Ep.052 Examining White Feminism with Anti-Racism and Trauma Therapist, Kelly Germaine
Kelly Germaine (MSW, LISW) is a politicized somatic trauma therapist, facilitator, consultant, and movement builder who is practicing Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression (ARAO) in her body, community, and industries. She is the Co-Founder of Energetic Justice, working with other white people to deepen our awareness of the pervasive and shape-shifting nature of white supremacy, sprout + strengthen mechanisms of accountability with BIPOC organizers, and erupt a community of white culture-makers and institutional organizers committed to an oppression-free world.
Kelly is trained in Somatic-Based Psychotherapy and Anti-Racist Training + Education, having 8+ years of experience in these fields of practice alongside the essential community-based training of grassroots organizing. She has organized for Economic and Housing Justice in Rural Appalachia, Indigenous Sovereignty & Environmental Justice, and for Black Liberation including ending gentrification, mass incarceration, and discriminatory policing.
Kelly Germaine seeks to change systems so individuals + communities won’t need healing or charity in the first place, offering individual and organizational consulting to support people and institutions who are committed to enacting systemic equity and justice.
Additionally, Kelly supports activists in healing from the impact of system oppression with politicized somatic healing workshops + group practice spaces, individual/community-based mental health care, and psychological first aid. She is particularly committed to investigating and correcting the ways that the of psychology and somatics that she works within have stolen, appropriated, watered-down Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color’s healing lineages.
In this conversation, we explore the water White women have been swimming for thousands of years and how this has impacted the way we show up and stay complicit in toxic dynamics. This externalization of our trauma patterns opens the doorway to understanding how we got here, and what we need to examine and heal in order to move forward in solidarity.
To go deeper into this work, you can find more of Kelly's work here.