Prentis Hemphill knows that any successful social justice movement must focus on healing its proponents — and as a seasoned organizer and trained therapist, they also know that the best healing practices don’t always look like mainstream psychotherapy. Psychotherapy’s emphasis on the individual mind often fails to account for things like one’s relationship to their broader community, or how trauma manifests within our bodies. And those concepts, among others, drive Hemphill’s work, whose mission — seeking collective liberation by showing people how to heal themselves — is more essential than ever.
“I've been doing movement work for a long time,” Hemphill told them. during a recent interview. “Being involved in any kind of Black movement broadly has really shown me that at the core, yes, movements are about political wins, but they're also about ensuring that our people get to experience joy-filled lives.”
Hemphill’s latest effort to spread joy through healing comes in the form of Finding Our Way, an eight episode podcast featuring conversations with luminaries like abolitionist and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and writer, doula, and Octavia Butler scholar adrienne maree brown. Hemphill and their guests navigate subjects like maintaining boundaries, generational trauma, and the white-washing of multicultural healing strategies. Conducted with a critical yet gentle tone, the series gives listeners the tools to reflect on their own mental and spiritual landscapes with renewed clarity, intention, and wisdom.
Before podcasting, Hemphill spent two years as the Healing Justice Director for the Black Lives Matter Global Network, plus another six teaching somatics (the practice of using the mind-body connection to strengthen one’s relationship with themselves) with the activist training organization Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). Last December, Hemphill established The Embodiment Institute, where their work in somatics bridges emotional and political skills and brings them to communities. Finding Our Way marks one of their most visible efforts yet, as shown by the emphatic reception to the podcast’s first season, which reached the top 100 podcasts on iTunes within a week of its release. The show highlights how we can all help contribute to each other’s liberation: “No one person sits down and offers every answer,” they explain. “Each of us has a brilliant piece of the puzzle to share.”
With a highly anticipated second season of Finding Our Way premiering this month, them. chatted with Hemphill to discuss everything from how they select guests, to reconnecting with their father, to remaining grounded during the pandemic.
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If you can choose one favorite moment from Finding Our Way, which would you choose? Who or what subject has made the biggest impression on you?
I had so much fun on the episode with adrienne maree brown, just because that's my homie, and that's my friend. The conversation just feels so expansive when we're together, so that was a lot of fun.
In terms of 'aha' moments, all the episodes have those moments in them. I think that I'm pretty transparent about when I'm having an 'aha' moment on the podcast, but the conversation with Alexis Pauline Gumbs was otherworldly. I feel like she took us into a different way of understanding ourselves and our relationships with each other, our relationships to other living beings. It was just phenomenal. There's so much wisdom in what she shared.
What does your process look like when scouting potential guests?
It really is the people who inspire me. Everybody who’s helping me feel a little bit more grounded, a little bit more inspired every day. It just so happened that the first season had all Black people as guests, and it just happened that way because that's who I was listening to.
I can't tell you who's going to be on this [upcoming] season. But similarly, it's all of the people that are really bringing me to my edges of understanding and what's possible for us. Those are the people that I want to talk to — people who don't feel limited by what we've been taught or told. You'll see who's coming up on the next season. It's going to be exciting!
I really admired the sequence in the “Ask Me Anything” episode in which you discuss the boundaries that allowed you to reconnect with your father. Can you elaborate on that process and share anything you've learned from it?
I spent 10 years actively doing healing work around that relationship, and I had to grieve what he couldn't give me as a parent. I had to grieve and let it go. I had to admit to myself that I wanted those things, that I longed for those things from him. I wanted to be loved in certain ways. When I admitted that to myself, I had to go and get those things as an adult. Once I started building a life where my needs were getting satisfied outside of this relationship that wasn't ever going to satisfy me, it freed me up to think about what my relationship with him could be like.
My dad is an interesting guy. There are things that we share in common and there were conversations that I wanted to have with him. And so I started just to have them. I just picked up the phone and talked to him like no time had passed. And I was able to have the kind of relationship with him that was actually possible for us, without me trying to get something else from him.
There are real moments where I felt harmed by him in the past when I grew up. And so my relationship is not about ignoring those things. We've had conversations around accountability. It is an ongoing process. I can't say that I feel satisfied in that regard either, I'm not necessarily recommending it, but I am choosing to remain engaged in that relationship with him. We don't have to have the relationships we had before, or be pressured by other people that have certain rhythms of communication. I talk to him when I feel like I want to. And no more.
How do you manage to stay balanced during these strange times?
Right before COVID hit, I moved into the country. I find balance by being outside because sometimes when you live in a city, you can't really experience the full magnitude of the season. You don't really get to feel that the same way you do when you're out in the country and it's all around you. It's everything.
While I have felt fear, I have felt concerned about people I love and my own family experiencing COVID during this time and the instability that's come with it. I've also been so resourced by just life, like literal life around me. The trees blossoming, food growing, food on the trees, the animals that have been born here on this land that has resourced me. That all tapped me into a cycle that's much bigger than the social cycle or social media cycle or even news cycle. There's a bigger cycle that I feel connected to.
I was just outside before I came in to talk to you, just like experiencing spring. So, that has kept me balanced. I think being a healing practitioner, I'm extra sensitive to my own energy, my own energy levels, the quality of my energy, my body, my being. I organize my life as much as possible around experiencing centeredness and groundedness and not doing too much that takes me outside of that.
What do you want listeners to take away with them after listening to your podcast?
I want listeners to feel inspired, but I want them to feel activated. I want them to feel deeply stirred by the questions, by the work, that it makes them trust their own brilliance a little bit more; that it makes them curious about what they know; that it just stretches their imagination a little bit. That's what I really want people to leave with. I want people to feel stirred and activated.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity
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