Gwynn Raimondi, MA

An ongoing membership group exploring, utilizing, and integrating traditional and non-traditional approaches to processing and healing complex trauma while reclaiming and restoring our Self through an anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, decolonizing lens.
Content begins December 21, 2022
Weekly content on Substack
Quarterly live group calls (to start, becoming more frequent as the group grows)
All humans are welcome
Pricing :: $16/month (introductory price)

There are many ways to process trauma. There is traditional talk therapy, somatic therapy, coaching, art therapy, mindfulness, meditation, etc. The ways we look at trauma is through the lens of “modern” psychotherapy, which while ever evolving, is deeply rooted in patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.

Before patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, our ancesters knew how to release trauma. “Natural” ways. Embodied ways. “Folk” ways. They relied on community. They relied on the ancestors. They relied on their own embodied knowing. They relied on folk “magic,” on spirituality, on divination, on the stars and planets. They relied on herbs, on food, on trees, on dirt, on water.

Today we are disconnected, dissociated, fragmented. We find ourselves relying on “experts” and “gurus” who are also disconnected, dissociated, fragmented. This disconnection breeds more disconnection. We find ourselves lonely, lost, and frustrated, healing in parts but not in our whole.

Embodied Relating :: Shadow Medicine is an exploration of the old and modern. It is an opportunity to bridge the gap between the two. To bring in our present day experiences alongside ancient knowing. To allow ourselves to be who we are in the present while finding ways to connect with our ancestral pasts. To unpack, unravel, and dislodge the indoctrination that oppressive systems have instilled in us, and connect deeply to our own knowing and healing. To reclaim what was our birthright, to restore our humanity, our ability to have emotionally intimate relationships, and our communion with nature, our ancestors, all of our Self.

Each month we will explore different themes and practices, finding ways to bridge our present day lives to older ways of knowing and being, while examining the ways our internalized oppression keeps us disconnecte fro our self, our communities, our world. We will utilize both “modern” somatic trauma modalities and more “non-traditional” ways of exploring and processing trauma.

Trauma healing and processing are non-linear. Nervous system regulation, body reclamation, somatic sensory exploration and Self integration are non-linear experiences. Reconnecting to our ancestral folk ways, and how they affect us, and dismantling our own biases and harmful indoctrination, are all non-linear and ask for our curiosity, experimentation, adaptability, and patience.

The content of this program will vary month to month, season to season, and ultimately will be dependant on what feels like the right next thing for the group. We will move at a pace that will both push at our edges and allow space and time for reflection and integration. Some of the aspects/topics we will be exploring ::

  • Decolonizing traditional healing
  • Nervous system regulation as an embodiment practice
  • Body reclamation
  • The two sides of consent & boundaries
  • Somatic sensory exploration
  • Land reconnection and stewardship
  • Self integration
  • Tarot as a healing tool and embodiment practice (including tarot constellations and deeper study and connection of individual cards)
  • Astrology as a healing tool and embodiment practice (including connection to “personal planets” and the signs and houses they reside in)
  • Stream of conscious writing and other creative expressions & explorations
  • Pleasure, sensuality, and rest
  • Ancestral reconnection as a healing tool and embodiment practice (including connections to the old gods and goddesses, practices, and riturals)
  • Grief practices and rituals
  • Ancestral trauma processing and healing (including reconnection to the folk practices of our ancestors)
  • Ancestral accountability as a path to healing our present day trauma (including looking at how acculturation/assimilation impacted our ancestors and their ways of being in the world)
  • Soul retrevial as trauma healing and self integration
  • Reading and discussion of various books and writings on history (of emperialism & colonization, capitalism, patriarchy, & white supremacy), feminst theory, critical race theory, and other topics
  • Interpersonal relationships and the ways trauma (including living under oppressive systems) impacts them
  • Exploration of alternate (healing, nurturing) ways of being in relationship with friends, lovers, and family (chosen and blood)
  • The necessity of expansion and contraction in our healing and reclamation journey
  • And more…

This group is the next iteration of my personal and professional work. While I have been a trauma therapist/support practitioner for ten years, working with individuals and groups both online and in person, utilizing the modalities I studied in and outside of school, I have also been quietly studying and (re)connecting to the folk medicine of my ancestors and upacking, unraveling, and dislodging the ways patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy suppressed those old ways and have impacted my ways of being in the world. I have been studying tarot for over 35 years (since I was a teenager) and over the last few years have begun my journey into studying astrology. I bring both lived experience and formal learning to my work, and have always had the attitude that I am not an expert, but rather have some expertise and am forever learning and unlearning.

I do not have “all the answers” nor is this group a nice and neat way of exploring the difficult intersections of trauma, ancestral reconning, folk medicine, and the impacts of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy. We are all in the process of decolonizing ourselves and our world, and I am here offering a potential path to add to your own personal journey of healing.

Complex trauma develops in harmful relationship and the ways to healing are through nurturing, expanding, accountable, and emotionally intimate relationship. The intent of this group is to grow an ever expanding circle of community, where the individuals can grow connections within and outside the group that are revolutionary, evolutionary, and deeply rooted in our humanity. This includes not only expanding our own “inner circles” but also expanding our “outer circles”. We need each other and while not everyone is meant to be our best friend nor is everyone meant to be in our lives “forever”, we do all have impacts on each other and community is made of multiple kinds of relationships.

Our goal is to come together, learn together, unravel, dismantle, shatter, grow, heal, reclaim, and restore together by exploring different aspects and ways of healing that in recent history have been ignored and shunned. Our ways to healing are limitless and this group is meant to live this truth, each person finding their ways while we support each other in community with guidance and a limited amount of structure.

This group will be ongoing, allowing members to come in and out as they need and want. While in someways this creates an level of inconsistancy, it is meant to allow for the reality of the ebb and flow of life, relationships, healing, reclaiming, and restoring. Each person will be welcomed where they are and we will all be invited to push at the edges of our own comfort zones to give space for individual and collective healing and growth. People can join, leave, and rejoin as they need, want, and as their lives allow.

With this said, overtly racist, homo-, trans-, bi-phobic, ablist, misogynist, misandrist, classist, etc speech and behaviors will not be tolerated. Hate speech will not be tolerated. Personal attacks and “canceling” will not be tolerated. And. We are all in a place of learning, and so these behaviors will be addressed in non-punitive ways, with the understanding that boundaries and accountability are a necessary part of the individual and collective healing process. Members who consistantly refuse to accept feedback that things they have said or done are harmful, will ultimately be removed from the group and invited to find other ways to their own healing and growth.

If you have any questions, please reach out! You are welcome to DM me on social media or if you would like to have a conversation to explore if this group is right for you right now, you can request a 30-minute consultation here.

You can learn more about me and my past work here.

You can read past and more recent writings of mine on substack, medium, and my old blog, instagram here and here, and on facebook.