What Happens In Between Athena Sayaka

Episode Summary: 
In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Walela Nehanda, a cultural worker, transplant survivor, and agender writer who created their debut book, Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir as an archive for Black, Young, and Disabled people. Walela helps us shift the narrative toward a world rooted in care, interdependence — and ultimately, revolution. How do we define our realities without molding ourselves into a presentation? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Cultural Worker x Transplant Survivor x Agender human using art and writing to push a revolutionary culture forward.
Question of the Week: When navigating through massive amounts of grief, how do we practice compassion without being rooted in ego?

Topics Covered:
Walela’s definition of a “Cultural Worker”The key ingredients of culture from the lens of a Cultural Worker Survivorship: A new creation of what it means to be aliveWalela’s relationship to their body as a cancer and transplant survivorHow relationships can help us realize that we deserve care Interacting with the fluidity of feelings about your writing How we can make ourselves legible in response to feelingsFour questions for our Seedling Round
Resources:
Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals
Guest Info:
Connect with Walela Nehanda on Instagram. Support Walela on Patreon, and pre-order their debut book: Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir here.
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Show Notes:
Walela Nehanda is centering self-acceptance as a means to a more supportive, nurturing future. Walela’s debut book, Bless the Blood - A Cancer Memoir is an archive for Black, Young, and Disabled people, where feelings can be validated in a way they didn’t think was possible. Walela is redefining the next era of the Black Arts Movement and exploring what key ingredients of culture can resolve conflicts in search of survival and progress. If art is a point of political struggle, is culture how we make ourselves legible to each other?
In December 2020, Walela underwent a stem cell transplant and spent 31 days in isolation. Walela helps us shift an overly autonomous narrative toward care and interdependence — and ultimately, revolution. They teach us why being patient with our bodies is proof that survivorship has no end date. Unfurling into (self-)acceptance of love. 
Walela reminds us that within the mess there is creation — and it doesn’t have to be coherent. Within it, you can be responsible for the outcome and supported through the process. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Cultural Worker x Transplant Survivor x Agender human using art and writing to push a revolutionary culture forward.

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Episode Summary: 
In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Shavon Swain, a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) with over 10 years of experience working in the mental health field. Shavon helps us understand that the layers of curiosity, imagination, and possibility are cultivating your innate wisdom. What does it mean — and feel like — to have the freedom and the expansiveness to try on all different parts of yourself? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be both a Black Woman and a Free Spirit.
Question of the Week: Why do parents put gift bows on household appliances in their homes?
Topics Covered:
Questions around being a free spirit, imagination, and possibility How Human Design highlighted Shavon’s innate wisdom Permission to shift and change within career/identity Shavon’s formula for clarity + embodiment = authenticityUsing somatics to sit with and understand emotion How Shavon channeled her intuitive gifts into a careerHow increased neurodivergence accessibility impacts therapy Four questions for our Seedling Round
Guest Info:
Connect with Shavon Swain on Instagram, The Healing Lounge Website, her personal Website, and Therapy For Black Girls Website. Check out Shavon’s NEW! Guided Journaling Cards here.

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Show Notes:
We get to choose how the layers of curiosity, imagination, and possibility integrate into some (or all) aspects of our lives. As a Black Woman x Free Spirit, Shavon utilizes human design, astrology, and inner child work as a permission slip to deepen her therapy practice while staying true to herself. But Shavon’s intent isn’t to make her work her sole identity. It’s a layered evolution, textures upon textures of the Self. 
Shavon’s somatic-centered therapy practice helps her clients understand how emotions and feelings show up in the body. How can you become your own tool for self-compassion? 
To embody self-awareness and understanding is to understand aspects of the Self. What does life look like when you believe clarity + embodiment = authenticity?
Shavon reminds us that there is freedom and expansiveness when we try on all different parts of ourselves. All the possibilities exist. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be both — a Black woman and a free spirit.
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Episode Summary: 
In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Xenia Viray, Imagination Healer, Multidimensional Artist, and Community Weaver focused on facilitating workshops and writing. Xenia expands our perspective of relationship dynamics, interconnectedness, and imagination as the ability to wade through the depths of experience. Is it possible to see imagination simply as the way we think and process? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Poetic x Empathy-Driven x Curious Imagination Healer who believes in experimenting with the construction of correctness.
Question of the Week: If you were a climate or a landmass, what kind of land would you be?
Topics Covered:
Questions around empathy-driven curiosity, personal stories, and being understood The psychedelic experience of being in the world and relationshipBeing poetic = Everything is made up How spirituality and mysticism helped Xenia understand her imagination Being unfamiliar with linear choice vs. linear experience Different levels of capacity concerning depth of experience Two questions for our Seedling Round
Resources:
Crystal Bennett HarrisArthur Vogelsang’s poem Help
Guest Info:
Connect with Xenia Viray on Instagram and her Website. Xenia Marie Ross Viray (she/they) is an imagination healer, multidimensional artist and community weaver with a focus on facilitating workshops and writing. Born as a brick-and-mortar business, Myths of Creation is a container for experiments, writings, and gatherings at the intersection of creativity and spirituality. Myth's core intention is to reconnect communities, ideas, and art forms that have been separated in order to enrich the pool of imaginal possibility. Xenia's 1:1 offerings Imaginal Temple and Heart Channel are designed to help unique creatives anchor the frequency of their natural genius.
Show Notes:
Everyone has a unique way of communicating, receiving, and interpreting language. With an infinite desire to understand individual experience, Xenia views the world from a dual, cosmic point of view: intrigued by the human experience and in constant observation. How does the construct of perspective help us be in relationship with each other and the universe?
Xenia’s newest offering, an “Imaginal Temple,” relates to her interpretation of what it means to be “an adult,” and a response to curiosity about the different layers within Self. When we view the world and ourselves as a desire for a relationship to experience, there is endless power — and an opportunity to create. In Xenia’s words, “My imagination is actually my energy. It's who I am without the constructions of the outside world.” 
Xenia allows us to examine the world and ourselves — while also experimenting with its structures and interpretations. Expansion and contraction (as a sign of bravery) is beautiful. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be an Imagination Healer who believes in experimenting with the made-up construction of correctness. 

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*CORRECTION: Neuroexpansive is a term coined and trademarked by Ngozi Alston.
Episode Summary:
In this episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Ben-Oní, a neuroexpansive clinical psych doctoral student, orator, writer, and Black disability justice activist. Ben-Oní shares their experience as a Black Multiple AuDHD and how that translates into their Creative Activism. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be neuroexpansive, leading through a lens of beauty, and devoted to activism. 
Question of the Week: What is one thing that you want to make your descendants proud to say about you?
Topics Covered:
What it feels like to be in your own village or family as a multipleThe power of memory among Ben-Oní’s family, especially for friends and familyWhy Ben-Oní is pursuing a PhD in clinical psychologyHow academia interacts with Ben-Oní’s creative activismEssentialism, minimalism, and the role of beautyThe nuances of Black womanhoodHow the term BIPOC coalition builds and flattens experienceReal diversity means disagreeing with someone, or being disagreed with, and being OKThree questions for our Seedling Round 
Guest Info:
Connect with Ben-Oní on the Black Neurodiversity website and Instagram.
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Show Notes:
For Ben-Oní, being multiple means living within a family. Sometimes being part of his family requires surrender, but their goal isn’t to control or integrate their family as they accept their multiplicity exists to make them feel safe. 
Ben-Oní is committed to sharing resources and presence around neurodiversity, disability, and other spaces from their lived experience. Through Black Neurodiversity, she shares resources and trainings that center on intersectional neurodiversity and anti-ableism. Their aim is to give Black people their own space to dive into our unique experience with disability, neurodiversity, culture, ethnicity, and race to ensure our experience isn’t glossed over or minimized. In some ways, the right words to match the experience don’t even exist yet! 
Their academic work in clinical psychology supports an even deeper resourcing for Black Neurodiversity and their activism. Ben-Oní shares the importance of letting our work be impactful, informative, and meaningful while also infusing it with joy, humor, and beauty, especially beauty! We can be heavy and light. 
Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be neuroexpansive, leading through a lens of beauty, and devoted to activism. 
Seedling Round:
Ben-Oní answers a few rapid-fire questions about their favorite thing they learned recently, their relationship to time, and why their lens as a Black, multiple AuDHD, and creative activist is a joyful space to inhabit. 

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In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Ola Akinmowo, the Founder, Curator, and Creator of The Free Black Women's Library: a Black feminist literary hub and community care space that features a collection of over 5000 books written by Black women. Ola helps us understand how to explore the different routes of expression, creation, and art as a ritual of self-actualization. How do we explore our own identities in a society that is anti-Black and anti-woman? Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Community Curator and a Self-defined Black Woman — who is choosing to thrive.
Topics Covered:
Questions around speculative fiction, collage work, and performance artThe concept of third spaces and commodification to assign valuePros and cons of social media: a meal for consumption Community as a connection to a common goal and how to learn from each otherThree questions for our Seedling RoundOla’s perception of what it means to “be free”How Black women have to be a contradiction to exist fully 
Guest Info:
Ola is an interdisciplinary artist and the curator, founder, and creator of The Free Black Women's Library, a Black feminist literary hub and community care space that features a collection of 5000 books written by Black women. This particular work is fueled by the tenets of Black Feminism, Community Care, and the transformative power of reading and creating to liberate, affirm, and heal.
Connect with Ola Akinmowo on Instagram, Facebook, and The Free Black Women’s Library Website. Support The Free Black Women’s Library here. 
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Full Description
We can use speculative thinking as a type of dreaming as an expansive way to dream big. As the curator, founder, and creator of The Free Black Women’s Library, Ola is interested in the infinite possibilities in which we can see the world. She uses the library as a co-creation process between humans and the physical space they occupy. How does community care transform the world when there is a seat at the table for everyone? 
The Free Black Women’s Library is considered a third space, but in Ola’s words, it’s “a space where black women can come and learn to read. To feel safe and feel free, within an anti-black, misogynist, misogynoir, patriarchal capitalist society.” Commodification is how we assign value — labeling and categorizing things help people better understand the mission. But how does language serve as another layer to what already exists, instead of a contradiction? 
Ola reminds us to explore the different routes of expression, creation, and art as a ritual of self-actualization. Freedom is accessible, but there’s no finality to it. Join us on today’s episode as we explore what it means to be a Community Curator and a Self-defined Black Woman — who is choosing to thrive.

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In this week’s episode of What Happens In Between, I sit down with Courtney Lanctot, the founder of The Unpopular Black, a platform built to inspire and educate the Black community to adventure the American outdoors. Courtney’s work serves as both representation and a specific type of relatability for the Black American experience. Is it unpopular for us to seek out nature, or simply uncommon? Join us on today’s episode as we separate generalizations from the public perspective by Shifting Narratives x Black Adventuring.
Topics Covered: 
Feeling misaligned with everyone else’s peak joy Why don’t Black Americans seek adventuring?The distinction between outdoorsing, adventuring, and traveling The space Black Adventuring fills as a spiritual practice Courtney’s outdoor grief rituals mirrored by joy and gratitude
Guest Info:
Courtney Lanctot, the content creator behind The Unpopular Black, inspires Black people to get outside and explore wide open spaces across the nation with her platform. Her outdoor adventures have taken her from paddleboarding the Colorado River to witnessing the Aurora Borealis in the Alaskan sky.
Connect with Courtney Lanctot on The Unpopular Black’s website and Instagram. Listen to Courtney’s We Been Out Here podcast, and check out The Adventure Directory here. 
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Full Description
Is it possible to shift narratives and Black Americans the pleasure of adventuring? As the founder of The Unpopular Black, Courtney Lanctot enters outdoor spaces in support of joy and gratitude for the outdoor landscape to co-exist with Blackness. While grief for Black history does exist, it is also a reminder of a shifting perspective; finding sensory forms of freedom in natural spaces can exist, too. Courtney shows us that co-regulation can extend to the presence of non-human connections.
Relatability is just as important as representation. So why don’t Black Americans seek adventuring, but travel overseas to outdoor destinations? The outdoors can both be a place for adventure and a spiritual refuge. Courtney started The Unpopular Black to inspire and educate the Black community to adventure the American outdoors. Can there be more than one way to perceive Black Adventure? 
Courtney shows us that bringing curiosity to the stories that surround us is the first step toward inspiring significant change. Join us on today’s episode as we separate generalizations from the public perspective by Shifting Narratives x Black Adventuring. Is it possible to be both free from narrative and connected to your individual freedom?

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