Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

Today is a conversation about healing by first acknowledging the collective trauma that so many of us are holding in our bodies, a lot of it intergenerational, meaning, we've inherited this trauma and it did not necessarily begin with us in this lifetime.

Simon Wolff: When we look at today's world,  what we're living inside of is the result of centuries of the cycle of violence. Trauma begets trauma and it's sad, cuz it could be so different.

Part of our work is to actually let ourselves touch into the grief of what is happening, to the planet, to people, to animals, to, [00:01:00] land. So much of what perpetuates the system is a nFumbness, and a dissociation and numbing out through consumption and numbing out through addiction.

And I get it because it's all super overwhelming and painful. And so at the end of the day, we're all trying to survive as we also try to metabolize the news and stay somewhat, aware of what's going on. And it's really overwhelming, but we definitely have an opportunity to, like, engage with these practices so that we can stay present and not look away.

Emily Race-Newmark: You just heard from Simon Wolff, a politicized healer and ritualist, who will be sharing a bit more about what it can look like to process, metabolize, and transmute these trauma and grief experiences through working with our benevolent ancestors as guides.

For some listeners, a relationship with our ancestors may be very culturally alive and resonant for you, and for others, it may feel a bit out [00:02:00] there, or "woo".

This conversation stands in the perspective that our relations with our ancestors are just one of the many relationships that we have an opportunity to connect with, in service of radical care and collective liberation.

In other words, if this feels a little foreign to you, you're not alone, and we hope that through this conversation, you are opened up through curiosity, through noticing what feels alive and resonant to you, to space that feels familiar, comforting andd safe.

In a moment, you'll hear more from Simon on how they are personally supporting people with this process, how they got into this work and where we may begin if this is resonating or sparking curiosity within us today. 

Our conversation was originally recorded in May of 2023.

Simon Wolff: I tend to introduce myself with various identifiers, which, I feel like are important cuz they locate me in time and space and in the politics of the world. And [00:03:00] so I identify as a queer, trans, non-binary, white Ashkenazi jew., I identify as, living with disabilities, as neurodivergent. And I'm part of the Ashkenazi diaspora, living on Anishnabe land, known as Wabi, otherwise known as Detroit, Michigan on Turtle Island. 

I understand myself to be a politicized healer. which I know we're gonna get into that, what, what that means. But just to say I find myself at the intersections of, anti-oppression work and healing and earth-based ritual.

And, it's a very juicy place to be. 

And I guess I felt kind of a non-negotiable drive to,, put energy toward justice work from an early age. I didn't really know how to do that and so it took me, the better part of my twenties and into my thirties [00:04:00] to kind of understand how to move in the world, with awareness of my privilege as well as start to understand also how I have been impacted by oppression and how my ancestors also live in that complexity of assimilating into whiteness, for example, as Jews. And also experiencing anti-Semitism.

 As I became an anti-racism organizer and facilitator, which is something that I,, found myself, doing, in the early 2010s, eventually, it was just a matter of time before I've personally,, found healing justice, which is a term that, has been, coined and created by women of color, who have been a part of movements for liberation for many decades. 

But I found myself wanting to, , work at this intersection of not just understanding these, , oppressive forces, but practicing how do we heal from the impacts of them.

And so that's really where I [00:05:00] find myself being a politicized healer is it's more than just individual healing. And it's more than having this analysis of oppression. It's, how do we bring those things together? How do we bring healing to movement, and how do we bring movement to healing?

 I experienced this sort of burnout, at the end of 2017 I experienced basically this process of being shown a path out of the woods, or maybe it was a path into the woods, as it were. 

And it was like just all these synchronicities started happening.

A friend sent me a podcast episode of Taya Shere talking about trauma and prayer. And then I looked into Taya's work and discovered that she founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and that she had this course called Jewish Lineage Repair.

 I felt like I was drinking from this source of just pure nourishment. And so I proceeded, to do ancestral healing work with her for two years before then becoming a practitioner [00:06:00] of the particular modality that she is trained in, which is ancestral medicine.

And at that same time I was in this space of knowing that I needed to understand trauma better. I knew some basics about the nervous system, cause I had been studying yoga for many years as a white person who was like seeking some sort of framework for healing.

 There's a reason why I was attracted to yoga because I didn't know what to do to heal. I didn't have a connection to my ancestral practices at that time.

I started to feel into like, what is this thing called somatics and how do I learn more about it? And so I ended up studying somatic experiencing. And that has been a journey of really learning about the nuts and bolts of the nervous system and how to actually be in right relationship with my own body in a way that many of us are socialized not to be just out of survival and out of our conditioning of don't listen to your body, just keep [00:07:00] producing, keep pushing forward, keep performing, whatever the thing is. 

It's really sort of necessary for capitalism to keep going, for us to be disconnected from our bodies, right.

So I basically dug into this ancestral healing work and this somatic healing work at the same time. My mentor in the somatic experiencing world has been Sage Hayes and then have also had other kind of intuitive healers that I've worked with throughout the, last five years. But I'm so grateful for my mentors because I was lost at that time and I needed guidance. And they were there. And I'm so grateful that my ancestors, dropped those crumbs for me to find.

Emily Race-Newmark: I'm really getting the visual of the ancestral guidance to that point. Was that a connection you've always had from the beginning? 

or 

Simon Wolff: I didn't have a connection to my ancestors other than having had a really close relationship with my dad's mom and feeling her presence and love with me after she died when I was a teenager. 

And then [00:08:00] generally having a sense of the fact that I had Jewish ancestors and some amount of cultural resonance with reformed Judaism growing up and knowing that there was some kind of ancestral connection there.

But it really wasn't until probably 2016, it was the Allied Media Conference in Detroit where there was a workshop led by another ancestral medicine practitioner named Langston Khan. They were offering a workshop that was about creating an ancestral reverence practice. And I was like, what?

Like, say what? Like, I didn't know that was a thing that you could do, you know? And that was really this eye-opening, mind opening, heart opening experience, in the midst of this conference. And I think that maybe primed me for then being in this inquiry of, what else is possible?

And then working with Taya, it has been a process of de assimilation work, decolonizing work because, you know, growing up I, I didn't feel a whole [00:09:00] lot of spiritual nourishment from reformed Judaism. I felt cultural kinship. I felt a sense of belonging. I felt a sense of like, safety within my temple community.

And especially cuz I grew up in a small town where there weren't a lot of Jews. So, you know, there was definitely like a sense of that being a cultural home. But it wasn't until I started to lean into this work with Taya, with my own earth loving, earth honoring, body honoring ancestors, that I started to put the pieces together, that there is actually more that my ancestors also had earth and body-based ways of being that are not all that dissimilar from other cultural traditions, right? If you look at the indigenous cultures of the world, including European indigenous cultures, they're gonna be earth-based and body-based.

And so it was a way of having this aha moment of, oh, my ancestors also worshiped [00:10:00] trees and water and land, and knew how to steward those things and knew how to be in relationship and in dialogue with them. 

And then I leaned into the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and it was this whole other aspect of, oh, and Judaism can include divine, feminine centered prayer and ritual.

It doesn't have to just be this patriarchal orientation to God or to spirituality. And so those are some of the entry points where I started to reconnect with the ancestors in an intentional way.

Emily Race-Newmark: I do wanna actually hear a bit more about the offerings you do have. How would you describe these vessels, as you name it, and what arises inside of them?

Simon Wolff: Mm-hmm the bulk of what I am facilitating these days is ancestral healing work, and I primarily work with Jews, although not exclusively based on the approach of ancestral medicine. And it looks like dropping in [00:11:00] with people in a very richly safe way.

So I again, start with that opening prayer that I offered earlier and then facilitate some grounding,, some embodied practice. I invite folks to call in support from, any benevolent and helpful powers from the more than human world. And then there's sort of , a process of clearing And protecting the space.

From there it's a process of supporting people to come into relationship with ancestral guides whose spirits are in a good place, whose spirits are benevolent and well. 

You might think of an elder grandmother who, was in right relationship with her body, with other bodies, with the land. And is able to provide really solid, reliable, trustworthy support.

 My role is essentially to hold the container for my clients to cultivate safe intimacy [00:12:00] with their well ancestors for the sake of remembering how to do that and being able to, receive their love and experience that level of support in a way that may not have ever been present for them. 

Sometimes my experience is that our ancestors can provide us with a particular type of support and care and love that we don't really have a reference point for based on intergenerational trauma. It's really an attachment healing experience for a lot of people of , oh, I didn't know that I could have a trustworthy grandfather. I didn't know that that's what healthy masculinity feels like, for example, which is like, you know, pretty common.

Then it's a process of collaborating with the guide to then bring healing down the line. And so it's a really beautiful, really moving process.

I feel really honored to facilitate this work and I find that it's very transformative for my [00:13:00] clients and it has been very transformative for me because it awakens this whole dimension that we often don't know that we have access to.

Emily Race-Newmark: Right. I hear you on this piece of the safety that must be created there. it feels like it's so intentional and there must be trust built on so many

Simon Wolff: Mm.

Emily Race-Newmark: And yeah, feel free to not answer this question if there's a confidentiality issue, but I am curious, what are some examples so folks could maybe, feel more grounded in what this feels or looks like.

Simon Wolff: This is not alluding to any one particular, situation or client. But a lot of it has to do with, displacement from land or, having to leave home. And a lot of it has to do with, violence, different wars that have happened throughout history and what that has done to people in terms of their spiritual wellness.

It has to do a lot of times with unmetabolized grief. So for example, with the Holocaust, when you have a genocide and mass killings [00:14:00] on that scale, there's no way that all those lives can be honored appropriately, with the Mourners Kaddish for example. And my colleague Jo Kent Katz, talks a lot about the, importance of the Mourners Kaddish as a practice for honoring all of those whose deaths didn't get honored in the way that our ancestors have taught us how to honor death. 

So it's, often these big troubles that have happened that resulted in disconnection, right? Disconnection from God, from ancestors, from earth or from land , from body, disconnection from each other, right? Distrusting each other, not knowing, who to trust. 

 So part of the work is to listen for what the wounds are, but also reconnect with oh, well, turns out before X, Y or Z happened this line is all about joy and all about, [00:15:00] laughter and all about celebration and all about reverence and dancing and singing. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm.

Yeah, you're talking earlier about under the context of the oppressive systems that are interconnected and at play, we may experience symptoms of anxiety or depression, or like these other feelings, so when someone comes to work with you, are there kind of the first things they may be experiencing?

Simon Wolff: It can be sort of a range. You know, sometimes it's people just having a curiosity and they're like, I don't have a relationship with my ancestors and I want to cultivate that line of communication. 

And sometimes it's something really intense in terms of a mental or a physical illness or some combination thereof, and the person might have a sense that it's not just theirs; that there's some other bigger body of trauma that is impacting them and [00:16:00] manifesting through these different symptoms, trying to get their attention.

 A lot of what the work is about, is providing relief to the client by actually creating a sense of boundedness, so that the client's body is not being unintentionally lended to the trauma body of the lineage, which can just happen for any number of reasons, including that we just don't know better than to, feel open in that way.

We have to learn how to have certain levels of protection, not as a way of othering them or cutting them off; it's just more like as a human being that's alive right now, it's not possible for my body to metabolize that level of trauma

Emily Race-Newmark: right.

Simon Wolff: and it's not helping them or me if I'm constantly depleted where, my nervous system is constantly being strained in that way,.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm. Wow. So I've never heard that described in such a way, like creating that boundary. And thank you so much for offering that for folks. 

[00:17:00] We'll transition into that vision, because all of these systems are dying and ending and here we can dream around what could be born next, we're in that liminal transitional space. How are we resourcing or, taking care of ourselves in this in between space as straddle two worlds, you know? 

Simon Wolff: I yearn for, long for, envision a world where we have the most beautiful aspects of the ways that our ancestors lived, before these bigger troubles.

I envision a world where literally all humans care about the earth and take care of it. Not just theoretically, but literally are connecting with the earth every day and tending it and listening to it and being in dialogue with it, practicing reciprocity. Nod to Robin Wall Kemmerer, who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass.

A world where our children and our elders and everyone in between are in a like, a reciprocal and in right relationship, with land and with water and with the more than human [00:18:00] world and with the ancestors. And so it's really an animist vision, meaning an earth and body honoring way of life. 

What I really long for is, a world where the new normal or the baseline is secure attachment, where people feel a sense of belonging for who they are authentically, where they don't have to hide or mask or contort who they are in order to access resources and in order to feel a sense of belonging. 

A lot of the work that I do is helping people to practice secure attachment with the ancestors, with the earth, with one's own authentic truth. And, that is helping us to remember and recover the birthright that I think we have, and the way that I think we were originally designed to be as relational animals.

It might seem a little like a fantasy, but I don't wanna let go of it because I do feel like there's a difference between fantasy and vision. And I think that, it [00:19:00] is a reasonable and meaningful vision that we cultivate a world together as the old world composts, where we are building our capacity to see ourselves and to see each other, and to remember how to be in right relationship and remember how to, do healthy intimacy with all of our relations.

Emily Race-Newmark: Hmm. This is not the first time you've mentioned healthy intimacy or safe intimacy. I'm curious, how would you define, or what's an example of 

Simon Wolff: Mm-hmm. 

Emily Race-Newmark: look like or feel like?

Simon Wolff: I have come to understand that healthy intimacy does not include non-consensual dominance, for example. It doesn't include power over.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Simon Wolff: It really is about mutual attunement, mutual care the ability to have your truth be heard and have your truth be honored.

And for the other person to have their truth be heard and honored and, this goes beyond the human world as well. [00:20:00] Part of this is helping children to practice consent with the plant world. , if you wanna harvest something, ask for permission, if you wanna pick that dandelion, , can you ask that dandelion if it's okay for you to harvest it, and there's gonna be an answer. Sometimes, we might doubt ourselves of whether or not we can actually hear the response from the more than human world, but it's there. It's about remembering and restoring that channel of listening.

That's really what it feels like to me is , there's a sense , of receptivity. There's a sense of humility, there's a sense of reverence, there's a sense of respect, and ultimately there's an embodiment of love, you know? I think most people. Sadly don't know what love is and don't have an experience , of what that really is .

 I think love really is about this ability to , be accepted and be embraced for exactly who you are. And I want to be in a world and I wanna help create a [00:21:00] world where everyone feels a sense of worthiness of that love and ability to , give and receive love in reciprocal ways.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. And brought back to what you said around that secure attachment, which again, is so powerful as a vision and an image to imagine that on a, collective level and I can, feel for myself , oh, there's moments when I've had secure attachment, and I'm trying to root into what that really feels like.

And it is that. Just like, ah, like a deep sense of like, okay, I can be, just

Simon Wolff: Yes. Right, right. Yeah. And Dr. Gabor mate talks a lot about this in terms of authenticity and belonging. If you have to sacrifice your authenticity in order to belong, that's not actually belonging. Right? And so when we're talking about belonging, it's where it's not conditional. Where we don't have to give up some part of ourselves in order to receive love. That's actually not love, [00:22:00] you know?

And what would the world look like if we all had permission to actually be our true selves? Because so many people, myself included in terms of past versions of myself, have negotiated , oh, I have to be this in order to be accepted or to receive love and yeah, that doesn't work actually.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. If this is the vision, it feels like there are skill sets and things to practice in order to get there. 

So what might some of those practices or rituals, or ways of being look like to help get to this vision?

Simon Wolff: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, that the ancestral healing work, is really powerful in that way because our, well ancestors know about secure attachment. They might not call it that, because that might be more of a term of modernity for those of us who don't have it innately.

So I think the ancestors can , help us practice it. A lot of what I have experienced and what my clients have experienced is this feeling of , oh [00:23:00] my gosh, I've never felt this much love coming at me from anybody.

Emily Race-Newmark: Wow.

Simon Wolff: Right? , again, there's not a reference point for it. And that's not to say that our parents didn't love us, but there's a way in which intergenerational trauma has played out such that a lot of what we all experience is some sort of distorted version of, love or some variation of insecure attachment.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Simon Wolff: Cuz our parents didn't get what they need and their parents didn't get what they, you know, not personal. It's not like we're blaming anybody, but we're saying, this is the nature of how this works. Yeah. And so,, the ancestors are a really beautiful dimension to practice with because we get to feel into what that level of unconditional love feels like. And it helps our system to identify it and to cultivate it and to have that become the new baseline. 

I also think that we can practice with the more than human world. I frankly am an unapologetic tree hugger.

I know that's kind of a cliche, but I feel [00:24:00] so good when I hug a tree, you know? And I try to do it consensually, but I feel the tree hugging back. , I feel a little bit bashful saying that, but I'm practicing essentially, with trees.

And when I experience that, it helps my nervous system to register that I am worthy of love. And that makes me that much more able to recognize and receive love when it's offered to me from a human being. And so practicing with the ancestors and practicing with the, trees, and practicing with my garden. And tending them and allowing them to tend me is again, helping my nervous system recover and helping me to be that much more skilled, as you say, and capable of then , cultivating that with other humans.

Emily Race-Newmark: I'm loving how it ties back to the work that you're focusing on at this moment, which is that ancestral relationship and connection and I see that [00:25:00] visual of almost reaching back to move forward, 

Simon Wolff: Yes, exactly. 

Emily Race-Newmark: better than that, but Yeah.

Simon Wolff: Yeah. No, I think that's really true. And somatics also like, is, is an important part because, there's a beautiful centering practice of the generative somatics lineage where we center in the length of our spine and in our dignity, we center in our, dimension of width, which is where we connect to other bodies, other beings, which can include the more than human world.

And then where we center in our depth, which includes the future, the kind of forward, stepping into the unknown from a place of being grounded in our values and in our commitments and our vision. And then also having our ancestors at our backs. Right. And so that does really track with what you're saying of moving forward from center and from a place of being rooted in where we come from.

Emily Race-Newmark: Wow, that's, I love that. Thank you

Simon Wolff: Yeah.

So, 

Emily Race-Newmark: So, people are entering this conversation from a number of different [00:26:00] places and spaces. but I do want to offer a couple actions or inquiries people can leave with. Whatever feels resonant to them, they can start putting into practice.

If they were to just take a action in this moment, if they were to pause the podcast right here do something, what would that invitation be?

Simon Wolff: Go outside,

Emily Race-Newmark: Okay. I wanna 

Simon Wolff: go out. 

Emily Race-Newmark: setup outside. Yeah.

Simon Wolff: Yeah, I mean, go outside and talk to a neighbor or talk to a tree. Or talk to an animal. Or talk to a plant. I joke that it's like truly, the invitation that comes to mind is Practice intimacy, practice relationality, I call it recovering sacred relationality.

 That doesn't have to happen outside. Some people might not be able to go outside, but even if it's from inside, can you look at the tree or the plant or whatever it is that might be a living being outside of your window and can you acknowledge that it's a [00:27:00] living being, and can you offer it some gratitude and some reverence and allow its medicine to land in your heart as well, you know?

 That level of practice, that level of moment to moment, day to day, intimacy is, like adrienne maree brown talks about fractals. It starts at home, right? It starts in our relationship to our own space and the land that we live on, right?

How we relate to one thing is how we relate to everything,

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Simon Wolff: From there, that informs the level of resilience that we feel and the level of care and commitment to our neighbors and to our communities and to the world, right? It grows from that place of literally our backyards.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm. 

And Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you just wanted to name?

Simon Wolff: Just acknowledging deep gratitude to all of my teachers and mentors and all the lineages that have informed my work [00:28:00] and deep gratitude to my ancestors and to your ancestors and all the teachers and mentors that have informed your journey and all the people who have contributed and will contribute to this podcast and this episode in particular.

And big gratitude and appreciation for everyone doing their best to show up for themselves and for the world during this perilous and transformative time.

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for all of that gratitude. I wanted to echo, I, really do feel grateful for and present to the ancestors that have guided this conversation and who are with us for this. And those who will be in contact with the living beings and their lineage as a result of this conversation.

Right? 

Simon Wolff: Mm. Mm-hmm. 

Emily Race-Newmark: that are going to blossom. Thank you for your part in opening up those doors and I really appreciate everything that you are and everything that you're doing. 

Thank you Simon, for being with us today.

Simon Wolff: Thank you so much, [00:29:00] Emily, my honor.

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. If Simon's messages spoke to you and you want to dive deeper, here are a couple ways to do so.

You can sign up for the This is How We Care newsletter, where each week you'll receive practices and prompts in your inbox from Simon and other guests, all with the intention of making it accessible to start embodying the world that Simon is dreaming of today.

You can also connect with Simon directly by following their Instagram or visiting their website, where you can reach out or book a discovery call if working together speaks to you. Both of these are linked over at thisishowwecare.com in the show notes of this episode. 

Please consider sharing this episode with the folks in your life that you think it would resonate with or who would be inspired by this conversation. Through sharing, you are helping us to connect more people to what they care about, to see a vision for what's possible, and to take small steps to embodying what truly matters to them, aligning their life with their values. Through this, we are co creating a world that [00:30:00] embodies collective care.

This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Anne, with editing from Andrew Salamone, and music by Eric Weisberg.