Becoming/Unstuck
Becoming/Unstuck tells the stories of internal paradigm shifts. Unsticking from old paradigms is the work of Becoming, or setting ourselves free. The process of Becoming Unstuck is individual, but universal. Everyone has their own story to tell, and this show is the table around which we gather together to share and listen. Here we illuminate that Becoming Unstuck is both journey and destination, process and result, the way Home and Home itself. These stories help us understand that the process of Becoming Unstuck isn't formulaic. It isn't neat and clean. You can't learn it from a book. You have to be willing to get dirty. This kind of education is embodied. It is dynamic and vibrant and messy. This show isn't one in which we cover up that mess because that mess is life, and what we are here to do is learn to live it.
Becoming/Unstuck
Acceptance is Not Giving Up with Carissa Singh
Carissa Singh is a sounding board for me. There aren't many folks at the intersection of mental health, collective liberation, and what I would call spirituality, but has many other names. Carissa is a therapist based in Seattle, and one of my favorite practitioners.
Carissa is also a bridge. She is three-heritages-in-one-body, and had to learn how to navigate being many-things-at-once from childhood. Since 2017, she has had a chronic invisible illness. She stands with one foot on either side of the chasm of an unfair system of labor, and in general thinks boxes are just too small for us. Not fitting in one place, specifically since her illness, has provided her with a wealth of discomfort that she has been able to use to liberate herself. She says: "Although I never would have asked for this experience, and, I don't know if I would have done things differently if I never could have had my [illness], it is a gift in that sense."
In this episode, she talks about how these experiences helped her validate herself, and that to gain more self trust, she had to accept that we aren't ever going to be the same person we are before our wounds. She says "I had to accept, to be more liberated, to be where I am now. We can accept and still keep fighting".