An Interview with Michael Wellman by Molly Brown

Original recording of interview

Editor’s note:  Michael Wellman recently wrote a PhD. dissertation titled “Rewilding Activism: Weaving Resistance, Reskilling and Re-membering” for the California Institute of Integral Studies.  After seeing how thoroughly the Work That Reconnects is woven throughout his dissertation, I wanted to interview Michael to bring his insights and perspectives to Deep Times readers.  Part One of the interview appeared in the March 2023 issue of Deep Times.

Part Two focuses on Going Forth in the Great Turning. (We edited the transcript for readability, but not the audio recording of the interview.) 

Molly:  Michael, you said that you wanted to address honoring our pain and the need to be with those feelings. But you also wanted to look at where do we go from here, using the Great Turning as your framework. In your dissertation, you have three things under that section: Resistance, Reskilling, and Re-Membering. Do you want to say a little bit about each one of those?

Michael: I’ll mention, since we’re on the Work That Reconnects, that there were several Honoring Our Pain practices at that [WTR] intensive I did [with Joanna] in California that really helped me move to the next phase [of the spiral]. I remember the “Open Sentences” practice, and looking in my partner’s eyes, and watching my partner who had tears and then making space for my own tears. Another practice was the “Truth Mandala,” and being able to grab that stick and trying to break it and having permission to express my rage in front of a group of people. I feel like allowing those emotions to move creates space for new feelings and fresh energy to circulate in. 

Then, Reskilling was based on Joanna’s “building alternative systems,” looking at the resurgence of  land-based lifeways, both in the more traditional sense of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and indigenous land management practices, as well as  some of the more current threads of permaculture, ancestral skills gatherings, and agro-ecology.

Molly: Yeah, huge, huge area! Yes, there’s so much going on in that respect.

Molly: Right, and that takes us to reskilling. Yes. I live in acorn country and I’ve learned how to make acorn meal; it’s very labor intensive! Boy, it tastes good, too!  I put it in tortillas or bread. Even just knowing that these nuts are falling from the trees and it’s free food. But it takes some skills to know how to use it.

Molly:  I like the way you’re spelling re-membering, like reassembling, in a sense. Re-membering is much more biological; reassembling sounds kind of mechanical.

Michael: And that comes from healing, the same root as wholeness. In traditional cultures, the role of the shaman was to travel into other worlds and bring back those lost parts of ourselves. What we know in modern trauma theory is that when someone has a traumatic experience–an experience that’s outside of the body’s (or nervous system’s) capacity to integrate–that part of the psyche is fragmented, broken, or severed…

Michael:  Exactly. And so the re-membering is very literally the re-membering of all those lost and forgotten and disassociated parts, of moving back towards wholeness.

Molly: Is there anything else you want to share? I want to just comment that the amount of research that went into the dissertation is truly admirable and amazing. It covers such a large area, and so many different movements and movements within movements. I am really, really impressed. No wonder it took you eight years!

Molly: I was reading this morning where you even describe the details of how you got up the tree, into the sky pod, and how you climbed the rope to get up there. So it really is very much your experience, embodied experience with these different movements, not just something you’ve read about, or talked to somebody about; you’ve actually done it.

Molly: That sounds like a great final remark, but maybe there’s more that you would like to say before we end?

Michael: I feel it [the dissertation] was written for activists. And so I want to keep true to that. And again, that idea from Joanna Macy, where she looks at each of these three dimensions as a form of activism. So our healers can be activists and our gardeners can be activists; we can all all be activists if we recognize that all three dimensions are inherently political. And so claiming the politics of the Great Turning is important.

Molly: and no one person could do it all. It takes all of us with our particular skills and resources and life situations to do what we’re called to do. I’m very big on the idea of calling, because I think the calling is  from outside. It’s not just from inside; it’s that inside/outside connection.

Michael: Yes, the purpose and passion to show up. 

Molly: The calling changes, because circumstances change. “Oh, we need somebody over here to do this thing. Oh, this person is the perfect person for that. Come on, do this!”

Molly: And rather than, “You should be doing this instead of that,” we can be supportive and joyful about other people’s different contributions, and seeing that all as contributions rather than, “Oh, you should join my team.” My team is playing basketball and yours is playing baseball, and we have to appreciate the different things that need to be done, and that various people are doing them. 

Michael: There is no shortage of things to be done.

Molly: It’s not just up to me. And being “up to me” is part of that individualism or separation that has to melt away,

Michael: And the centralization and hierarchy that needs to melt away. Trusting the decentralization, the network model, being in mutual aid, and recognizing that we need to trust each other that we’re showing up and doing what we need to do. And how can we continue to lean on each other? Beautiful.

Molly: Yep.  And on the more-than-human world as well. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Michael.

Michael Lynn Wellman is a recent doctoral graduate from the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Michael’s dissertation, “Rewilding Activism: Weaving Resistance, Reskilling, and Re-Membering,” is inspired by his time working with Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects. Michael is a father, husband, activist, and guide who lives on the shores of Gichigami (Lake Superior) on occupied Anishinaabek lands.

By Sara Thorsen, LMFT and Krista Gaston, LMFT

Recorded by Sara Thorsen

“Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.”
    ~ Francis Weller,  The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Introduction

It’s hard to describe the experience of providing mental health services in the last few years. This has always been heartfelt work, but unprecedented levels of grief, loss, sadness, panic, confusion, rage, and despair amongst the backdrop of a global pandemic and our ever unfolding climate crisis was harrowing to hold. Whether working in schools, jails, tech startups, community agencies, or in private practice– we all felt how hard this experience was and continues to be. Truthfully, it seemed that everywhere we turned, not only were our clients struggling, but our colleagues were struggling as well: inaccessible education, exams that gate-keep our profession, increased licensing fees, wide spread dysfunctional systems of care with ever higher demand for services, poor pay and benefits, unethical supervisors with little recourse, labor theft with minimal opportunities to collectively organize, the loss of hard-earned hours for those unable to complete their training in the specified 6 years, and widespread burn out. There is no infrastructure for our care– a truth that became painstakingly felt throughout the pandemic.

The Bloom + Grow Collective

Members are enlivened about systemic changes in licensing, a reorientation to healing-centered practices, and improving working conditions for those serving their communities as mental health workers. We need and deserve care and investment to sustain us in our work, particularly at this phase of the Great Turning. Bloom + Grow is cross-pollinating with other community collaborators to orient to a more regenerative system of care and put it into practice. Turning towards this wounding is essential as we move forward given the collective psychological distress accumulating in our experience. Our immediate priorities are to continue showing up. We are gathering thought partners and kindred spirits, facilitating spaces where people can feel supported and plug into our work, gathering information and stories to inform others of our experiences, and getting ready for direct action.

Metabolizing Grief and The Great Turning

Inspired by Joanna Macy’s work, several members have found solace in the Work That Reconnects framework and community. We value the honoring of our emotions and the sacred relationship between humans and our ecological world.

With this in mind, Bloom + Grow has integrated the spiral to move us through metabolizing our grief. We are rooted in gratitude for each other, our skills, and our knowledge base as intuitive social-emotional guides within our collective’s mycelial network and beyond. We have held intimate space for each other’s bottomless grief through community care opportunities and compassion. This grief cannot be truly understood alone, it demands witness and time to see its full terrain. Honoring our pain is a foundational piece of the spiral and many folks engage with the collective for an opportunity to share their pain in community.

Orienting to Active Hope and Calls to Action

We are currently cultivating a diverse network of support to build sustainability, catalyze our work, access active pathways and conversations for change, and imagine new pathways for change. This project can only grow in alliance with others and we honor that support comes in many forms. To stay updated about our work follow us on Instagram or join our newsletter. To learn more details about what motivates our work, check out Fractals, a Bloom + Grow Collective podcast series featuring interviews with mental health providers utilizing the Spiral framework to metabolize disillusionment into active hope. To plug into our work more directly, check our website for community process groups, clinical consultation, town halls, and workgroups. 

 Bloom + Grow is exploring this avenue further and excited to highlight a new opportunity to join the conversation via the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW)’s Behavioral Health Associate Membership. Through this new membership, mental health professionals from different licensure paths and workplaces can gain knowledge on how to catalyze our public health expertise into political power to impact change while advocating for mental health parity in our healthcare system. 

Orienting towards living systems theory, and in particular leaning on the concept of open systems, we look to and are influenced by those having similar conversations. If you or someone you know has already begun or would like to join the conversation on creating sustainable pathways for change, healing the healers, and metabolizing the collective grief we carry for our neighbors and the environment around us, reach out to say hello. If you are a mental health professional who is experiencing compassion fatigue or other barriers to feeling successful in the mental health field, we want to connect with you! The longevity and health of a community is informed by how it cares for its members and its responsiveness to collective needs to catalyze action. 

Reimagine mental health care by joining us in community!

Sara Thorsen (she/they) is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Eco-therapist with nearly a decade of experience supporting youth, families, and emerging adults in the Bay Area, CA. Her areas of focus include: nature connection, liberation, trauma, and ethics/philosophy. Sara is passionate about fostering the Labor Movement in mental health and is a founder of the Bloom + Grow Collective. Outside of clinical work, Sara nourishes herself through writing, plant medicine, and community organizing. She has a long-standing dream to be a steward of land and is forming a group of collaborators to make this dream a reality.

Krista Gaston (they/she) is a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist in CA and TX, a certified Eco-Therapist and Trauma Informed Systems Specialist. Krista has worked with youth and families for over 20 years, in community mental health for 8 years, and in private practice with young adults 18-25.  As a therapist activist, Krista is passionate about reconnecting to sustainable life practices rooted in collective care and emergent strategy. Bloom + Grow Collective is a loving offering for other mental health providers to orient to their own healing as well as marking a trail head for action.

by Barbara Whitfield

Recorded by author

One afternoon I was waiting for a friend who was late. I wasn’t bothered; I was in a cafe overlooking the beach, and had the entire afternoon to dedicate to my friend, so what were a few minutes? Ordinarily, I would have spent the time reading, but some inner voice stopped me. Luckily, I listened. 

Photo by Barbara Whitfield

I live in a beautiful part of the world, surrounded by fields and hills and streams, a quick hop to the sea and yet, even here, the local community is facing polluted rivers, dying trees, and the loss of insects and birds. On a warm day when the sky is high, the spring’s hum is missing. Apple trees that used to sing with bees as though vibrating as you passed are silent. Nature should not be silent. The meadow behind our house which used to fly upwards with wildflower-coloured butterflies is now more often a flat, unmoving green or worse, brown through lack of rain. 

Often, help is given in the way we think is appropriate without considering the recipient’s needs. This is something I’ve observed  both on a personal and community level and across the wider context of international aid and politics. Help is given top-down. While it may make us feel better about ourselves and we have sound motives, often our efforts have unintended consequences because we have paid scant attention to what the recipient is saying. 

I hadn’t thought of poetry for decades, not since earnest teenagehood. But the idea would not be ignored. Where to start, though?  How do you walk a poem? Why would you? Wouldn’t people think you were mad? Where would you even find poetry? I nearly gave into cynicism— that postmodern protection from our own cowardice–but I was compelled, or rather propelled, by a force outside my will. 

My first literal and figurative step came on a hoar-frosty morning here in West Wales just before Christmas. I was out of bed early and knew I had to walk up the hill behind our house and speak Christina Rossetti’s poem, In the Bleak Midwinter, into the clean, clear air. As I spoke those lines, it felt like a bird call, a breath out into nature, honouring the season, honouring giving and giving over. It was a small thing, a slight connection, but it was my thing. Something I could do. Anywhere, anytime. And it didn’t feel like a small thing at all. It echoed Rossetti’s words–Yet what I can I give…Give my heart.”

I have also discovered that poetry is infectious. Those who encounter this practice begin to notice poems left around them–it’s there in the unlikeliest of places–and send poems that speak to them, to be breathed on their behalf into all creation. I’ve been on walks with friends who have said, “If you don’t mind…” having brought a poem with them to read into the wild Welsh wind. Once on a crowded city street many miles from home, my dearest friend read a poem for me and for that moment we were united. Strangely, happily, no one passing found her recital odd. Usually, people pass by with a smile and so the poem’s spirit moves along with them like an opportunistic plant on the pelt of an animal. 

Photo by Barbara Whitford

Taking a poem on a walk may not be for everyone or even anyone else. Asking for a poem to be walked and spoken into nature may not sound useful or even hopeful to many. But for me, this practice feels like a victory over complacency or despair and is joyful in the face of indifference or despondency. It connects the community of those who have requested a voice and myself with the resonance of all that is and can be. Hopefully, words spoken on the wind in the wild west of Wales play in the air far beyond these shores.

Recorded by author

Barbara Whitfield:  I am currently living on a small holding in West Wales. I write and perform poetry and, with a partner, novels, plays and screenplays. Before moving to Wales, I was a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary. Since moving, I have been a non-fiction editor for Parthian Books. I am currently developing a forest garden alongside other small-holding undertakings. I believe in an animate world where all things are equal and, thus, to be respected and protected. I have completed the Active Hope Foundations Training (https://www.activehope.info/free-training) and I am a member of the Walking Artists Network.