Jan 16 2024 54 mins 3
Truth Fairy and Dr. T welcome Cami Barton, author and practitioner dedicated to social change through embodied practices, to the show. Truth Fairy reads a poem on pain by Kahlil Gibran that emphasizes the intertwining of pain and joy, suggesting that embracing pain can lead to a deeper understanding of life, which highlights many of the themes of Cami’s work.
Cami discusses their work in psychedelic therapy, grief, pleasure, and drug policy, rooted in black feminism and harm reduction. They share personal experiences, including an abortion in 2017 that sparked the project for their upcoming book, "Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community". The book explores grief and healing rituals, drawing from Cami's journey and broader societal patterns.
The conversation delves into Cami's work in designing a master's program, teaching psychedelic therapy, and collaborating with MAPS to ensure accessibility to MDMA psychotherapy for marginalized communities. Truth Fairy and Dr. T discuss various aspects of Cami's expertise and personal journey, including childhood trauma and the surfacing of dissociated memories during their healing process. It is a meditation on grief and healing that holds deep insight to benefit all listeners.
“And so the Dagara people are indigenous to what we now call Burkina Faso in West Africa. And they have a very specific relationship to communal grief tending, where everyone in the community is expected to tend their grief in the communal ritual once a month because there's an understanding in their cosmology that unattended grief will actually become harm in the society. So rather than being taboo as it is in the West to grieve publicly and be with that, it's actually taboo to avoid your grief in the Dagara context.” - Cami
Resources discussed in this episode:
- On Pain by Kahlil Gibran
- “Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community” by Camille Sapara Barton
- Website: CamilleSaparaBarton.com
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