Welcome Kaira Jewel Lingo, author of We Were Made for These Times and coauthor of Healing Our Way Home. Kaira shares her journey from a communal upbringing and monastic life with Thich Nhat Hanh, her work in nurturing community, and her exploration of racial identity in spiritual practice.
Her gentle guided practice is beautiful and completely original. We notice the experience of our skin - its age, its protective and permeable nature, its colour, and its history. Afterwards, Tasha shares how profound this was for her, feeling her mixed white and Black heritage, which at times can feel like a battlefield playing out on her own skin.
Our conversation afterward is frank and open: on race and ancestry, on how every person - regardless of skin color - has a role to play in healing the collective trauma of racism and colonialism. We talk about the larger “skin” of community - the role community has to play in offering support and safety, and yet also how hard that can be to find in a culture whose values so often separate and isolate. Is this changing? There are signs it may be. As Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, there is no more noble task than true community building.
Hopefully, this podcast can be a space for community - a place where we can explore together the many different ways of being human :)
Let us know in the comments how this practice was for you!
The Afterparty
This week, we discuss Kaira’s powerful authenticity — revolutionary to think of gentleness as being powerful, yet it is! Then Tasha shares her honest thoughts on how Jeff makes space for BIPOC conversations but sometimes seems to hover on the outside, unsure. We talk about how everyone is affected by racism, how we all have skin in the game and need to show up without our masks - whether it’s a mask of distrust and anger or a mask of guilt and confusion. So healing. Then we talk about ADHD, because … well… we’re ADHD!
*In an effort to sustain our antics, the Afterparty will move behind ye old paywall soon!
Find Kaira Online: www.kairajewel.com
A Resource for community building: The CEC community activation kit
That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.
Love always,
🧘🏽♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼♂️
Damn, this podcast brought up some stuff! I am half Swedish and half Ojibwe et al. (a lot of that little "et al." bit being more Swedish), and I am, as of late, beginning to realize how much confusion and pain I have internalized from my Ojibwe side. A ton of this comes from the fact that I am one of the (if not the) palest people I know, and my dark hair and eyes are not dark enough to be unmistakably Native. I grew up extremely poor, but I did not grow up on the reservation. A good week meant we could afford ketchup to put on our onion sandwiches (to this day, I cannot eat raw onions), some weeks, I would have just ketchup sandwiches--and if we had mustard, that was a real treat! But I did not grow up on the reservation. I grew up judged and bullied because, to my family's dismay, I was always proud to tell people I was part Native, so a lot of kids weren't allowed to play with dirty and now-even-lower-than-white-trash me. But I did not grow up on the reservation. I have always sort of felt like I didn't belong anywhere (it didn't help that my mom has never wanted or liked me) and cried throughout this meditation. I am finding it hard to stop because I am realizing how much I hate my skin (and me). I listened to a podcast on Substack by Zaid Ishmail yesterday about the importance of understanding how one's cultural upbringing can help create one's basis of imposter syndrome, and now this. I think the Universe is trying to tell me I need to work on something! Thank you for yet another great podcast and for talking about ADHD because that is in my alphabet soup too. You guys seriously crack me up! 😂
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. ❤️ So much trauma and pain and resilience and survival. I had no idea you were mixed! It’s wonderful to know we have that confusion in common too 😂
I will definitely be digging more into this subject in our Bodhisavage sits soon. Making sense of and integrating the mixed-person experience has been the ongoing work of my lifetime. I think we’re incredibly lucky to get to walk this path, but damn… it ain’t easy 😅 thanks as always, for taking the time to share your practice with us 🙏🏽
It's funny because I'm 47 years old and I still feel like I didn't earn the title of being called a mixed person. I just feel like whatever I have gone through pales (literally) in comparison to everyone else. Thank you so much for your kind words, they mean a lot! (Now you've got me tearing up again. 😂) ❤️
I listened to Jo Confino’s interview with her on “The Way Out is In” - very thought-provoking and eye-opening, in a great way. Can’t wait for this!