And so, like I think that colonization is about is the origin of disconnect and that trauma creates this energy, of the historical trauma that many of us have dealt with as well as the intergenerational trauma and the complex trauma that people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis and I think that this forges this psycho-spiritual connection, to be perfectly honest with you, Bianca.  

I feel like colonization has created this deep grief, this deep disconnect with self and with other, and that a lot of what is happening now for many of our generations is a reconnection, like a plugging back in and it's like a coming back online rather than a sense of survival. I know my mom and dad and grandparents were not thinking about like, “oh wait, what is decolonization? Am I being colonized? How does this affect me?” And so, in many ways, I feel like this work is about the emotional stewardship, right, when we talk about decolonization, we are talking about getting right with the land, but when I'm sitting with my elders and I'm sitting in certain circles and some of our shaman practices, I know that some of the abuelas and curanderas, when they're talking about decolonization, we're also talking about the energy, the spirit, this psycho-spiritual way of knowing the way that we heal and take care and hold space for each other. Although, the land is there, I'm not minimizing the land aspect, but I also want to say that a lot of the elders are also holding decolonization from other lands as well. And so, I believe that before we can give back the land, many of us, whose land that we do not belong on per se, right. There is a process of undoing and analysis that needs to be had, a sort of politicizing and I believe that that's where decolonizing therapy sort of comes in and this intersection between the collective, the personal, the spiritual, the political, and the therapeutic. 

Bianca: Yeah, and I totally hear what you mean by people saying, “Jennifer, that's so much. Oh my god, you just named like 16 different things” and it's like yeah, we're complicated messy human beings. We're not just like this easy cut and dry, like that's it, one solution is going to find the answer. So yeah, I really appreciate that framing because it's so important for people to not only hear, but also to witness what that can look like in action and you know, I think sometimes people just get really caught up on the language and kind of forget the action piece, right? And so, I say this a lot to, you know, the students that I support and who are writing. I'm like, “you just need to stop reading and just start writing”, you know, stop thinking there's more books that you need to read. There's probably more things you need to listen to, not just read and so helping people reframe the multiple ways of knowing that we’re able to bring in when we are open to them. I think that's a really important piece that challenges a lot of the ways that we’re trained with a written word is like exalted, you know, and I know that, just from like the fact that we both went to NYU, a school of higher education. That you know, we’re affiliated with CIIS.  

So I know this in many particular ways and also, I think that's why people are attracted to your work so much is because you do have an interdisciplinary approach, where you're not just staying siloed in a Western understanding of psychology, of psychotherapy, of psychoanalysis, whatever ‘psycho’ thing you want to talk about, but that you’re really saying, ”no, we need to learn from the oral narratives. We need to learn from listening with our whole bodies. We need to learn from sitting in, on the dirt. We need to really also come inward.” And that's not a bad thing. And I think a lot of times, people misunderstand the going inward piece. No, we need you here! And it's like, that's also about self-preservation is also what I hear you saying, which is deeply for me about decolonization, is like how do we preserve ourselves to do this work, to show up in the ways that we want to, to be able to hear a calling on and a correcting when it needs to occur, and then how to correct that behavior moving forward and so I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about, or a lot about the challenges to incorporating a decolonial framework.  

And you know, what's your response to those individuals or communities who are still experiencing or still stuck in that very colonial ideology of life? Of living, of being. And how to move into a more decolonial space. I think, you know, I offer this question because there might be people listening now or in the future who are really going to be like, “oh, that’s what I needed to hear” so I would love to hear you say a little.  

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for the reframe. And I think, you know our land was not the only thing that was stolen. And so, in the process, emotionally and psychologically, I think that many of us start out at a very disconnected place, like the very nature of white-bodied supremacy is disconnected, the very nature of it, I think, is trying to pass and assimilate and to fit in and to push down our difficult emotions and to try to swallow back what needs to come out. And so, I know I keep talking about disconnected embodiment. It's because I've only recently realized that part of what decolonizing therapy is offering is the absence of a frame. And the initiation into embodiment; and so I say this to say that many of the folks that I work with whether in groups, organizations, one-on-one, a lot of times there's this coming to of like, well what if I don't know my ancestors or what if you know, I didn't know my grandmother's name or what if I can't trace ABC and D back and the first thing I would say is well, we need to take some breaths and number two, we also need to look at patterns, right? We need to look at behavior because people are trying to understand oneself. In trying to understand oneself, we can't just look at the self as psychology would prefer. It's really essential to also go back. What happened in my people’s history, what happened on this land that I'm on, what has caused a disconnect between me and my mother tongue? What is home and where can I initiate a sense of home in my body, in my relationships? In the field that I'm working for, and the people that I'm serving?  

And so, I would say that part of this work is truly deconstructing the colonizer within, yeah? And so that is where I talk a lot about like emotional decolonization and that's where I reside, it's like what are the ways that we have been conditioned to believe that lighter skin is more attractive, that a smaller body is more attractive. What are the ways that we have conditioned to believe that the binaries need to exist? I know, I'm preaching to the choir with you, Dr. Laureano. [both laugh] But seriously, you know and sometimes I talk about all of it, you know, the two-spirit identity, the ways in which the grandmother energy needs to come through, the Earth, the collective pain because so many therapists out there have only been trained in classwork, right? In theory. But what about in energetic boundaries? What about an emotional regulation of ourselves? What about us being a depository for the pain, for the suffering, for the container of other people's sorrows and intergenerational trauma. And so, what is the impact of that on us? Right? What is the impact of that and not just on therapists, on everybody? Like, so if you're holding space and you're a rape crisis hotline worker or you're one of the warm line workers for NAMI or you're a nurse or you’re beautician and people are sharing everything with you? Right? Like I mean, I talked to the person who cuts my hair all the time and I'm like wait, I need to say this to my therapist because I don't know if I've told her this. Yeah, and I just had a revelation, right? [Bianca: Yes.] Shout-out to my hairstylist. [Bianca: Absolutely.] Yeah, you know all of this to say that we all start somewhere and so I think that looking at that shame, like we were given these difficult emotions, right, like rage or defensiveness, this overwhelming feeling that I've seen many people step into. I’ve even stepped into it in various points throughout my life, right, for different identities and different reasons and so we can step into that defensiveness and take those breaths and step away and say, “okay, where do I have to do more learning? What have I learned that needs to be unlearned? Where have I…you know, where did this theory derive from, right, who's teaching me this theory? What is the context? How does this land with me?” And then if you do spiritual work, ancestral work then how does that land with my team? How does that land with my ancestors? How does that land with my folks? Right?  

And so, for me, it was always and again, I talk about myself and say ‘me’ to humanize myself because I think sometimes with a ‘doctor’, people forget that this is also a very personal process and so in creating decolonizing therapy, it was created with community. This isn't a Dr. Jennifer Mullan thing, this belongs to the people, for the people, and the hope is that it's not just therapy that we’re decolonizing but that we're lovingly holding the mental health industrial complex accountable for the ways that it treats its you know, therapist. For the ways that it treats its people or doesn't treat them and the ways in which we have been lied to about how we have to do this work. So, questioning everything, empathy, compassion. Looking at the shame that we may be feeling as well as being in collective. You'll hear me say this a lot, throughout the next hour, that it is essential to be held and also hold space for others. 

Bianca: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, one of my favorite disability justice principles is interdependence and everything you just said is deeply in alignment with that where we need each other to do this. We need each other to thrive, to survive. We can't do it alone. I think you demonstrating, how you document the evolution of your knowledge, the evolution of your practice, how you come to a space where you're like, it wasn't, “I didn’t just get here by myself.” It was by questioning. You know, the Freud that I was forced to read and asking why don’t we read some Fanon or whatever it looks like, right, like mashing it up in a different way. Also questioning that canon that we're told is the right thing to do, which many of us know is like not even the tip, that many of us are able to get into. You know, like it's not even accessible half the time and I also hear you talking about embracing the chaos when you begin to do this work, but also the chaos that’s always going to be present and I know like as an educator, I usually tell people I would much prefer a chaotic classroom than one that is super quiet and people aren’t engaged because that to me, is life. That to me is like, you know livelihood and energy just like you're talking about and it's also like uncertainty, which is also a part of life. Like we're not always going to be certain if like our offering to our ancestor is going to be acknowledged or held or you know responded to in a particular way but also like that, that's the risk. I think that comes with choosing ourselves, that there's consequences to being on the side of choosing ourselves and some of those consequences are liberation and interdependence. It's not always violence, although it may be and so I really appreciate you mentioning that and reminding us that like binaries are a scam because they are. [Jennifer: Because they are!] I mean, there's no way around that and you know and bringing in this conversation that you're, that you're introducing us to around rage and anger; I really love, because you know, I remember reading Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins where she says anger and rage is our space from which we can learn grow and create action from and so I would love for you to talk a little bit more about how you're channeling those energies, those emotions, that knowledge in our body-minds into a decolonial framework that you're offering in a therapeutic way.  

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, I believe that when we really start to understand our history and our trauma and our people’s history and trauma, even if we're not exactly sure from which island, from which place, from which space that we came from. There's a lot of emotion and really tough emotion that starts to bubble up to the surface and it has been my personal, as well as professional experience and spiritual experience to consistently be face-to-face with the darkness. Right? And I think it's really essential for many of us to acknowledge the ways in which we have harmed others, right, on personal levels as well as ancestral levels.  

And so, I say this to say, that part of this, again, a paradigm. I hate to call it a frame because it smells like it's the antithesis of decolonization. So that's why we're still struggling with that's, like the language, there is no language for it. But this paradigm is to really start to look at the shadow, the collective shadow, to look at the shadow of the self, and that isn't a slightly Jungian way for those of you that are therapists out there, shout out to Carl Jung who was at least attempting to look at it, identity and race and multicultural issues. Dream work, the anima, and the animus. And so, part of what really started to come in, in this work, on our retreats, when I was working at the university were that here we have like first generation college students, undocumented college students. Here we have like inner city folks from the hood, hood that I grew up in, meditating. You know, talking about their family’s history, screaming into a mirror, you know vomiting after group because they're literally expelling all the pain and the fear in the overwhelm.  

So, I'm a practitioner first, you know, shout out to the Psy.D. program, so as a practitioner, what came up for me, because I always cared about the people, right, my people. I was all about elevating my people, whoever they were but those at the margins, relegated to the margins. And in DT, in decolonizing therapy what started happening was this beautiful marriage between that which nobody wants, right, that which collectively, you know as a society that we don't want to ingest and in this process, it is essential to look at the things that our parents have gone through, that our grandparents have gone through, even if we don't know exactly, it's essential to also look at, as I said before, the history of the land that we're on and so when we're unpacking this, when we're becoming more radicalized, when we're realizing how everything is absolutely political, right? Everything is political.  

There comes this moment, I believe for many of us, of deep, either grief or rage and I believe that they are two sides of the same coin. I think that for someone like me, I grew up, it was easier to feel rage and it was protective. It was a disguise that I needed in order to survive. For others, I think that depression becomes a dark lover, you know. Or that anxiety or that deep grief like sitting in that because that feels safer. So, I say that to say because we're complex as humans. It's never again, the binary, it’s never like you’re one or the other. But the flipside of them is where the freedom and the liberation is, in my humble opinion. And so, I like to define rage as the love child of shame and ancestral trauma as well as our childhood trauma. And so, if we look at it in that vein, we see that there's a very big ancestral component, a lot of us when we do have these rage outbursts and that doesn't always mean we're flipping something over or slamming something. I also need to say that rage has disguises, like depression, like distraction, like devotion, right? There's, there's lots of disguises to rage and it is different than anger. Right, where anger is more of a justified one-stop thing like someone cut me off, I'm pissed, enraged. Whereas rage, there is a sacred, ancestral connection and so the crux, I think, the foundation, actually, of decolonizing therapy is looking at the historical, ancestral trauma and remembering what was and part of that work is also holding psychology, social work, and counseling accountable for the harm that we have done to people throughout the last couple years or so.  

Bianca: Yeah, and I also hear you talking about like the power that comes with being in this position. It's complicated, you know, we started off talking about like we know what power looks and feels like, even if we can't taste it or see it or touch it. We know that it's there and that's part of like our inherent, you know, knowledge that we are often socialized to not listen to and so I really appreciate you bringing that conversation about power without even saying it because that's really how I translate something. Oh, yeah, Jennifer, actually mentioning this idea of power and even like intersectionality, you know, talking about like, how did we get here? What is the historical elements that brought us here? Because that's, that's how we may understand. What are some possible solutions? How can we get more creative? What does it look like moving forward?  

And so, listening to you talk a lot more about like the ancestral healing through ritual and ceremony and resistance. I'm wondering if you're open to talking a little bit or if you even discuss or consider hauntings, like what haunts us? What does that look like? Does that also manifest as rage that's righteous. But also, you know, what, what is your stance or what are your thoughts about how we may be haunted by certain things whether they be good, bad, neutral, something in the middle?  

Jennifer: Yeah, what a beautiful question. Yeah, I believe that, if we're talking about—I believe that—let's talk about United States of America, in North America and South America. So, the Americas, right? I believe we are deeply haunted as a collective. So, I should have noted, and I don't know if I did prior, that there are like the two branches of decolonizing therapy and part of that is the individual and what happens to me and how that is permeated and affected in the rest of the world and how the world is also affecting me, as well as the collective. And having that pulse on what is happening to everybody.  

So, in answering your question, yeah, I mean, I believe that we're dealing with the underbelly of our ancestor’s actions, right? I think that we're dealing with the repercussions of that and in many ways, we are haunted by the lack of acknowledgement, right, of many of our ancestors, of the enslaved Africans that were brought over, of the Chinese that built the railroads, of the Indigenous people that have lost their land and given “reservations”. Right? I'm always fascinated by words, right and like we have reservations. What does that mean? And I think that part of the haunting piece where we can land, is in finding home. Whatever, that is for us with a capital H, you know coming back to a centered place of self where we can feel less disconnected. I think it's, To-ko Turner that talks about, I love her book, Belonging, speaks about that loneliness is not just about a…not having someone around or like a disconnect, but of not being able to speak to you know, the truth of what you feel deeply like not having others speaking your language.  

And so, for me, I think also the haunting aspect is also deeply related to this shadow self this, this collective shadow that many of us don't want to look at, which is why we focus a lot on the emotion. You know, I think that there are so many theories out there that are beautifully put, but if the people can't ingest them and understand them and I work on this all the time myself, then what good is it? Right? And so, a lot of times, what happens I know for myself as well as someone who is trained as an academic, is that I'm still unlearning, right? I'm still unpacking and unlearning the ways in which I need to drop from here to here, to the body, like how has, how can I embody this? So, I would say that the haunting is like the trauma. [Bianca: Yeah.]  You know? It is a deep, traumatic reaction to people's mind, bodies, and spirits.  

Bianca: Mhm. Yeah, and you know when you said the haunting in like the academic way we've been trained, I felt that deeply through and through because it's so true. And you know, I like to think, and people told me this, I like to continue to think it, that one of my superpowers, I’ve been meaning to acknowledge those and claim that term for myself, is taking really complicated ideas and theories and making them more accessible to community members, to people and you know, I've trained people who are like, “Bianca, kids don't understand intersectionality! [Jennifer: Yes, they do!] It’s such a high theory!” And I’m like you have to make it relevant to their life. So go talk to them about school uniforms. They understand power. They understand institutional power. They understand oppression. You know, you just got to make it relevant to them and you know thinking about these hauntings.  

I think also, you know, for me being introduced to those hauntings was definitely deeply rooted in like a sociological imagination and what that could look like in a sociological way, I'm thinking about what is still haunting me in our field. What is still haunting me as someone who's unlearning the harmful ways that I was taught to dehumanize other people and how am I showing up for that work? And you know, you talked a lot about interdependence and your community holding you and I would love to hear a little bit more about how do you find support for when you may experience failure or when you may mess up, or cause harm. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about either personally or professionally and you know, do you have an accountability process that you incorporate in your personal and professional life?  

Jennifer: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that how are we doing this work without accountability? I think that it's essential. It's more than just like, write pretty words or prose or poetry. We're talking about the process of actually excavating the framework of systems that are taking part in the excavation of systems that continue to harm people and below the poverty level and if they're melanated so I continue to be held accountable by my organizing communities. I would say that I have two strong ones. I continue to be held accountable by my spiritual community and by my spiritual elders, as well. I have elders in both political spaces as well as spiritual ones and I think where the growth process has to continue to happen in my own life is finding those places and spaces where they’re political and spiritual and that the analysis…that we can speak each other's language, right because I'm very much for international solidarity. I'm very much about like beyond Turtle Island, you know, although it's very important to me. But I also care about what is happening overseas and I'm conscious of how this affects everything else in our ecosystem. So also holding myself accountable for ecocide and looking at the ways in which environmental racism plays out and what's our carbon footprint, so to speak. And these are things that I just like, okay well, this is really important and, and some of my friends had to like check me and re-remind me.  

So, I would say that the process of accountability is often first like an inner circle, right? I feel safest bringing it first to my inner circle but not an inner circle that is just like my best friend is going to tell me everything that I want to hear. I think it's about acknowledging where harm has been done, having the education or the re-education on what needs to be learned and what are the steps towards learning it? Really looking restoratively. Do I have to sit down and look at, talk to someone else, apologize? Do we need a mediator? What would that look like? Who is the best person for that? So, in two or three of my circles, we have systems in place. I don't feel at liberty to like discuss them in detail, but I will say that it is very close to like restorative justice work because there has been egregious harm done and there are times where we also all can acknowledge that it is best not to let people go, I'm not for this term ‘cancel culture’ kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies. That's a whole other conversation. I think it's just, it's interesting, that if we have time, we’ll get to it. I just think it's, you know, people have to take accountability. And is that really canceling when we have to show accountability so that, I can get more into that later if we need to, but accountability must be taken and I think that it's important to also work through the emotional content.  

So that's something that we have in our process for accountability is also looking at the ways in which we have to feel it physically, that there needs to be space and time, that perhaps accountability may never be taken, perhaps an apology will not ever be given, perhaps the relationship can never be repaired or perhaps one or two of us need to step down from various positions and can no longer engage in that way anymore because of the harm that we have enacted or because we need time. I think that time also has been colonized, [Bianca: Right.] and I think that we're often rushed and pushed to feel a certain way, engage a certain way, act a certain way, to hurry up and like apologize because both people want closure and I don't think why I'm, I'm quite certain as a psychologist that closure does not happen in a week, closure doesn't happen often in a month, or sometimes even in a year. So, what does that look like for us to really embody self-accountability, as well as community accountability, accountability and self-forgiveness.  

I often tell my students like guilt is a useless emotion and it's not, don't get me wrong, not for when someone has really done a lot of harm, but in the sense of where we're constantly like I feel guilty about this, I feel guilty about this, I'm guilty about it. Okay. So, what now? What next? What needs to happen in order for us to either rectify this for you, rectify this for the community? How can we begin to call other maybe communities in, in our pods and actually ask for a little bit of what we call like, “respirator support” like we need somebody to come in and really breathe life into the situation and I think it's important that the people holding space have multiple lenses and have multiple intersecting points of identity that reflect the people or the peoples that are struggling.  

So, this is, yeah, I have been in…I would say more recently in my life, they have been about me holding space for others, and I would say that more recently, it has been much more about being an active listener and an active, conscious sort of, recipient of what people need and giving them that. You know, I have to say that, you know, I think having a social media presence, there's this, I feel this like anxiety of like are you going to be canceled, you're going to be called out, have you done something have you this, have you that and I kind of…not that I don't care anymore, I just…I don't, I don't, I don't, I care about what I'm saying. If I'm harming somebody, I care about serving communities. I care about this work, having integrity and authenticity and I care about making sure that is understood and not just used as a buzzword and yeah. Because there's been there's a lot of that, there's a lot of that, but I don't care to sit in a place where I don't speak my truth because then that would recreate the trauma of a lot of my ancestors as well and not speaking out and not having the ability to speak on what we need and what our people need. [Bianca: Yeah.] I hope I’ve answered your question. 

Bianca: Absolutely. And you know, I think a lot about how many of us have been socialized to fear conflict and to fear messing up and failure. And you know, I've told a lot of the people that I support and mentor that like, this is a human experience, it is human to fail. It is human to mess up. It is human to learn and unlearn [Jennifer: Yeah!] and those are you know, that's also like brain chemistry stuff. Right? Like how do we respond to that. What does it feel like in our bodies? How is our brain sending us messages? And how, how is our body-mind reminding things that maybe other parts of us might not remember and similar ways?  

And so, I think, you know, being clear and open and honest with people and saying “yeah, I have an accountability process. Yeah. I got a grievance policy for when I do this stuff” and that is really an amazing modeling for people to understand that we're not just doing this off the fly, you know that we've put in time and energy. I mean you done the work, you did it the Western way, you did it your way, you did it the way of your community, and this is what is possible is an example of one) acknowledging that maybe harm has occurred but also that failure is happening and not dehumanizing yourself because you've been radically loved and gently corrected. Or not so gently corrected! And two) I’m like this language of cancel culture is a misappropriation of what is really happening and what it was originally created for.  

And that I think is important to acknowledge because language access is also so, so important and we touched on that briefly with, you know, making concepts more accessible. Well, yeah, they're like high theory but it's the same thing here with like accountability and it is, which like you say, it is such a spiritual, visceral welcoming of this because that's how we do better and that's how we, how we build, collectively and collaboratively, and how we let people show up and love us and I think those are the pieces that you know often times, I think people are afraid of this radical love that’s showing up. [Jennifer: It's terrifying being seen.] Yeah! [Jennifer: Sorry to cut you off.] No, it’s true! I mean, this is a conversation. It’s terrifying. Can you talk a little bit more about like, that fear that you see bubbling up for some people and also how you support people to move within it and not around it? 

Jennifer: Yeah, it's, right, it sounds cheesy. The way out is always through but it’s 9.5 times out of 10 it is! [laughs] Yeah, I think that most often what people come in with, right, are usually relationship issues, right, like even in with an organized, like a majority of people that I serve are organizers like hardcore, frontline organizers, underground organizers and a lot of what happens, it's like, “yeah, but I was misunderstood here, where I didn't step into my power here,” and it leads to beautiful, beautiful places and spaces when done gently and correctly, right, and when held with this very conscious, politicized frame, we can start to…like oven mitts, right, like kind of just gently…it’s kind of just like gently lifting a person up and like gently energetically holding while they're sitting with this place and space of “I'm afraid to be seen.” “I'm afraid to speak up” or “I'm being misunderstood” or there has been some sort of harm done or “I'm lost.”  

And with this lost feeling, in my humble opinion, often comes this sense of wanting to be known and seen, fully seen, right, with a capital S, fully like whatever space that we’re occupying, this sense of I just kind of want to be…I want to be seen here. I want to be located here. And I think that part of this process for many people, again with the disconnect, does relate back to colonization. Yeah. And I'm not making this up. I mean literally, I mean, part of what colonization has done, and I don't want it to be a symptom checklist, [Bianca: Right.] which is an issue, but it has formed this sort of cerebral, metaphorical, as well as physical disconnect between a person and their possible community, their possible places of being loved. It's allowing oneself to fully be seen in all of that messiness, right? We don't want to be seen in messiness. We want to be seen as “good”. I hate that word. Right? What is good or bad? F the binaries, right? [Bianca: Yes.] So, you know with this goodness I enjoy helping people pull back the layers to look at. Well, what if you're not good? Okay, we're going to use that word “good”. We’ll use the word good if you want to use that one. What would it look like to be messy, Bianca? I'm just using your name. Right? Like what would it be like to not show up with a full face of makeup, if that's what some people...right? [Bianca: Mhm!] What would it look like to talk about your white identity? Your part white identity. What would it look like not to always say the right thing or to not always be super prepared or not to always know or to be exhausted? What would it be like to rest without rationale, reasoning, or anything to do and I think that we know that capitalism and the way that the structures are set up create this inability to rest.  

And so oftentimes, the education then goes back to “well, you're blaming yourself.” But what about this 9 to 5? What about…and I start to lead individuals, right, sort of like on a canoe through a process of looking at systems in a very tangible, understandable way. Looking at how all of these systems are interacting in a nexus to work together and to feed each other and to continue to feed the top one to two percent of the population. And we have conversations about this and how it affects their grandmothers’ knees, on how it affects their father’s asthma, right, like again with the humanizing and the highlighting of how these systems continue to eat at us. So, I would say, although we started out talking about like, you know being seen and loved but it's the same thing. Like, how can you fully allow yourself to step into love and be seen when we're still very much operating from a system that is telling us we're only worth our labor, or our degrees, or what we can carry on our backs.  

So, for me, they're always deeply intertwined, and I think it's always beautiful, you know, to take out—I enjoy taking out—well I used to, but now virtually, like, you know, taking out a big piece of paper and creating this like trauma timeline, prepping, you know, a person I'm working with in advance, but looking at the ways that individually, as well as culturally, and ancestrally, that we have been violated. You know and then looking at the ways “well, maybe that's why I'm having a difficult time trusting now. Maybe that's why I'm having a really difficult time being present here in this space or being in this class…? or what have you. Yeah.  

Bianca: Yeah, or like speaking up or finding the courage to like, demand that I'm treated better or whatever else shows up and I think it really, it definitely, for me, hearing you speak definitely connects to the conversation we had about grief were there, in my experience, you know, grieving like the death of my first relationship on the planet, my mother, and how that like nobody could have told me what that was going to feel like. It really like just shook me at my core and also, people have really high expectations for people who are grieving and it's wild to me when it happens and I see it still occurring as people are grieving and mourning during the COVID pandemic and you know, can you talk a little bit about what it looks like for the people who are wanting to show up for the grieving person or for the mourning process or ritual because I think, my experience has been that some people think that grief is contagious and so they'll run away and they don’t want to be near it but also some people are just stunned, they don't know what to do. And so, what are some of the ways that you could share with people who want to support those who are grieving or mourning? What are ways that can help people show up and like challenge this idea that grief is contagious and it's not, it's not really a human experience. [Jennifer: Yeah.] What are your thoughts about that?  

Jennifer: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, ask. Yeah?  Like, I honestly, the number one thing that I feel like I've been saying, like a little parrot, because there's been so much death and loss, right, and so many people that are coming in like, “my mom is dying” and “this is happening, this is happening.” My own family members have had two people pass away in the last month and a half. Like it's a constant, a constant, I feel like grief has been pervasive, particularly for Black-bodied people. Right? Like I mean, I think it's just it's heavy it's everywhere and so asking, you know, asking, “what do you need?” And I know that those of us in our circle, we know what that means, but if not like what can I do? When's the last time you ate? You know, how is your sleep doing? Hey, do you need me to wash your clothes for you? Let me come by. Can I come by for a few minutes? I think that there's a misconception that folks that are grieving want to be like, left alone.  

I mean, there is this dichotomy of occasionally feeling like there's moments of coming back into oneself. And then this space of suddenly “oh that just reminded me of blank, said person”, you know, or this color, this smell, this scent, the Chanel Number Five that someone's wearing, is reminding me of my abuelita and I'm like, “whoa tears,” right? Like how do I, “oh” and then as a friend I think, or as a partner, as a you know co-parent, as you know, another person, another human, I think it's important to pay attention, you know, to notice that it's past a week or even past a month that a person will still be grieving. To check in even months later, you know, to hold space for that, to understand if they ask, do you want to come to my birthday celebration? Sometimes holidays, birthdays really can be very triggering for individuals that are in a grieving process.  

And another thing is I think, just like encouraging movement. I know with one of my closest friends that have just recently lost their mother suddenly and unexpectedly, maybe a couple months ago. I make it my business, and this might sound ridiculous. But you know, we have busy lives. I literally put it in my calendar like every few days or every week, depending, not to be too annoying. Just like, “bruh, love you.” You know, I'm thinking of you, right or sending random pictures of us or “oh, when's the last time you’ve gone outside? Let's do our walk.” “I don't really feel like moving.” “Okay. Well, I'm gonna come by and I’m gonna come upstairs.”  

You know, just yeah, also making sure that I'm not speaking, any of us are speaking, in these patronizing tones, right, like well, this is really hard like when appropriate but sometimes, folks just don't want to be treated as though they have this like, grief letter on them, The Scarlet Letter, right? Like just, just a sense of “hey, I'm here”, asking if they want to stay over more, you know, even if they're not children and I would say for the children and the youth, particularly grieving during this time, really paying attention to their play, right, play is one of the ways that children connect and I think it's really essential, not just for us adults, we need play as well. But youth, children, teenagers need play and that is the way that some of that trauma is processed very organically and so play therapy is—shout out to all my play therapists—like it is, it is the MVP and adults need play therapy, as well, in my humble opinion. So, I would say get on the floor with kids. Like even though they're fine. They're okay. We're not seeing anything. But then, we're the ones that see years later, after a loss, or after a massive world event, that maybe there's a lot of bedwetting or maybe there's a lot of aggressive behavior and we'll ask what has happened in the last few years. “Ah, nothing, you know, a couple years ago, their grandfather passed away and they were close to them, but they were fine right after”, so I think it's also educating ourselves that grief is not linear the same way sexuality and gender is not, right, that it's not, it is not linear. It's not just like okay, I'm mourning, depressive. Now, I'm feeling happy. You're feeling better. Oh, now forget…No. It is this twirl, it is this figure-eight, it is consistently contracting and expanding and when in doubt, ask. Ask. Right, because I do feel that it is personal. Yeah. 

Bianca: Yeah, and using language to connect to each other, you know, and that's something I usually tell people a lot about as well, as like, when my mom, who died of Alzheimer's, the term ‘Latinx’ was really becoming popular. I would have never said that term to my mama. She wouldn't remember that like, so I'm going to use language that's going to bring us closer together and not pull us further apart and I think sometimes it is as simple as like asking or inquiring and I really love the examples that you offered us because I, too, do those things, you know, I have the date of my friend's mother's death day in my calendar and, and other important moments like that. And also like, I was one of the first people of my friends who lost a parent, a lot of my other friends that lost a parent when they were teenagers and they were like, you know, 15, 20 years from that and they just had a completely different experience. And yeah, it's a constant shapeshifter and it's also a really human like this is the circle of life, you know, like death, change. We know that those are some of the guarantees. And so, I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about what is your vision or hope for the future of therapeutic practices that are embracing a decolonial praxis?  

Jennifer: Yeah, my hope and vision and what I'm starting to see opened up are that therapists, social workers, people that are practicing clinicians, really begin to do their own investigative work first. So hence, what I believe I specialize in, right, is helping people get to the root of their emotion and investigate and get curious about it. So, I'm hoping that we're seeing this huge push to not just be overwhelmed and inundated with cases and managed care. But rather, and we're starting to see a shift, really personalizing, we don't have to be a blank slate and people get to decide who they want to work with as well. Right? Like folks have that agency and they have that ability to make the decision to say, “yeah, I don't really kind of like her politics around blah blah blah”, not that we want to share everything, but you know, it's a reciprocal process as we give and take and you know, we give support and receive support, so I'd like to see the humanization of therapists, number one. [Bianca: Mhm.] 

Number two, I believe that it is also moving towards this shift in moving away from such a strong medical model. Although, I want to say that there are places, spaces, cases, reasons, and rationale why having a diagnosis can be really helpful. However, I have seen few and far between, managed care is a beast and a system within itself. So, I think that we're going to see more healing in mental health and therapy as opposed to treatment and as opposed to this very strict pathologizing of intense, normal human emotion and the range of human emotion. I think that we are going to see, again with reclamation because part of decolonizing work is not just the re-education and the questioning, but also the reclamation of what was. So, we're not talking, I'm not speaking of appropriation, at all in any way shape or form, but actually people coming back into their own ancestral ways. Like, my white-identified folks out there, right, like prior to becoming white, you were Irish, Italian, Czechoslovakian. And so, it's like, there it is again, the reclamation, also the reclamation of your Druid ways and healing methods and methodologies, right? Pagans, Wiccans, right?  

So, the belief that this deep ancestral healing can only come from people of color, I believe, is erroneous [Bianca: Mhm.] and very short-sighted, right? I do think that there are multiple ways of knowing and understanding but, it first has to require a lot of internal digging and understanding of the ways in which privilege shows up. So, I think that we're going to see a lot more use of indigenous ways of knowing, our own indigenous ways of knowing. I think that we are going to take also an approach of really being first-line responders much more.  

I think that this pandemic and the pandemic and the violence on Black lives. We have continued to see this massive shift and movement towards the importance of mental health and not just when there's a problem, but all the time. And so, I think some of us have been thriving in it, but particularly folks of color that have also been therapists that we’re like yeah, we're like, [Bianca: Yeah.] this is what we've been doing. We've been trying to take care of ourselves because these systems took us apart. These systems took us apart. And here we are bringing ourselves back together again, every Friday like Humpty Dumpty.  

So, I think that we're also going to see this shift towards less of a police state, especially when it comes to social workers. There's a lot of removing children from families, deciding who gets to be where, so I'd like to see and we're starting to see, social work, counseling, psychiatry, psychology come together and also hold the boards accountable. Right? And looking at the ways in which many of us have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Yeah, if we did not have funding from families and did not have that privilege and so holding these systems and these boards accountable for getting to decide who gets a license when we've already had this much amount of coursework. Who gets to decide to do this, who can practice in New Jersey when you only have a license in Indiana, right, who can…it's simply another way to gain more money and to run us ragged. So, I think that there's going to be a reckoning of the various boards and I think it has to start internally, first.  

Mental health professionals across the board have to ask, why are there babies in the water? Right? Like why are our kids dying? Why are we not well? Why are the mental health rates so high but if we're so burned out and we're so pushed to the limit with capitalism fatigue and compassion fatigue, then how can we ever stop to look down the river and be like, “oh there’s systems at play here.” This isn't an individual's problem. They're not just depressed because you know, they broke up with someone, they're also depressed because they're working this many jobs. It's impacted their relationship. Their mother is undocumented. They're worried about ABC and D. So, I think that this will be the norm and there will be new systems, new schools or of unlearning, I would like to call it. 

Bianca: Mm-hmm! I just want to invite our audience to just revel in Jennifer's, you know, vision for our future. It's beautiful. It's stunning. It's holistic and human. So, I thank you so, so much. This has been such a joy. I know people are going to come back to this and re-watch it again and again in the future and we're excited for your book in the future as well, and I'm here to conjure with you all the things that we want to have for our whole selves to be here. So, thank you so much, Dr. Jennifer Mullan. It was great to be with you. 

Jennifer: Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, Bianca for being such an amazing steward of this conversation. I appreciate you and thank you for the tech team and everyone else on the ground. We appreciate you.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  
 
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