211 - Kenji Kuramitsu - Liberating Our Personal and Shared Histories From Shame
“If you think about the psychotherapy process, it’s not dissimilar from a meditation practice or a cultivation of an internal space.” - Kenji Kuramitsu
In prepping an episode for its final edit, I’m always astonished that the recording equipment has captured actual words (good ones!) rather than straight-up, high-frequency vibes. Seriously, my guests pulsate at such perceptive, heartfelt levels that I expect only aural soundscapes to emerge rather than actual conversation. I wouldn’t be mad about that, btw, but then we’d miss out on receiving the wisdom of folks like Kenji Kuramitsu, M.Div, LCSW. The two of us went spelunking in the deep caverns of generational trauma, shame, and resistance. We uncovered hard truths and a trove of healing opportunities.
As a mental health and spiritual care professional, Kenji draws on training in healthcare chaplaincy, group psychotherapy, and anti-racism consulting to provide care in clinical nonprofit and movement settings. His creative writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, so you know he’s got a firm grasp on the power of language. Our conversation connected the many dots between what has become divided and what has gone willfully unaddressed.
“If there is a hopefulness for me, it would be around the way that communities of affinity and shared membership [ ] are beginning to explore the haunted histories that we've been talking about and trying to make some real repair around them,” he says, reflecting on his own family’s trauma and the threads of repair woven throughout. He recalls visiting Manzanar in California, one of many concentration camps where Japanese Americans were forcibly detained during WWII. Members of Kenji’s own family were detained at a concentration camp called Tule Lake, also located in California. “It was a life-changing moment for me as a young person.” The experience sits alongside another “camp” memory: that of his grandfather’s career as a YMCA summer camp director creating access to nature for young people of color. “His work has been a guiding star for me,” says Kenji.
While the human spirit overwhelmingly leans toward the light, white supremacy and capitalism still muddy our efforts at restoration––especially those attempts made (or not) by white people. Again, Kenji is optimistic. “The more you and others are creating communities to have these kinds of radical conversations, effectively congruent conversations, the less I think it'll fall, consciously or not, on people of color to feel this kind of shame and discarding that we are so good at doing to ourselves sometimes.”
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
CWH112: Derrick Dawson - Dismantling Racism
CWH019: Sarah Suzuki - You’re Not a Damaged Product
RESOURCES
A Booklet of Uncommon Prayer: Collects for the Black Lives Matter Movement—and Beyond
NARM - NeuroAffective Relational Model
American Group Psychotherapy Association
Resmaa Menakem - Somatic Abolitionism
GUEST CONTACT INFO & BIO
Kenji Kuramitsu, LCSW, M.Div (he/him) is a mental health and spiritual care professional living in Chicago, IL. Kenji draws on training in health care chaplaincy, group psychotherapy, and antiracism consulting to provide care in clinical, nonprofit, and movement settings. His creative writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he is the author of "A Booklet of Uncommon Prayer: Collects for the #BlackLivesMatter Movement."
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