Discernment, Reclamation, and Navigating the Apocalypse with Richael Faithful

Jamee Pineda  0:15  
Hi, I'm Jamee Pineda and this is the decolonizing medicine podcast might hear my dog chewing her little bone in the background. Anyways, I am a queer non binary trans person. My ancestors are Tagalog and Chinoy my healing arts practice is located at fruit camp in Baltimore, Maryland. My guest today is Rachelle faithful. They are a black, conjurer, folk healer, shamanic practitioner, and cultural worker rooted in DC and Virginia. Since initiation in 2015, they have supported 1000s of kindred ancestors and spirits in spiritual direction, energy, medicine, divination, as well as magic and death to the ship. Their work has been featured in color lines, the route and other platforms. For Shall we have third mysticism into other work around Healing Justice, strategy, conflict transformation, movement lawyering and community organizing. Just for context, this episode was recorded on June 29 2022, right after the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Good morning Richael. How are you today?

Richael Faithful  1:42  
I'm doing as well as can be expected to. Yeah, how are you maintaining?

Jamee Pineda  1:49  
You know, a lot of shits really rough right now. But I'm finding my places of joy. I'm finding my places of connection and love. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there are spaces, right now, for me at least where those things don't those things. They have to coexist together. That is just, it's just how it is? Yeah. So my first question for you, which I guess is relevant to what I just spoke about, is how did you come into healing work?

Richael Faithful  2:27  
I always appreciate this question. I think my answers are different every time depending where I am in understanding not only my own healing journey, but also where we are collectively. And I just feel this week we entered into, you know, we're speaking at the end of June. And I feel like we've entered into even a different dimension of this time period. Where I think the stakes are quite high. And that's at least felt for me, and therefore makes me even more committed and invested. And also appreciative that this is the way I've moving and the people around me have been moving. So I think what a way of answering that question is, like, all of us are many of us, I entered into healing work, in part to find myself. And I think also like a lot of people and happened in a way that wasn't very linear, right? There are bits and pieces of my life that I remembered as being pivotal because I was following a question or inquiry. And I think that's still true for me, if I'm following an inquiry for a certain period of time, it leads me to these different places. And the challenge has been brave enough to keep saying yes to that inquiry where it brings you. So I remember, even as a disillusion teenager in a space, I grew up in Northern Virginia, in a particular part of Northern Virginia, that was pretty white, really fluent, really evangelical. And also, yeah, just and pretty buttoned up in a lot of ways. And that was not my family, that was not me. And so a lot of finding myself and healing was even trying to validate where I existed in this particular part of the world. And this is, you know, pre internet, really. So a lot of finding myself was also just like, actively trying to connect to people that at least identity levels we may not have a lot in common with but we were the outsiders of the community. I was doing my best to read books and stories to come into the city as often as I could, just to locate myself, and I made that connection to politics earlier on. So I was doing activism, even high school. It wasn't until later that we really got grounded in spirituality for me. I knew what I was not I was not an evangelical Christian. And I felt connected to some of the ways in which my mom experience spirituality, which is more of a connection to nature, and understanding universe or God, or whatever connects us as being very amorphous, but intelligent, and complex, but inherently loving. All things that were not at least demonstrated to me through the evangelical Christian community I lived in. So through college, I was interested in more contemplative practice and did some of that on my own. That deepened when I left college. For me, that trajectory then brought me back into DC, where I found a people of color Sangha, which helps me really ground in some really important teaching through a mindfulness and some around the Dharma. But mostly, that allowed me a space to be in that meditative practice. And the story goes from there where I found energy work in Reiki, I had an affinity for that. And that expanded my worldview and my sense of like, what healing that was even possible could be. And that brought me home over a series of years to the tradition I'm most connected to now, which is conjure, right, the southern US based practice of enslaved Africans, part of the African diasporic set of spiritual traditions. And that was like, almost like a whole decade journey that I just described to you and trying to locate and find myself. So my healing work continues very much on a spiritual level, but I'm also spending a lot of time these stages on my own emotional healing, continuing to do different levels of my trauma work. Understanding why I still like, the ways in which I react to things are things that that really activate me deeper into somatic practices and

Richael Faithful  7:33  
understanding the more visceral levels of how I exist, and what that means. And I always have said to folks, I've been influenced by different teachers and seekers who have tried not to, on one hand, tried to remind us how integrative our experiences are right? Because, of course, our spiritual and emotional bodies are connected, they're all one body. At the same time, they can be different kinds of work, the spiritual work that we need to do doesn't replace emotional work we need to do right. And I feel like that often gets very confused in our circles. I would love to hear your thoughts about that, too. Because I think that discernment is really important. And yet, I think, for a lot of good reasons, it's very confusing to folks, unless you've been brought to that question had to discern. But I've, I've been grateful the last few years to the pandemic spend a lot of time on the emotional work that I've been brought to not because I haven't done it before, but the just in the spiral effects that we also often have in this world, right, there's a bit of deeper of layer that I think many folks have experienced, and I've also experienced over the last couple of years.

Jamee Pineda  8:52  
I think that discernment piece is really important. I, one of my witch teachers Ylva I remember I was attending one of her lectures, and she she brought up like, you know, magic isn't magic doesn't fix everything. Like you can't just assume magic is what you need to address a problem like maybe you need therapy, maybe you need to be on meds, maybe you need to like dance or go exercise or you need to change your diet. It's even though all of these things are interconnected. It like if someone's having a psycho emotional problem, I'm not going to be like, oh, let's sit down and like talk about your nutrition. You know, like it's, it's it's not that nutrition isn't related or that it wouldn't help someone and support them but that discernment is really important. I have definitely been in situations where I had healing to attend to but there's something I was attaching some kind of escapism to spiritual exploration. And and now with the analysis of being nerd and like neurodivergent being autistic, I'm like, oh, was I sensory seeking, but I was like sensory seeking in a spiritual way, which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not the same as healing. 

Richael Faithful  10:27  
Yes, 

Jamee Pineda  10:27  
it's different. 

Richael Faithful  10:29  
Yes. 

Jamee Pineda  10:29  
And so it's, yeah, like I don't I don't think that those are bad behaviors or bad to be sensory seeking. But, you know, it doesn't necessarily, it's not always going to serve us in the way that we were intending if we're not clear about what our intention is and what we're actually doing with our actions.

Richael Faithful  10:52  
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Absolutely. Yeah, I really feel you're both on the magic piece of discernment. Magic is not a bandaid for all aspects of our human condition as powerful as it is. So yeah, it's certainly around what's for me, like what's appropriate, what serves best for this particular need right now. And that is so context specific. And I hear you too, that like, especially in the spiritual seeking side, right, it can manifest or at least illuminate lots of different needs, we have even ones we're not even clear we have initially, right. But in that discovery about ourselves, and how we are, exist in the world. I do love that sometimes that byproduct of spiritual seeking of just like, we discover pieces of ourselves to help us understand how we exist in the world. And that can have a healing effect, I think, right to understand ourselves better on that level. And it may not be what we had thought we were seeking out spiritually right to answer this deep philosophical question about the universe and, and how we're situated in that. And yet, we still discover something's really important. So I hear you that like, it's not bad. It's not wrong, even to the extent that we ever use those dichotomies and labels. But like, it, it you know, there can be your clarity of intention can help direct, right, the clarity of what you actually land on? For sure.

Jamee Pineda  12:45  
Yeah.  So that leads really, really well into the next question I have for you, which is what have you observed in how you approach medicine in the beforetimes, before Rona, and now during the pandemic? And has it changed for you at all?

Richael Faithful  13:05  
I think so, I mean, so much has been transformed for me, in the world, in these last few years. I think, as you know, Jamee, I consider my medicine to be of the spiritual energetic side. And I have a lot of appreciation for folks like you who do like more body based work, that is not my ministry. So I've been really tuned into what medicine has been either helpful for me and those close to me, I have made a more specific intention to be working in my life a little more narrowly and more deeply. So I've been less visible, I think, than I had been in the before times, because I've had my own discernment of just like, This is what I need to do for myself and my capacity and also like, for me to feel more values aligned with how I speak about care. In particular, it's like, I want to actually just be much more deliberate in my care for myself and those in my sphere of influence than necessarily just in the world, right? And I know, for other people, right, they're actually being called to scale their work. And I think that's beautiful, as long as you're very clear about, you know, where you need to be right now. But for me, the before times, I was more visible, more available publicly, and I've been asked to really bring things home. And specifically, I've been doing a lot around grief work. I felt I had supported folks from like 2018 To 2020, around some death work mostly along the lines of folks who were considering ending their lives by suicide. And I won't get into more details around that. But there's something about being a compassionate companion to folks, in their experiences of grief. That's what they were experiencing. That called me into death doulaship. So I got training for that in 2020. And that's still a really big part of my practice right now is like, how can we companion ourselves to our own grief, and others' grief? Especially considering that we're gonna we're in quite a global, cosmic right dying process. So what does that actually mean to exist inside of that, and still feel connected to our humanity, and to feel connected to spirit, whatever that means for us.

And I've also been in the practice of like, a lot of, again, come back to discernment. But I think for me, particularly the discernment between being still

and movement, like, when do I need to be still? When is it wise to listen, and to ground? And when is it wise to move, right? Because there's a lot of shit out here. Right? So what do we actually need to move and be nimble and be agile, right? And being both like discerning that, but also being in practice from that has been really important to me in thinking about my medicine and the medicine that others are holding, right? Because I think, for those of us who are still perpetually moving, right, and are genuinely beyond burned out, I think about the cost for people individually and us collectively. And for folks who are very still and very slow. That serves in its way. And I also think about the ways in which there might be missed opportunities, right, individually, and also more important, collectively, for us, depending on the medicine that they're holding, right? So I want to be that practice myself. And I even think about our Qigong class that I was able to be a part of how so much of that practice, I think, helps with that discernment, right? Even somatically. So even things like that, right, and receiving medicine, even from you and others, right, I can practice that understanding of myself and even be present to my own grief and grieving processes. But I wonder what, what that's like for you whether it's felt clear in your body clear in your being right, whether to be still or to move? Yeah, what that's been like for you?

Jamee Pineda  18:08  
That's a really good question. I mean, with the start of the pandemic, like it was so incredibly disorienting. I think for a lot of people. And from my own experience, I was exhausted in ways I didn't know I could be exhausted, I was also not moving in ways that I was so used to moving like physically, emotionally, and also like mentally. And I will say that it's still that discernment is a very dynamic thing, because the pandemic hasn't been the same the entire time. And the like, I am finding myself constantly having to reorient to this, like, these constant changes within the pandemic itself, what's happening collectively, and then what's happening with me on an individual level. So how I've been conceptualizing that discernment of rest versus activity is, it's easier for me to think of it as having a seasonal relationship. Where does this rest? If I'm resting, is this rest also in service to the action or activity that I want to do later? And is the activity actually going to lead me to have more rest? Like, is this going to be a generative cycle that I'm participating in? Or is it something that either stagnates or burns me so burns me out so hard that I'm like, not able to have any action afterwards? And let me say I've gotten it wrong several times during the pandemic. Well, wrong is not the right word. Like I'm not I'm not trying to be unkind to myself, but it is Not easy to discern all the time.

Richael Faithful  20:05  
I feel that relate to it real hard, just like, yeah, it is, in terms of adapting and regenerating in that way. Even if we're paying attention to seasons, or daily cycles, or weekly cycles, or monthly cycles? Yeah, because things are so dynamic. It's just like, I feel like I can sometimes get sharper, but I'm still like, testing limits of it all the time. But I really appreciate what you're describing. Even even seasonally, it's like, how is my rest supporting my activity, how's my activity supporting my rest and just really, integrating those two is a true cycle. I think you help me articulate something that has intuitively felt more true for me. Because I, I've been certainly resting more like I've created more spaciousness in my life, I've made choices to I've had some privilege along these lines, and I've made some choices to have more spaciousness. Because I can't even fully trust myself still around like that discernment all the time, because I've been. I mean, of course, there's capitalism programming to be active all the time. I'm very much an earthly creature. I love working. I actually love working. And it's not good for me to work as much though, as I could have an impulse to, right? I enjoy play.  Play has a very good function. It's very important. 

Jamee Pineda  21:47  
You're a Taurus, right?

Richael Faithful  21:47  
Yes, I'm a Taurus. I'm a Capricorn rising.

Jamee Pineda  21:49  
I remember that. I was like, wait a minute, you're a Taurus.

Richael Faithful  21:54  
I can work right. So that's, there's no doubt about that. Right. But then, you know, there's also programming I think, too, for those of us who are space holders who do caregiving. Gosh, I mean, there's just so many. And you know, and some of us are also organizers, right? So there's so much activity that we could be called to. And I think a lot of us follow a lot of the movements to like, just slow our lives, to have more naps. But I think you're so I've really appreciate your clarity of like that, in connection to the activity that we know we're going to be doing is really, really vital. And even doing that, the things that I've been doing the choices I've been making around the activities I've been doing, I'm also doing them differently, right, so so that they do feel just so much more in tuned with the extra capacity I do have. And also trust in the long term nature of all of us, right. think it hit me hard this past week, especially being a constitutional lawyer, just like my entire legal education was usurped in a week. But it's made me really think about oh, yeah, this is the lifecycle of a movement. Right? So how can I think about being really patient with myself and our collective as we adapt and regenerate for cycles and timelines? They're really, months, years, decades, centuries, right? Especially if we think about the ecological aspects of regeneration. So it's all happening right now that I'm very clear about. And, you know, I have to be fearless enough to move what I need to move. So it's, I'd love envisioning that though as being integrated as like a cycle together. 

Jamee Pineda  24:07  
So how do we expand our ideas of medicine at this particular apocalyptic stage? And I think it got more apocalyptic since they wrote the questions for you. 

Richael Faithful  24:20  
Yeah. Yeah. 

Jamee Pineda  24:23  
And then the Roe v. Wade thing happened. I was like, Oh, my God.

Richael Faithful  24:28  
Yes, that it's actively happening. And in ways I've been speaking to my partner and others about this in ways that it really is hard to sometimes literally keep up with just like, what part of the apocalypse is unfolding today. So that's why I think there's a relationship between that right, like as our our worlds around us are decaying. To me that means how we think about medicine needs to expand that much more. In the past, and that's also I think that my trajectory around healing, right, I grew up with a very white western context of medicine, I was not the person who grew up with conjure other kind of sense of like spiritual medicine and what that means. So thought of a very narrowly is like allopathic and the doctor prescribing pills as mostly my concept of medicine. And I think over time, I continue to think about medicine as anything that can just tend to us. And it doesn't even have to be an ailment, right? I am even like letting go of this idea of medicine having to treat illness as we think about it more holistically, and really is like, what this allows us to tend to our beings, and that is something I have felt in my body, the last few years, and I think what's transformed over the pandemic is I really am thinking about different forms of care, and how medicinal care continues to be. Because one thing I feel very competent about that's gonna survive the apocalypse. It's like, I'm not counting on even things like, maybe our banking systems, maybe not existing. Just like, I, I'm not in a bunker somewhere, but like, I'm not taking for granted much these days. But I do feel deeply invested in my relationships, because I'm like, is that really something I feel like I can count on? Through whatever we're gonna continue to go through is like, do we know how to relate to each other? Do we have close relationships? Do we actually have trust that is tested? And can I actually care for either another human for our beyond human kin, and spirit, like, can I care to those things? Can I do it well?  Do I know what it's like to receive that? That I feel more confident about in these increasingly apocalyptic, post apocalyptic moment? And that's the kind of expansion I've experienced. And for someone like you who's thinks about medicine all the time. I'm wondering especially like this last month, has that shifted for you anyway?

Jamee Pineda  27:39  
I don't know if it's if it's shifted differently, but it's continuing to shift in the same direction where I just keep getting more fuel to go into a certain direction, with how I relate to medicine. And that is really, it's two things, it's ancestral. And then creativity, creation/art. If we are to build medicine systems, that really serve us as a collective, but also as individuals, I really feel like we need the capacity to think beyond what we've been introduced to. And we also need the capacity to look at things that were in place before things like colonization happened. Because all of us come from some culture that had deep medicine, even if it's not so apparen now.  We all have, we all come from somewhere with an herbal tradition, because there's plants wherever people live, you know, like, they're even white folks, white folks feel like, I don't know, they just like pretend like they don't have any traditions. And that's just not true. They have ancestors, they have medicine, they didn't practice medicine the way that we see modern Western medicine now until, like, very recently, like the company of bear, which is the first big pharmaceutical company that you know, created aspirin and stuff like that's, that's like just the last couple 100 years. 

Richael Faithful  29:23  
That's right. 

Jamee Pineda  29:25  
And medicine predates all of that medicine predates colonization, medicine predates Big Pharma. There were holistic ways of practicing medicine in Europe, before people started appropriating holistic medicine from East Asia and other parts of the world like so, so yeah, like to me, there's that combination of being creative with how we do things. We have to be creative. We have to access art We have to be inspired, we have to be able to understand enough of what other people are going through so that we are constantly cultivating empathy for each other, need to have joy. If we are in, in, if we're intaking so much information all the time, like, let's have some of that information be pleasurable, let's have it be fantastical, like I'm a huge proponent of reading fiction, specifically sci fi and fantasy Afrofuturism to understand issues that are really complex and not easy to get from reading an academic journal. Well, at least for me, I don't know some other people that's very easy for them. But I need to have magic and art and creativity for me to fully grasp what's happening around me and for me to start imagining things in a different way. That that imagination, that's creation energy, we need that right now, because shit's getting destroyed.

Richael Faithful  31:02  
That's right. That's right. And something I often say, in Black liberatory spaces. And I think it's true in it resonates strongly what you just shared, Jamee, is I do feel like we are needing to create as if our lives depended on it. And I very much believe that right? That creation energy, to me is love based, right? It has to match and does match right? I think at least universally speaking, creation energy exceeds... the capacity to create can exceed the destruction energy, the decau energy. It's all imbalanced, perhaps, but I I believe in the power of it, and how we are changed, right being in that inspiration and that imagination, energy. I really feel you on that. Also, big fan of speculative fiction, also just laughing a lot more. I'm just like, I am laughing at the sheer absurdity of the moment we're in, right, I just feel like, what kind of terrible satire are we experiencing? So easy to laugh these days, not because it's not serious. But because I'm like that is it's both a coping mechanism. But also like there is I think, humor, that it's just beyond absurd. I was thinking about that yesterday. Also, with the January 6 hearings, I'm like, this is just a poorly written satire, that we are experiencing today. But I want to get back to something that's actually very important to me. And I think important to you about what it means to not only acknowledge but practice ancestral medicine now. I think some people make the mistake of believing we're trying to go back to something that we can't go back to. And I'm like, No, that's not what's important to me in at least my conjure practice. To me, it has to be companioned with what we were just talking about, which is the imagination piece, right? In many ways, I think we're not only reclaiming. But we are really reimagining right how these ancestral practices live right now in the context of the healthcare systems that we live in, until work. And in the context of, you know, also like really powerful tech, right, that's also changing people's lives, in ways that were impossible for our ancestors. So to me, those things, you know, are not against each other. They're very much complimentary, if we can understand, right, the value of them, the potency of them, and also making them more accessible. But I'm wondering your views on that, because I know, you speak about I think you speak about those things all the time on the podcast. But this is like a huge soapbox point for me.  I'm just like, we're not going back to go back. Right.

Jamee Pineda  34:21  
Well, it's impossible to just recreate something with that kind of accuracy, because we're just not those people. We are not our ancestors in that way. And for me that creates a weird thing about authenticity that like I'm not trying to be authentic and accurate in that way because that that feels very colonized. I'm someone who lives in diaspora that is Uh, I'm as much a Californian as I am, you know, someone whose ancestors are from the Philippines. And right now I live in Baltimore. You know, like, it's all of those things are part of my experience and are part of me being in diaspora. So I'm not trying to, I'm glad you brought that up. Like, I'm not trying to go back into what is like, the most indigenous representation of, you know, whatever ancestral medicine means to me. And I feel like, if we are, if we limit ourselves to think of ancestral medicine in that way, it makes it super inaccessible. 

Richael Faithful  35:40  
Yes

Jamee Pineda  35:41  
Because part of colonization is what disconnects us from our ancestors. So, I'm not trying to be in a system that disconnects me or anyone else further, I'm trying to think of ways that we can, we can access it, I mean, you are made up of your ancestors, just period, your blood ancestors, your non blood ancestors, your non human ancestors, and you are also made up of all the descendants that come after you whether or not you have like, whether or not you have children. 

Richael Faithful  36:16  
That's right.

Jamee Pineda  36:16  
And so, to me, that changes the orientation of, of what ancestral medicine means. Like it could literally be someone goes out in nature and just meditates in the woods and learns to listen, maybe you build an altar to your ancestors that you know of, maybe you don't even do ancestor veneration for your blood relatives, maybe you're doing ancestor veneration for your trancestors, or, you know, the ancestors of the folks whose land you live on like it, it is a lot more flexible, I think, then.  It's so open to interpretation. And I think that's fine. You know...

Richael Faithful  36:59  
Yes. Yep. 

Jamee Pineda  37:01  
Make your traditional foods, even if you've never made it before, see what that feels like taste the ingredients that are there. You know, even if you're like, if you're someone who's like Southeast Asian, like the Philippines, I would consider as part of Southeast Asia. I know that that is like debatable, geographically and culturally. But like if I pick up a pumpkin spice latte, from Starbucks. Maybe that doesn't seem like a decolonial practice. But let's look at what the spices are in a pumpkin spice latte. You've got like ginger, you've got cinnamon, you've got cloves, cardamom, none of that shit grows in the US. None of that shit grows in Europe.  Where do you think it came from?

The only thing that's from the U.S. there is the pumpkin.

Richael Faithful  37:54  
Yeah, that's right. I've never broken down a latte like that.

Jamee Pineda  37:58  
Coffee come from?  Coffee comes from Africa.

Richael Faithful  38:02  
That's right. And even knowing that right, even knowing that's powerful.

Jamee Pineda  38:06  
Yeah. And it's magic is everywhere. And social connection is everywhere. It's so layered. It's so nuanced. You don't have to feel a spiritual high to be connecting. Like, you don't have to feel like what like you don't have to, like speak in tongues or like have like, prophetic dreams or anything grand like that. Like, it literally could just be like you're sitting there with your latte. Just thinking about it. tasting it. What does that bring up for you? Everyone's experience around that is going to be unique to them.

Richael Faithful  38:42  
Yes, I believe that so deeply. Sometimes I even describe it as everyday magic. I also describe other kinds of like ceremonies, low ceremony. Just because I really value that experience of how mundane magic, spiritual connection, a sense of deepening of one's experience, and existence can be. And it's yeah, it's such a contrast to Eat, Pray Love, and all the other, you know, colonized ways I think we can be programmed to experience spirituality, at least in certain parts of the US in certain cultures. And and I think we see that too, also with like, plant medicine now and how folks can't just appreciate ginger, but you need to have a psychedelic experience and another part of the world that you're not connected to. But the magic of ginger is like right here. You could understand, you know where ginger comes from and what that means, even if it's not part of your own ancestral lineage, but you appreciate that plant right and how you experience it here, and I can't stress that more. And that's something I've actually been very a student of through conjure, right. Just because in this particular lineage and tradition, folks didn't have much on the plantation, right. So you do a lot with little, and I'm just like, enforce, were deeply connected to spirit and, you know, creating, and especially under the brutal conditions, you know, that the terror that people lived in, and yet folks had those deep connections and like, it's possible, like you didn't need me that expressed, you know, expensive ???, you know, have a meditative practice, you just don't. And we have that experience and knowledge. So I just appreciate you bringing, bringing that to the fore here. And I just, I feel like if I can proselytize anything to anyone, it's that piece, which is our connection to medicine. If it has, I think, for most people been very simple and can continue to be simple. Especially if it's medicine that feels life affirming, it does not have to be anything special.

Jamee Pineda  41:16  
Yes. I mean, imagine how powerful we would actually understand ourselves to be if we knew that medicine was all around us all the time. Like all around us all the time. I think that like having that subtle medicine, like an awareness of that subtle medicine, medicine is a very, it's very eye opening, I forget it sometimes because it's so subtle, and I'm trained to want an almost psychedelic experience or like a very jarring experience the way that Western medicine can be. You know?

Richael Faithful  41:56  
Yeah, that's right.

Jamee Pineda  41:58  
But you know, subtle is good. Medicine everywhere is good. And it's it's there, whether or not we acknowledge it, or whether or not we're aware of it, which I think is to me is very comforting.

Richael Faithful  42:10  
That's true. I love that. Yeah, it's not about us. We don't even have to have a species bias. It's been there it's going to be if we acknowledge it or not, whether we even care about it or not. That's right. Yeah, but I'm all about the subtle, the quiet, the unseen, those are the waters I like to navigate. And also remind myself and others about, so I'm glad we touched into that a little bit.

Jamee Pineda  43:03  
For this part of the show, I would like to invite you to highlight a BIPOC group or individual that you would like to uplift for our community shout out and maybe encourage folks to redistribute resources to, to check them out. Let's give them some visibility.

Richael Faithful  43:22  
So the group I'd like to lift up is the Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom. They are Georgia based. And they have been offering more public workshops and spaces even virtually, particularly for queer trans BIPOC Folks, and they have a lot of also Black spaces to offer folks. And I was able to do a workshop with them as part of the Black love convergence. Back in June, I was able to share an essay from the Black Trans Prayer Book, called my Blackness Absorbs Every Shade of Being and also lead us in a love letter writing exercise. And I was one of like, three other practitioners in the space. And I'm also planning to do actually like a short conjure school with them coming up here in August, but I'm lifting them up not only because I'm partnering with them, but the reason I'm partnering with them is I think there are so few spaces that are southern based that share our values, our political values, and our warding such a range of medicine practitioners and lifting up especially folks who may not be the most well known, but are doing really beautiful work. So I want to lift them up because they're lifting a lot of other folks up who are doing this work. And I'll encourage folks to check them out. They're having a number of offerings starting in the fall. So if you're interested in thinking about doing workshops, or even a series of workshops this fall, I would check them out.

Jamee Pineda  45:36  
Great, thank you so much. All right. So Richael, how can folks best connect to you and learn more about your work?

Richael Faithful  45:46  
Yes, I have been spending a little bit more time on Instagram. So if you want to get a sense of some of the public offerings I'm a part of you can check me out @richaelfaithfulfolkhealer, all one word. A common way too that people stay in touch with me is to check out my website and to contact me on my contact form. And my website's richaelfaithful.com. So I actually have conversations with folks ranging from ways to partner with me to even just like magic questions, and I do respond to everyone. So that's another way to actually just stay in really close connection. And I'll announce this now, because I hope to have it finally up next month is that I am finally creating a substack that shares more of my writing. And I've been writing more about intergenerational healing. The complex work I do as well as politics and culture stuff that I'd like to comment on just based on the things I am learning and my work and community. So there'll be a link for that probably on my Instagram, but also my website. So if folks want to follow some more of my writing, they should be prepared to see that substack

Jamee Pineda  47:04  
Cool. Thank you so much. Definitely check out Richael's work. They are awesome.

Richael Faithful  47:11  
Thank you, Jamee. It means a lot coming from you.

Jamee Pineda  47:13  
Thanks for being here today.

It's fall, we are in the metal season of Chinese medicine. If you want to learn more about what the heck that means and tips on how to live in alignment with the seasons, you can check out my zine collection or become a member of my Patreon. Shout out to Yiming for joining being part of this community. Patreon members have access to a mighty networks community with educational modules featuring Hilot and Chinese medicine. All this info is on my website at Jamee-pineda-lac.com. Also, it's my birthday tomorrow. That's right. I'm a Libra. I am happily accepting delicious and beautiful things from my loved ones, getting cozy, and relishing this witchy season. This is a reminder to myself and folks living at the intersections of multiple marginalization to celebrate yourself audaciously. Surround yourself with obnoxious creatures that will never let you forget how truly fucking gorgeous and amazing you are. There is also still time to sign up for Burnout Burn Bright, a workshop that I will be co facilitating with Cuan McCann the workshop is on October 22 And you can get more info at buildwith.org

Maraming salamat for listening to The Decolonizing Medicine Podcast. Music is by Ambro Ojeda, Hedkandi, and Rocky Marciano. Big thanks to Cuan McCann for audio engineering all of our episodes. And last but not least, thank you to all our listeners and supporters out there.  Ingat.