“Post-traumatic growth is a privilege and… we need some way to detail and describe [it] without glorifying or idealizing this idea of growth while still experiencing trauma” ~Cassie Walker

Bookmark this episode as the one with the Dungeons and Dragons reference and a Porterhouse steak metaphor. Seriously. No other guest has their way with tangents - or the status quo - quite like my good friend Cassie Walker. Such great fun to follow them down myriad rabbit holes as we discuss the intersectional journey of healing self while caring for others.

Cassie is a Black, queer activist and entrepreneur, and a life-affirming, sex-positive, kink-aware, tabletop role-playing nerd. Whew! “I am a deeply bizarre person in a very positive way,” they say. “I take pride in owning all my intersections and all my weirdnesses.”

Cassie’s impressive cred also includes their recent NARM™ master therapist designation. Who knew? Me. I knew. So, of course, our conversation delves into NARM-specific themes of complex trauma, attachment, and spiritual connection.

Listen, I may be in the driver’s seat of this podcast but Cassie’s taking this episode down roads less traveled, introducing us to the Odu, the sacred text of Ifá, a Yoruba religion from West Africa. As far afield as that may sound, this episode is never in danger of veering off-course, y’all. Instead, the detour leads us back to current events in this country, and the powerful narcissism that too often shapes parent/child relationships...and informs what has come to pass as “presidential” behavior.

To occupy so much intersectional real estate in 2020 is to simultaneously feel tenderness for and anger toward society at large. So, it’s about time someone occupies a space in which intersectional healing can safely and authentically take place.

“I am in the realm and in the business, literally now, of assisting [the] healing work,” Cassie says. “And so, that is the energy I embody. That is the energy that I have to exude and put forth - a healer's energy.” If someone from the paternalistic, pathological old guard has a problem with that, Cassie can always shove them down a rabbit hole.

Cassie Walker is a Black, queer, activist, entrepreneur, and NARM Master Therapist-in-Training located in Chicago, Illinois. They are also a table top role playing nerd and general strange human.

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