Hello!
Immaculata here.
It was a great week for touching base with my internal sense of purpose behind this project. I also met a listener who recognised me in the wild for the first time! That was wonderful, and the feedback/conversation that ensued? Affirming and inspiring. Check out the work that the feminist pan-African collective Liberation Alliance Africa is doing.
In place of the audio essay, I’ve uploaded my episode with Gbemi Adekoya, a conversation I would have loved to have heard growing up. I had the conversation in the weeks following a particularly devastating fall-out with a friend and I owe the vulnerability I brought to the generous rawness of my wounds at the time. I consider the episode essential listening because it’s about living with a duty of care to ourselves and others. Whoever you are in the world, this episode is for you. “Prepare to be dumbfounded sometimes.”
Please spread the word, rate the show or leave a comment if you enjoy an episode. Word of mouth goes a long way. Here’s some of what people said this week:
“What you’re doing is building infrastructure for hope.”
“You owe other people a duty of care.” - Gbemi Adekoya (listen above)
or for web, on Acast here
In this episode, I spoke with psychotherapist Gbemi Adekoya (@gbemisoke on X) to explore the complexities of trauma, healing, and personal responsibility in interpersonal relationships. I consider this essential Sweet Medicine listening because all social change begins with the individual and this is the one episode in this project that focuses exclusively on the individual.
We discussed Nigeria as a metaphorical abusive parent, the necessity of acknowledging one's feelings and experiences as part of the healing process, the vitality of hope and agency, and what unconditional positive regard looks like in Gbemi’s psychotherapy practice.
02:54 Nigeria as an Abusive Parent
06:03 Hope and Agency in Healing
12:00 The Role of Unconditional Positive Regard
15:04 Navigating Personal Responsibility and Accountability
17:57 The Dilemma of Victimhood and Perpetration
23:46 Tools for Emotional Intelligence and Healthy Relationships
Full transcript is not yet live but will be on this page.
“Memory will break your heart, memory will also heal you.” - Didi Cheeka
(Acast link)
Didi Cheeka, a filmmaker, archivist and critic. He is the co-founder & curator of the Lagos Film Society & Decasia, the Berlin-Lagos Archive Film Festival.
In this profound conversation, we explored shared values as the glue for true belonging, Nigerians’ collective trauma, engaging history and archival studies with a psychoanalytic lens, one problem with the concept of ‘post-colonialism’, and much more.
04:57 How he came to memory work
08:02 Taught to forget, to be numb, to fear difference, to avoid our internal truths
12:48 Values
19:18 Is dialogue enough?
21:19 Belonging and Community, how Nigerian Marxists coped after the fall of the Berlin Wall
27:52 Post-Colonialism vs. Post-Nationalism
34:57 The Healing Power of Archives
Full transcript is not yet live but will be on this page.
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