Rebel Healing Interviews and Where You Can Find the Book

Interviews:

Book Talks:

Find Rebel Healing wherever books are sold online, like Amazon and Bookshop, and in select bookstores, including:

Palestine: What can we do?

Palestine: What can we do?

Here are some resources that might inform/support you taking action:

A 15 minute video on Gaza’s history by Vox from November 2023

Support the Global Strike & ways to take action, 1/22/24

Organizations to take action with:

Palestinian Aid:

if noAnera, started in 1968, is the oldest American Palestinian Aid organization. They have been working in Gaza for decades (I worked for them out of Jerusalem in 2005) and they have been able to get some aid in since October 7. Please consider donating here.

For figuring out what you can do/what you want to do:

Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis

Critical Healing Tools No One Is Talking About

Critical Healing Tools No One Is Talking About

When it comes to living well with chronic illness, here are three essential practices that don’t get enough air time:

1. Seeing ourselves in the collective context

2. Cultivating and consulting our intuition  

3. Fostering connection

3.5 Making friends with our nervous systems*

* This is "3.5" because it IS getting talked about, just not enough.

1. Context - Most conversations about healing health challenges (chronic or otherwise) are very focused on what we can do as individuals to make our bodies feel better. We largely aren't talking about why so many of us are sick. We are sick because our society is set up to value profit and power over human, animal, and earthly wellbeing. Since the norm = illness, we have to be non-normative in our approach to healing. We must resist the forces that are harming our bodies and do our own work to deprogram the capitalist, ableist, white supremacist, patriarchal, etc. social programming that lives in our cells, so we can interrupt intergenerational cycles of harm. That deprogramming work needs to be part of any physical healing journey. 

2. Intuition - One of the #1 most valuable tools I've acquired in my healing journey is honing my intuition. When we stop looking outward and turn our attention inward, we get all the information we need, including learning when we need to look for more information or a different kind of support. Our body knows what we need. We just need to be able to ask and listen. Trauma and conditioning separates us from our intuition so this is challenging for most people living on Turtle Island. It takes time, but it's worth the investment. This is a big area of focus with most of my clients and there's a whole chapter on it in Rebel Healing. 

3. Connection - Resisting hyper individualism and reconnecting with other humans, ourselves, the earth, ancestors, and the divine, is critical in successful healing. We cannot get through the hard times or sustain wellbeing without it. In order to connect well with other humans, we need some of these other points of connection too. Humans will let us down, our bodies might disappoint us, but if we are also connected with rocks, trees, and the spirits of our great grandparents, we can still feel that we are not alone. 

3.5 Making Friends With Your Nervous System - In 1994, psychologist and neuroscientist Stephen Porges introduced Polyvagal Theory to provide a framework for how the nervous system works and what puts us in different physiological states of social engagement, fight/flight, shutdown/collapse, etc. When you understand how the nervous system works, you can start to track your own physiological state moment to moment. You can also learn tools for getting yourself into more regulated states when you notice you're dysregulated. Because the nervous system regulates so many critical bodily processes, the more time you spend in a more regulated state, the more easily your body can unwind patterns of dysfunction that cause pain and disease and actually repair itself. You can support yourself and people in your community by practicing co-regulation through singing, dancing, laughing together, playing games, humming or mirroring each other. In this so-called "Post-Pandemic" time, most of us are still struggling with dysregulation, so investing in co-regulating activities can be a huge contribution to you and those around you. 

Learn more about all of the above in my upcoming book, Rebel Healing: Transforming Ourselves and Systems That Make Us Sick, coming out 9/19/23. Sign up to be an early reader here. 

Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash

Should You Identify as Disabled? 

Should You Identify as Disabled? 

The image above is the disability pride flag. Learn more about it’s meaning and history here.

In honor of Disability Pride Month, I am sharing this excerpt from my forthcoming book, Rebel Healing: Transforming Ourselves and the Systems That Make Us Sick.

To go a step deeper in our exploration of how to talk about health challenges, I want to specifically explore why spoonies should consider identifying as disabled. I’ll talk about why people with chronic illness can benefit tremendously from being in community with disabled folks and how, together, we can build more power and access. 

Based on how few people even in my liberal Boston bubble knew the definition of the word “ableism” when I started writing this book in 2017, my assumption is that many people across America are not yet familiar with the term, which describes discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. Unless you are disabled or know an openly or visibly disabled person, it’s unlikely that access challenges and the exclusion or inclusion of disabled people are something you think about every day. If that’s you, don’t despair. All is well. Take a deep breath and keep reading. I still have a lot to learn about disability justice myself and am by no means an expert. I am grateful to my community for their support in furthering my education, and I continue to learn a lot from the work of disability (justice) activists, educators, and cultural workers like Mia Mingus, Kevin Gotkin, Riley Dwight, Alice Wong, Naomi Ortiz, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Sins Invalid, a disability justice performance project that centers people of color, queers, nonbinary and trans people with disabilities and maintains a very useful disability justice primer. I share additional resources at the end of this chapter. 

It may seem like being focused on healing and calling yourself “disabled” are at odds, but I want to argue the contrary. People with chronic illness and otherwise disabled individuals have a lot to gain from being in community with each other. I first started to understand this by lurking in the Bay Area Sick & Disabled Queers Facebook group. I have never lived in the Bay Area, but someone once suggested I post in there about my coaching and I observed so much beautiful sharing and support and community validation in the group. Even though I’d been sick for more than a decade at this point, this was the first time I’d seen a community use both the “sick” and “disabled” identifiers together (disabled brilliance at work!).  It just makes sense for these overlapping communities to be able to share information, connect with others who “get it,” and voice and troubleshoot all kinds of accessibility concerns––from crowdsourcing practitioner recommendations to ideas for a good date restaurant that could accommodate both gluten-free diets and wheelchair users.

In my years of being in community with sick folks, I have found that many with chronic illness don’t choose to identify as disabled, or don’t know that it is even an option. Unfortunately, ableism is rampant in many chronic illness support groups where being sick and disabled is generally considered bad, undesirable, and something that needs to be fixed. But when folks with chronic illness join disabled communities and learn about disability justice, we can experience a whole new sense of belonging and empowerment. What a lot of spoonies don’t realize is that chronic illness is considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), meaning that both employers and businesses are legally obligated to provide you with “reasonable accommodations.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they will, but as more of us claim the disabled identity, own it and demand equity, we grow our collective power to change the status quo for ourselves and others. Choosing to identify as disabled and work in community with other disabled folks provides a way for our overlapping communities to come together and ask for what we need with a bigger, broader voice. And the accommodations required by sick and disabled people to participate fully in society are not so different from broader societal needs. Our communities just need them more often and more urgently. By lifting up the needs of sick and disabled individuals, we are providing more options and accessibility for everyone. 

Years ago when I couldn’t stand up for long periods of time, I asked a local music venue if they could reserve a seat for me for a particular show. I love live music, but I mostly stopped going to shows when my legs started feeling weak all the time. That one venue was happy to reserve a chair for me and did so many other times. Other venues didn’t make it as easy, but I’m sure if I had gotten a group of people together to push them on it, we could have effectively pushed all venues in the area to do the same. This would benefit people with short-term injuries, seniors, and all kinds of people who don’t usually identify as disabled. Given that more than half of Americans have a chronic health condition, we can assume that most people have needs that they might not even know could be accommodated in many public spaces. If they could acknowledge and receive these accommodations, they might be able to do more and move through the world with much greater ease. 

I personally began identifying as disabled fairly recently on the suggestion of a student activist at Harvard Kennedy School, where I used to work. I considered myself intermittently disabled because at the time I was generally feeling well outside of occasional flare-ups. I understand now that claiming the disabled identity wholeheartedly is more useful in the context of collective action. Even if I am not in fact disabled every day, it doesn’t mean I am not disabled. There have been a lot of times in my healing journey when I have been very clearly and consistently disabled. I was speaking to my family about getting a wheelchair at one point because I couldn’t stand, and I was sick of not being able to go anywhere that required standing. Still, for years, it didn’t occur to me to identify as disabled. But through connecting with more disabled individuals, I realized both that I am disabled and that disabled folks are my people. 

I’ve felt so validated by my disabled buddies and have learned so much from them about how to advocate for personal and collective wellbeing in many contexts. Disabled folks who have been disabled for a while, sometimes their whole lives, are often experts in surviving within systems that are not designed for them, from the workplace to the doctor’s office. A lot of stuff that I struggled with early on—feeling like a burden, navigating insurance and health care bureaucracy, not knowing how to get support in the workplace—most of my disabled buddies learned how to navigate with grace years before me. Issues that people just complained about in chronic illness support groups, my disabled buddies had found solutions to. They are also experts on what support is available through the state and other institutions. When able-bodied individuals get injured and/or become ill, they are usually confronted for the first time with the discomfort, bureaucracy, and injustice that disabled Americans navigate on a daily basis.

Disabled folks have also opened my eyes to just how rampant ableism is, and how deeply we have all internalized it. Getting support to see where ableism lives in you is a crucial component of healing. The more disabled buddies you have, the more you can support each other to see that some of your struggles are really rooted in internalized ableism, therefore freeing you up to live your life more fully on your terms. 

Identifying as disabled may not be a fit for everyone but I encourage you to explore it if you have not already. Sick and disabled folks still experience a lot of discrimination, so coming out publicly as disabled is worth thoughtful consideration. Even employers and businesses who want to do the right thing aren’t hip to what it really means to be inclusive and accessible. Choosing who to tell and when, especially in hiring processes, may be different in different industries and contexts, so I recommend doing your research. Identifying as disabled on a job application will get you on the top of the pile with the federal government for example, but it might mean you don’t get an interview with a local business. In some contexts, you may be required to get disability benefits and/or recognition from your state of residence in order to take advantage of certain resources. Outside of navigating the government and work realms, you might find that identifying as disabled socially, or even just privately, has its own benefits. Choosing to be in relationship with disabled folks can sweeten and broaden your community, help you feel seen, give you a new framework for political activism, and support in learning your rights as someone with a body that doesn’t move through this ableist capitalist reality with the same ease as other bodies. 

The more we build disabled community and come together to make our communities more accessible now, the more rapidly we can arrive in a future where the focus of our attention is on matters beyond access and inclusion. I want to invite you to imagine that for a moment. If you and your sick and disabled kin didn’t have to spend so many spoons thinking about how to get places or wondering if your needs would be accommodated in those places, for example, what might be possible? What might you do with those extra spoons? What other social challenges could we heal and transform together if we already had what we needed? 

Here are some disability resources that might be supportive: 

  • Sins Invalid’s disability justice primer Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, is a great intro to disability justice and how to apply it in organizations, planning events, and other social movement work. 

  • Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha is a beautiful entrance into the history of disability justice, creating care webs, centering healing justice in our movements, and uplifting sick and disabled, queer, trans BIPOC brilliance. 

  • How to Get On howtogeton.wordpress.com/ Provides guides on applying for Social Security and Medicaid, finding affordable housing, how to get a wheelchair, how to get a home care aid, and so much more. It’s also bright and cheery and has a very loving vibe. It might be particularly helpful for folks with ME and other homebound and bed bound individuals.

  • Job Accommodation Network (JAN) https://askjan.org/ is a phenomenal resource for all things related to disability and work, for individuals and employers. Among other things, it has a 1-800 number you can call for free consults, and links to several job databases specifically for folks with disabilities. 

  • Chronically Capable https://www.wearecapable.org/ is a platform that connects chronically ill folks with remote work opportunities with supportive employers. It’s less robust than JAN, but growing all the time. 

  • Disability Visibility Project https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/ is a project of disability justice advocate Alice Wong that encompasses a blog, podcast, an advice column, and much more. 

  • Life In My Days https://www.lifeinmydays.com/ is a peer- & youth-led international non-profit supporting communities and individuals on their journeys for self-actualization. I attended an awesome training on disability justice led by this group and they have a lot of solid content on their website about living with disabilities.

  • CripNews https://cripnews.substack.com/ is a wonderful weekly newsletter about disability art and politics put together by Kevin Gotkin. 

Reflection Questions: 

  • What did you notice reading this section? What feelings arose for you? 

  • If you do not already, how does it feel to consider identifying as disabled? Do you feel fear? Freedom? A mix of emotions? 

  • Do you see a small sweet next step you want to take to learn about disability benefits, disability community, or disability justice? 

Five Underrated Job Search Tips

Five Underrated Job Search Tips

If you’ve been applying to jobs online and hating it, or feeling paralyzed even thinking about starting your job search, know that you’re not alone! These are very common experiences. Even most very well educated folks do not get a lot of instruction on the process of getting a well-fitting job. Here are five under-discussed but crucial tips that have supported many of my clients in experiencing more success and ease in the job search: 

  1. Have a vision. As much as possible, get clear about what you DO know about the job you’d love. What’s important to you? What’s your ideal schedule, culture, salary, day-to-day responsibilities? Write down as much as you can, even if the details are vague to start. 

  2. Have a strategy. 

    1. Clarify your intention: Are you looking to get a job yesterday, get a job in six months, figure out what you want to do longer-term, or some combination of these?   

    2. How might you connect with people who can help you get clear on what you want? Or how can you get in front of people who might want to hire you or who can be an ally in helping you get hired? Think about how you like to learn and connect with people. You might consider doing a series of informational interviews with people in your network (and/or your network’s networks), volunteering, or attending events/conferences in your desired field. 

    3. To find out about jobs in your field(s) or interest, set up alerts on LinkedIn, Idealist, HigherEd jobs, or whatever job sites feel like a good fit for your interests. You might also join listservs, sign up for email lists, join Facebook/LinkedIn groups, or subscribe to relevant publications. If you went to college and/or graduate school, your alma mater(s) might have their own job databases and/or systems for connecting alumni with each other for purposes of career advancement. 

  3. Build relationships and keep up with them.

    1. Most people think they hate networking because it seems transactional and disingenuous. I invite you to reframe the process as relationship-building. Maybe you have something to offer the other person. Maybe the chance to support you will be a gift to them. Folks who like their work tend to enjoy talking about it. 

    2. Who do you want to get to know? Who might also be able to support you in getting a job you love? Look through your own email address book, phone, and LinkedIn for possible connections. Maybe you email people you know to ask for conversations and/or connections. If it’s not a risk to your current employment, you can post on social media and ask for connections. 

    3. After you speak to someone, send them a thank you note and, if it’s someone you want to keep in touch with, circle back to them and keep them in the loop about your career journey. You can also send them articles or other media that you think would be of interest to them as part of your gratitude practice. 

    4. As you build your career, it’s a good practice to have informational interviews or coffee chats regularly. This gives you an opportunity to learn about new positions, industries, companies, or roles you’re interested in learning more about. It’s also an excuse to get to know people who you think are cool and an opportunity to practice talking about yourself, which many of us need practice with!

  4. Tailor your resume. This is pretty standard advice but still a lot of people don’t do it. At the beginning of your job search, make a standardized version of your resume that you can copy, and then add to/subtract from to make it match whatever job description you’re looking to apply for. 

    1. If you’ve had a lot of roles, focus on including the most relevant and tailor the bullet points for each role to the skills listed on the job description. Use hard numbers whenever possible, e.g. grew canvass team from 20-50 people in six months. 

    2. Though you would probably not send to an employer, it can be nice to have one resume on file with your entire work history, for your own reference, and/or you can also put this on LinkedIn so it adds a little color to your story when people look you up. 

  5. Call on your support team. The job search often feels like homework we don’t want to do and it helps to bring people in, both for accountability and to support our success. 

    1. Organize a co-working night with other folks who are job searching, launching side hustles, or otherwise have extracurricular work they could use help with to support you to sit down and do your job search tasks. 

    2. Ask friends, colleagues, or family members to proofread your resume, cover letter, and other job application materials. 

For additional, more tailored career advice, feel free to schedule a complimentary 35-minute strategy session with me here. 


One Year After Vaccine Injury

One Year After Vaccine Injury

April 29 marked one year since I received the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine. We still don’t know exactly what happened or what is still happening in my body but my understanding of it, that I’ve pieced together over time, is that the vaccine caused massive amounts of inflammation, perhaps a minor cytokine storm, that triggered a reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus, Lyme disease, probably bartonella, and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS).

In the hour after I received the vaccine, I felt like something had lit up my nervous system, like someone had shoved a fork in an electrical socket. I had a lot of fatigue for a few days, but that eased up. A full week later, my left palm started itching, and then my right. On the recommendation of my beloved herbalist, I began taking a lot of different kinds of binders, working on the assumption that I was reacting to some of the chemicals in the vaccine. Then I started having panic attacks. Then headaches and body aches. Then brain fog and increased fatigue. It felt like a tick-borne illness relapse and then some. Two months post-vaccine, I got costochondritis (inflammation between the ribs), and could barely walk. My knees and feet hurt everyday. Stairs became a whole thing. My daily walks became marathons that would knock me out for the rest of the day. The whole experience felt eerily similar to what happened after I got a concussion in 2012. Just like this time, I had been feeling much better physically (a high point in more than a decade of living with health challenges) until I got doored while riding my bicycle. In the week after, I had my first ever panic attacks, followed by the return of a host of symptoms I’d forgotten about: light and sound sensitivity, frequent urination, body pain, and much more. 

This wonderful little body has been through a lot. 

And, even though it really sucked to get sick again, and in some ways more debilitated than ever before, I saw early on that it was an invitation to heal at a deeper level. In some ways, it also wasn’t surprising. Like a lot of folks, I pushed myself really hard through much of the early part of the pandemic, working two jobs, mostly completely alone in my apartment with very little touch or in-person interactions. I do not blame myself for getting the vaccine, or for my body’s reaction to it, but I recognize now that I was ripe for a relapse. 

The vaccine experience also felt on trend in a season of letting go that started in 2021. I let go of living in Boston, said “no” to a graduate program, left a job where I loved my colleagues, left the following job because I was too sick to do it, ended a relationship with someone I loved who didn’t want the same things, and after many, many days on the coach, subsequently let go of the idea that my body had to function in a particular way. This experience has invited me to REALLY let go of striving, slow the F down, and accept love and support into my heart in a much more expansive way. 

Unsurprisingly, this deeper healing experience has had a big influence on my coaching work. It makes me chuckle that I’ve become a life coach who is anti-striving. It feels so right, and also antithetical to a lot of the messaging in the coaching industry that often invites folks to do more, be high achievers, and “maximize” their potential. My clients achieve truly amazing results – landing dream jobs, launching businesses, getting the clients of their dreams, writing books, fundamentally shifting their relationship with work, etc. –  but we start by slowing down, resourcing, and building a foundation of clarity and alignment. Do less to eventually do more. 

My year of deeper healing has also fundamentally changed my outlook on what healing is. I’m no longer interested in trying to “fix” my body or helping others “fix” theirs. I am more firmly rooted in acceptance and being. I am still receiving medical treatment, and still hopeful that I will be able to run again someday, but I trust my body and feel clear that healing from this vaccine injury is going to take as long as it's going to take. My job is to do my best to enjoy the ride. Understanding it like a concussion has been helpful too. There’s only so much you can do for a concussion. Mostly you just have to give it time. 

I have found a lot of solace in the Fleet Foxes song, “I’m Not My Season,” and specifically the lyrics, 

Though I liked summer light on you

If we ride a winter-long wind

Well time's not what I belong to

And I'm not the season I'm in

Instead of my previous “I gotta do whatever it takes to heal this” energy, it has felt so much better to say “F you” to time, and to the capitalist expectations that my body can’t meet, and honor the season I’m in. 

Given this new orientation to healing and time, the guiding question for me and my work with sick clients now sounds like: How do we let go of the chase for a cure and create a joyful abundant life with what is? 

If that sounds like a question you want to dance with, I invite you to set up a strategy session with me here. 


My Upcoming Book: Healing is a Contribution

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My Upcoming Book: Healing is a Contribution

Healing is a Contribution: A Chronic Illness Survivor’s Guide to Personal and Collective Liberation is a light-hearted guide to the mental, spiritual, and emotional healing of chronic illness in our current cultural context.

The pandemic has shown us with greater clarity just how broken our systems are, and how much we need each other to heal and survive. This is the first chronic illness book to address personal, collective, and systemic healing simultaneously.  It postulates that doing the mental, emotional, and spiritual healing work needed to heal physical health challenges contributes to our collective liberation because it frees up our energy, creativity, and attention to envision and embody real, lasting social change. Sharing lessons from healing justice, disability justice, cultural somatics, her work with clients, and her own healing from late-stage Lyme disease, Noëlle shows readers just how much agency they have in both their personal healing and in healing societal and systemic oppression that contributes to our disease.

The book guides readers to build a foundation for personal healing; understand the connection between systemic oppression, trauma, and chronic illness; and heal in community so they can reclaim their agency, live in right relationship, and build a joyous, connected life.

To stay in loop about this book’s availability, join Noëlle’s newsletter here.

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Finding Your Role in Social Change Movements

This an awesome tool for finding our roles in social change ecosystems!!

I believe strongly that it’s only in making our unique contribution that we are able to stay in change work for the long haul. If you’re looking to find your special fit, let’s chat!

Gateless On Hiatus

Gateless On Hiatus

My monthly Gateless Writing salons are on hiatus for a little while as I continue to heal from a vaccine-related relapse of bartonella and Epstein Barr virus. Joining my email list is the best way to stay up to date about future salons, workshops, and coaching groups. I do have two openings in my coaching practice for a September 1, 2021 start date.

In the meantime, here is an excerpt of what I wrote in the August 16th salon (In Gateless Writing, we are asked to write everything that comes up):

When I put down my book of short stories every night, I think about Cornel West, and his beautiful gap-toothed smile. I saw him in the Harvard Book Store the day I bought this copy of the Best American Short Stories of 2020. It was January, so we must have had masks on. I spotted him when I first walked in and pretended to browse romance novels while I eavesdropped on him excitedly talking philosophy with some undergrads. I smiled to myself and moved on. Later on, as I was walking to the checkout counter, we made eye contact. He smiled and gave me a practiced but genuine, “Hello, how are you?” with a nod of his head, all wild eyebrows, nerdy glasses, and graying afro. I was taken aback, not used to being so thoroughly acknowledged, in New England, by a very famous Harvard professor. It was as if we were in the South, and as if he cared. I said “hello professor” and nodded, smiling huge behind my mask. For a moment, Cornel West made me feel like a human being again. He was wearing his signature three piece black suit with a chain sneaking out of the vest pocket. I really, really hoped he had a pocket watch. It made me wish I had some kind of signature look. I feel as if I have a kinship with Professor West because of his upper midline diastema, a.k.a. a significant gap between the upper front teeth.  I was born with one too, before it was “fixed,” without my consent. It’s not that it was done against my will, but no one asked me if I wanted the surgery, it was just assumed. Of course this isn’t real life real, but in my heart the warmth of his greeting indicated that Dr. West knew that we were in the same club. 

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I will attempt to rewrite the conclusion to the damn manuscript that I desperately want to finish: 

I hope that you have found some sweet nuggets here to support you in your healing. And maybe you see now too, how being on the healing path contributes to our collective liberation. While we could write a neverending list of all the things that are wrong with the United States of America, there are just as many opportunities for change, redemption, and new paradigms. As important as it is for us to heal the white supremacy and racial capitalist constructs that live within us, it is equally important that we dream new possibilities into being. And as you know so well, dreaming doesn’t happen as easily, or at all, when you are completely exhausted, depleted, and beat down. Dreaming is enabled by being on the healing path. Each small shift and healing victory make space for possibility. 

Imagine for a moment what it would be like if everyone in this country loved themselves, or even if everyone was willing to walk the path of self-love. Let yourself feel what it would be like if your neighbor, your doctor, and your community leaders really, truly loved themselves, and through loving themselves in turn loved the land, and had a relationship with their ancestors, with animals, and the divine. What does that feel like in your body? What do you notice and where?

A little more on my healing journey

A little more on my healing journey

I was recently interviewed on a new podcast about healing called Our Power Is Within. More generally the podcast explores our innate ability to heal ourselves and different tools for accessing that.

In this episode, I share my experience with the Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) and how my healing journey led me to become a coach and a healer. I’ve told my healing story on a couple podcasts before but I think this might be the best version yet. :-)

Find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or listen to it here.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Eradicating White Supremacy + Supporting Black Lives

I have been committed to anti-racism since before I started my coaching practice five years ago. I believe very strongly that it is something that needs to be practiced every. single. day. in all aspects of our lives. Same with anti-oppression more broadly. I am not an expert at doing this. I still have a lot to learn but I am committed to that learning, and I hold a vision in my mind of what America could be like if all beings were truly free.

I do this because when some are suffering all of us our suffering and I want for all beings to feel like they can claim their agency, stand in their power, and do what’s theirs to do in the world.

For all its flaws, I love this country and I want so badly for he U.S. to ACTUALLY live up to it’s nickname of “land of the free.” I think that might be possible, with a whole lot of structural change, cultural change, and reparations and restorative justice for BIPOC.

I also have selfish motives for practicing anti-oppression:

  1. I know that my life will be way better when everyone in this country feels truly free, and all our systems reflect this.

  2. I think life is a lot more fun and joyous when there is less struggle.

  3. I want people of all races, abilities, gender, sexual orientation, etc. to feel like they can trust me so that I can coach people from all walks of life and host vibrant and diverse coaching and writing groups.

As I mentioned recently in this Instagram post, I have been very lucky in that a lot of people, Black folks and otherwise, have taken the time to call me in/out when I’ve said something racist, to recommend resources, and otherwise support my anti-racist education. I have also royally screwed up and have hurt and excluded people and some of them still took the time to tell me how I could do better next time. It is not the job of oppressed people to educate the privileged so I am grateful to people who have nevertheless taken the time to educate me.

Part of how I express that gratitude is by continuing to do my own healing work and my own research. I know not everyone has the network and experiences that I do so I want to offer myself as a resource. If you’re a white person looking for support on your anti-racist journey, please reach out to me. You can set up a free 30 minute session with me here and we can just chat about whatever is coming up for you. I am also including some of my favorite anti-racist and anti-oppression resources below.

Why anti-racism and anti-oppression together? Because we cannot ignore how gender, sexuality, and physical and cognitive ability tie into racial oppression. Being born Black in this country at this time automatically lowers one’s life expectancy. Being Black, trans, and a woman cuts life expectancy nearly in half. If she’s also disabled, it makes the amount of oppression (and potentially violence) she faces that much more significant. First and foremost, Black lives matter. Period. And, we need to make sure that we are always holding ALL Black lives as sacred.

I am not keen to list all my anti-racist actions because, as I mentioned, I see anti-racism and anti-oppression as an ongoing practice, and I don’t want to seem as if I am being defensive or painting myself as an exemplary white ally. I am trying to be an agent of social change, but I still have a lot of work to do to uncover my blind spots and metabolize the white supremacy that lives in me. I do want to share some of my practices in case it is useful to potential clients to see what I’m up to, or in case it can be of service to other white folks, and white coaches in particular.

Here are some of the practices I have, in addition to reading, engaging people in positions of power, and having conversations about race with colleagues, friends, and family.

  • I do a lot of noticing. I notice how I feel in my body in a room that is only white people. I notice what I feel when a Black person enters. I notice what it feels like in my body to walk down the street in a mostly Black neighborhood. I notice how I feel when I am one of the only white people in a room. I notice when I feel scared, when I feel safe, when I feel happy, and when I feel enraged. And then I examine those feelings and consider why I feel the way I feel. As an empath, I also track how people around me are feeling in different situations and offer space for them to process when I can and it feels appropriate.

  • I take on Black teachers. One of my most precious spiritual mentors is a Black dancer/coach/entrepreneur and I’m grateful that she and her husband (also Black) have been in my life for nearly a decade. I have learned a lot from them. Amazingly they continue to facilitate spaces in which Black and White folks can heal together. In 2018, I took a course specifically for white coaches on how to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion in their businesses. Most of the people I quote in the book I am writing are Black. The book is about the connection between healing from health challenges and social change and, as you might imagine (or know well yourself), Black folks have a tremendous amount of wisdom when it comes to healing and living well in the face of tremendous oppression and hardship. The three individuals who most influenced the concepts in my book are Black or mixed race: Resmaa Menakem, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, and adrienne maree brown.

  • I consume Black media. Some of my favorite TV shows are Insecure, Dear White People, and more recently, #blackAF. I listen to black radio, and podcasts hosted and created by Black folks. Trudi Lebron and Louise “Weeze” Doran’s podcast, That’s Not How That Works is an incredible resource for white folks to learn more about justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion and what those words really mean in practice. I also follow Black coaches and healers online. Consuming media by Black creators has helped me learn more about Black culture and the concerns of the Black community from the Black perspective. When I don’t know what something is, I look it up and try to learn more. I love hip hop, and growing up in communities with almost no Black people, it provided some of my first exposure to the Black experience. When I first heard Common’s “A Song for Assata,” for example, I didn’t know what it was about so I did some research and started learning about Assata Shakur and her contributions to Black liberation.

  • I try to support the team. I look out for opportunities to elevate the voices of Black, disabled, queer, and indigenous people, immigrants, and those who hold other marginalized identities, both in my personal and professional life. I do this when I’m in group settings by trying to make sure all voices are included, ideally most marginalized first, and I choose to promote the work of more marginalized voices, e.g. by choosing the books of POC poets for prompts in my writing group, and asking everyone I know to read Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. I practice speaking up for individuals with certain identities whether or not they are in the room, and offer to educate others when I’m able. Last year I organized a training for my team at work on disability justice and how our team could best support disabled students. I recently introduced my boss to oops/ouch so that we could start using it in meetings as a mechanism for addressing microaggressions. I have a meeting scheduled with our Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging later this month to talk about what I can do to support Harvard Kennedy School in its anti-racist journey. I recently worked with some neighbors on NextDoor to raise a little money for a local Black-owned hair salon to buy supplies for reopening after quarantine. I have been learning more about the Black-owned businesses in my community so that I can support them when the time comes, e.g. when I need to see an auto mechanic, I will try to support the Black mechanic first. In the last round of my coaching group Operation Dream Job, the group I recruited was 50% POC and we offered partial scholarships to four individuals who were low-income, POC, and/or disabled. I’m going to aim higher next time but it felt like a start. And, it’s a small thing, but I also make a point of holding doors open for Black women when I get the chance. It’s the very least I can do to be respectful and honor how challenging it is to be a Black woman in America. My hope is that these practices add up to something meaningful and inspire other white people around me to take similar actions. I also understand that I can do a lot more, particularly when it comes to combating systemic oppression, and I plan to do so.

  • I ask for feedback and welcome accountability. I’m currently paying a POC friend to do a sensitivity read of my book because I KNOW I’ve written things that are hurtful and tone deaf, and I want the book to be as accessible and inclusive as possible. If you see me share, write, say, or do something that feels racist, ableist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive (including this post!) please reach out and let me know. If you have ideas for how I can make my coaching practice more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, I would love your feedback.

Here are some of my favorite resources on anti-racism:

Anti-Oppression more broadly:

In the coming months I’ll be working on a more robust resource page that will also include resources specific to supporting and lifting up queer, trans, sick, and disabled folks. If there are any resources you’d like to share or recommend, please send me an email.

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 04: "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow" by Funkadelic

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 04: "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow" by Funkadelic

“Free your mind and your ass will follow

The kingdom of heaven is within.”

I feel like this song is speaking to what happens in physical healing when we are willing to shift our mindset. Riffing off of a previous post about Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” when we are no longer caught up in cultural tropes that keep us unwell, i.e. “I have to do everything myself,” we are able to do what’s right for us, instead of what we think we should do. This alignment of thought, heart, and action allows energy to move more freely in the body and can manifest as relief from pain and illness. This is why so many of my clients start feeling better physically after a few months of coaching. They stop sabotaging themselves and start acting with coherence and alignment and the body responds.

Recently I have found that the reverse of this is also true, that if you free your ass, your mind will follow. March - May of this year were pretty intense for me. My favorite healthcare practitioner died, I moved unexpectedly, several of my family members got sick, and I ended a three year relationship with someone I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. And, on top of that came more and more bad news about our president, concentration camps on our soil, proposed limits on abortion, etc. The only way I could deal with all the sadness, anger, and angst that came up in me was to move it through my body. For me, this looked liked running, swimming, and dancing. Dancing was the most effective, and I did it in my beloved Afro Flow Yoga classes, as well as in my kitchen and living room. 

Speaking to “the kingdom of heaven is within,” I love supporting folks to tap into and cultivate their intuition because you already have everything you need inside of you to heal fully. Once you clear the bullshit (trauma and self-limiting thoughts) out of the way, you start to see the road map to victory with more ease. And the more you tune in, the clearer and clearer the path becomes. IT’S SO FREAKING AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM YOUR BODY WHEN YOU LISTEN!

Listen to “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” here.

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 03: "Everything is Everything" by Ms. Lauryn Hill

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 03: "Everything is Everything" by Ms. Lauryn Hill

“Everything is everything

What is meant to be, will be

After winter, must come spring

Change, it comes eventually”

 Everything is everything is another way of saying that everything is personal and collective. We cannot separate the two. I get livid listen to popular healers who make healing out to be an individual responsibility. They tell us that if we just eat the right things, in the right ways, and do the right practices, we’ll feel better, beat cancer, avoid cancer, live longer, blah, blah, blah.  

Then a lot of people, desperate for good health, take this advice, they do all the “right” things, and they don’t feel better. Or they feel better for a while but then they relapse. That is because this individualistic approach to healing doesn’t take the collective into account. It’s more of the American pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps narrative that keeps us from experiencing collective health and freedom. And the popular hyper-individualistic approach to healing can be really traumatic when people don’t have success with the protocols they’re prescribed and their healers make it out to be their fault. Patients are left to assume that something must be wrong with them, when in fact they’re being asked to heal, mostly alone, in the context of generations-worth of toxic and oppressive influences. 

Drinking celery juice and doing coffee enemas everyday could really change your inner landscape but it won’t change factors like pollution, pesticides in our food system, systemic racism, and the capitalist-informed busyholism that causes dis-ease. 

This is one of the biggest failings of the wellness industry in the United States. You can bust your ass to heal yourself and it will be really challenging as long as the collective is still unwell. Unless you are fortunate enough to get hide under a rock off grid somewhere, you’re going to be trying to heal in an environment that is culturally and environmentally antithetical to healing. 

Part of how we survive this, and work to reverse it, is to see that our healing is bound up in the healing of our neighbors and the earth around us, and grasp every opportunity we can to support collective healing. This is what it means to see that everything is everything. You can see that it’s just as important to say “hi” to your neighbor and use natural resources responsibly as it is to get yourself to yoga class.

When we are willing to treat everything as everything, it allows us to be in right relationship with ourselves, each other, the earth, and the universe. Understanding this and acting from this knowing is fundamental to healing fully, in part because it keeps us connected to the bigger picture making it easier to not sweat the small stuff.

When we are in right relationship with the earth and each other, it is easier to roll with the punches and the natural ebbs and flows of life. Instead of feeling like something to complain about or fight against, we understand upsets as just energy doing its thing. We can resist it or allow ourselves to go with the flow. :)

Listen to the song here.

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 02: "Bag Lady "by Erykah Badu

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 02: "Bag Lady "by Erykah Badu

“Bag lady you gon’ hurt your back/Dragging all them bags like that. I guess nobody ever told you/All you must hold onto, is you, is you, is you.”

Ooof. This song! As a yoga teacher, when I hear this song I think about aparigraha, one of the yamas in Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga which concerns the virtue of non-hoarding, non-grasping, or non-attachment.

The lesson of aparigraha is to take only what you need, hold on to just what you need in the moment, and be okay with releasing everything else, because so much of what we hold on to does not serve us

Of all the virtues that Patanjali spelled out, this is the one I’ve come back to the most in my healing journey. A big part of my healing has been letting go of expectations again and again, and learning to surrender to what is and what is unknown. 

One of the biggest things I had to let go of was the desire to get back to where I was. For some time I just wanted to “be healthy again.” But what I thought of as normal, life before I got sick, was actually what made me sick in the first place.

Once I surrendered to the possibilities that 1) I might always feel sick and 2) even if I started feeling physically awesome my life would be completely different, I experienced a new level of spaciousness. In that space, I experienced less despair, more ease, and saw new possibilities for living a life I loved while I was healing.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but you actually have to let go of the idea of wellness for a little while in order to see what you need to do to get there. Constantly search for the answer outside yourself distracts from the answers within. In order to hear the answers within, you need to slow the F down, see that you’re not in control, listen to what your body needs in the moment, and honor that request.

All you really need to heal is you so that’s actually all you have to hold on to. :)

Once a week for the next few weeks, I’ll choose a song and explore what it can teach us about healing. 🎤 For tips on how to heal yourself sign up for my email list here: https://www.noellejanka.com/contact

Listen to “Bag Lady.”

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 01: Redemption Song

Healing Lessons from Popular Music 01: Redemption Song

Once a week for the next few weeks, I’ll choose a song and explore what it can teach us about healing. 🎤 Music has always been my greatest healer and has kept me alive in more ways that one. Sign up for my email list to catch the whole series and learn more about me and my healing work https://www.noellejanka.com/contact 
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Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds”

I don’t like to use the word slavery lightly and want to acknowledge that that the legacy of slavery is what Bob Marley was singing about in this song. In this post, I’m exploring the power of his words in the second line above, “None but ourselves can free our minds,” and how it relates to healing from health challenges. As my understanding of healing has grown and shifted, I am seeing more clearly just how much our mental landscape keeps us unwell.

We all have what my mentor Maria Nemeth calls “structures of knowing,” or ways of organizing information that we developed while growing up to understand how the world works. The structures of knowing in themselves aren’t good or bad, but it can be useful to observe them and see if they are serving us.

While coaching people on healing journeys for the last four years, I’ve noticed a lot of trends – common structures of knowing that have been shaped by the American culture of capitalism, individualism, and puritan work ethic. These show up as blocks around asking for support and slowing down. What’s behind them is usually 1) shame about asking for help, because we’re supposed to be able to be independent and figure things out on our own, and 2) an unwillingness to slow down, leave a job, or rest for fear of being unproductive.

When people realize that these ideas about support and productivity are not their own, they can come back to what IS true for them. For example, “I’m tired AF and want to ask for help taking care of my mom since I’m already working full time and in school. My cousins have already offered to come twice a week.”

When we surrender to what is true, we can make choices that are in alignment with what we’d love and what we really need. Clearing away thought patterns that keep us unwell, allow us to see what would make us well. Like if you actually accepted help from your cousins, you might get to do just that much more self-care, which might give you that much more joy and energy to pour into the rest of your life.

The invitation in Marley’s classic song is to notice where your mind has been programmed by forces of oppression. The song is also a reminder that only we are truly able to do that for ourselves. It might be nice to have some support along the way, perhaps from a coach, therapist, or people in your community who are game to hold you accountable, but you have to be interested in - and willing - to dive into the process of examining your structures of knowing.

We create the structures to survive in this crazy oppressive system. It’s normal. But only by observing and shifting them can we achieve true personal and collective healing.

Coming back to healing again and again

Coming back to healing again and again

"Things are simpler than I think they are." This is my mantra for the day.

I feel like 2019 is slapping me in the face and asking, "Girl. are you ready to grow for real, for real? 'Cause here's your opportunity."

On top of jetlag and the worst cold I've had in recent memory, I'm facing some big health and relationship growth opportunities.

In the past, I might have called them "challenges" but they really are opportunities -- Opportunities to be more aligned in two of the most important parts of my life right now.

And even though I can label them as such, I've felt a great deal of overwhelm and fear.

I've also felt disappointment seeing that all the work I've done hasn't been enough. I KNOW the journey is never really over but I'm tired. I KNOW that it's my journey to take but I still dream of letting someone else tell me what to do.

It's hard to see that I've been wearing rose-colored glasses, celebrating everything that has been working, but not telling the truth about what still needs attention.

It's true that I've healed from Lyme disease. It's also true that there's some post-Lyme fall out to address, that my metabolic systems aren't working properly, and at some point drinking coffee, crashing every couple weeks, and saying everything's good just isn't going to cut it anymore.

This morning in my meditation/reflection time I realized that the major fear coming up for me has been fear of financial scarcity.

I am very annoyed by this. I'm anti-capitalist, I've done a lot of work on my money mindset, and fear of not having money is still threatening to destroy what's most dear to me.

I've been planning to lead a book study group on Maria Nemeth's The Energy of Money in February and I'm seeing now just how much I will personally benefit from the money mindset reboot that the book offers. 💰

My internal scarcity monkey has been saying:

Healing my body for real, for real is going to take a lot of time and energy. Healing my relationship is going to take time and a lot of emotional energy. If I put in that time and energy, I won't put enough work into my business, I won't be successful, I'll go back to being broke, everything will be hard, and life will be super poopy.

❤️ I can have compassion for myself as a Capricorn and a 3 on the Enneagram. I desperately want to be successful, I want to have the answers, fix things, do them efficiently, and be on top of it all.

But I also see that right now I have to allow myself to be fragile and flexible. Even typing that starts to bring tears to my eyes because it feels so scary to give up control, to not have a plan for every possible outcome.

THE TRUTH is that committing to healing (my body, spirit, and relationship) is the only way I'm ever going to be the person I want to be - the friend, the partner, the healer, the coach, the family member, and the citizen.

It's scary as shit but I'm willing.

Accountability check-ins are welcome. 💛

If you're also seeing that you could use support with financial scarcity worries in your life, let me know. I'd love to keep you in the loop for my upcoming group. 

Maybe Healing Isn't About What to Do But What to Stop Doing

Maybe Healing Isn't About What to Do But What to Stop Doing

Since being featured on the Healing Out Loud podcast in October, all kinds of Lyme folks have been contacting me wanting to hear more about what I’ve done to heal.

They have asked about the treatments, the doctors, the self-care routines, and while I have been happy to answer their questions, it’s hard doing so knowing that that information probably isn’t what they REALLY need to heal. This was making me uncomfortable but I didn’t know what do about it.

Then a mentor of mine helped me frame it in the clearest way. She said, “Noelle, it’s not what you did, it’s what you stopped doing.” Cue animation of my head exploding. She couldn’t be more correct.

In my case, when I met her four years ago, I was doing two big things that were keeping me from healing: I was pushing myself way too hard and I was unwilling to ask for support from the people in my life.

I would push myself to work, to do things for others, to go to the store, to try to make relationships work, all the while ignoring pleas from my body to act otherwise. I pushed because I was scared of what would happen if I stopped.

On a day-to-day basis, because my energy was unpredictable, when I felt I had some physical energy or mental clarity, I would want to make the most of it, doing as much as possible because I didn’t know when it would be unavailable and for how long.

In a more big picture sense, I’ve always had workaholic tendencies. I used to think that I couldn’t be successful unless I worked as hard as I possibly could. That, along with some guilt about class and race privilege, steered me away from myself – what I wanted and needed and what was true for me. I had let myself and who I really was fade into the background.

Getting the support of a coach helped me clearly just how much this pushing was hurting me. It also helped me muster the courage to slow-the-F-down. I didn’t know what would happen, or if it slowing down would even help my healing, but my coach helped me see that I was willing to give it a shot. The status quo sure wasn’t working.

Slowing down in the way I needed to necessitated asking for support. As much as I resisted asking for help, because I was ashamed of needing it, I wasn’t going to be able to heal all by myself, and deep down I didn’t want to.

Once I got over myself a little, I took some baby steps. I got rides places, borrowed cars to see out of town doctors, and asked friends if they’d be down for low key hangs. Later on, when I got more comfortable with the whole thing, I even asked for financial support from family and friends to see doctors and start my business. It wasn’t easy, but it turns out a lot of people wanted to help.

I’m sure I needed the herbs, the Ondamed, the neuroplasticity training, and the countless Epsom salt baths. And I’m sure they were helpful, but I’m CERTAIN I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t stopped pushing.


What the Body Knows

What the Body Knows

“The body knows things about which the mind is ignorant.” - Jacques Lecoq

If you follow me or my work at all then you probably know that I’m a huge proponent of cultivating intuition, particularly as a tool for healing health challenges.

I want to share a little story about how my own intuitive practice helped me last week.

I’ve been trying, with mixed results, to heal a bacterial imbalance in the gut and a deteriorated stomach lining (thanks antibiotics!), since February of this year. Sometimes my gut doesn’t bother me, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s super bloated. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s not the easiest either.

A couple weeks ago I was both in pain and really depressed. Like, struggling to make myself do anything depressed. I had just spent four days trying to do the SCD intro diet, which looked like two days of sticking to it and two days of eating the diet AND binge eating potato chips.

I was exhausted and feeling lost about what to do next. It felt like my Naturopath was taking forever to get back to me. I was also questioning his expertise since his last recommendation had made things worse.

Then I remembered that I could just ask my body.

I lied down on the couch, took a minute to arrange pillows so I was super comfortable, placed my hands on my belly (skin to skin), and closed my eyes. I took deep breaths for several minutes, bringing my attention down into my belly. Then I asked it, “what do you need?”

The answer I got, with great clarity, was “a break.”

I kept inquiring.

“A break from what?”

“Solid food.”

“What would you like instead?”

“Juice. Soup. Celery juice. Chicken broth. Squash soup might be okay too”

“How long?”

“Three days.”

Feeling like the instructions were pretty clear, I started this modified cleanse the next day. I had only the things my belly asked for, ginger tea, and buckets of water.

I was surprised by how much easier it was to stick to this prescribed diet since it had come from within me, and not from some outside force. And in the first day and a half, when I experienced a near constant headache, I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t try to fix it. I just understood it was part of the process.

Interestingly, in the first two days of the cleanse, a hawk flew across my path each day as I was out walking. Hawks are understood by many cultures to be symbols of broadening awareness, observation skills, and even physic awareness (!!).

On day three, I woke up feeling pretty out of it so I consulted my belly again, “would it be okay to eat solid food again?” I got a strong “yes” and confirmation on which foods to start with.

After I ate, and even had a little coffee, I felt like a million bucks, like a whole new person, and so excited to be alive.

After days of wanting to talk to no one, I went to a brunch event thrown for my partner's theatre colleagues and shmoozed like a champ for a couple hours, enjoying every minute of it.

One of the most common struggles I hear from folks with health challenges, and particularly folks in my Lyme family, is never knowing what to do next. When health goes south or another promising medicine doesn’t help, there’s this painful looming question mark that keeps coming back. Naturally, we try to problem solve and because, most of the time, our mind doesn’t have the answer, we exhaust ourselves trying to decide between different options that may or may not provide any relief or healing.

The truth is that the body knows what the mind can’t. It also knows things before the mind. This is why we can jump out of the way of an oncoming car before our cognitive mind can tell us to move.

The more we can give the mind a rest and tap into the wisdom of our bodies, the easier healing becomes. Consulting the body facilitates alignment, since we’re doing exactly what the body wants and needs, and saves energy because we’re not riding the emotional see-saw of “Should I do this? Should I do that?” It can be hard to remember in the moment when things feel scary (I forget all the time) but we actually have the answers and our bodies can guide the way.

If you want to learn more about how to cultivate your own intuition so you can tap into your body’s vast wisdom and bring ease to your healing, send me a note and we can have a chat about it. ✨

My Lyme Disease Story

My Lyme Disease Story

I was recently featured on the podcast “Healing Out Loud with Jackie Shea.”

A fellow Lyme survivor, Jackie asked some great questions and gave me the opportunity to share some of the highs and lows of my healing journey – what was challenging and what ultimately helped me heal. Specifically I talk about the power of coaching, intuitive work, moving out of the city, and the Dynamic Neural Retraining System.

I also share how regularly tapping into your own intuition can help you navigate your healing journey with greater ease.

Check out the episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.