We Heal For All: The Collective Healing Podcast

Liz Moyer Benferhat
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

You feel the world deeply — the pain, the injustice, the disorientation of living through so much change. But you also sense possibility. You're someone who cares about what's happening and knows that your inner life is connected to how you show up in the world.. and maybe even more. Maybe you're trying to bridge your spiritual practice with your political values. Maybe you're a helper or a healer. Maybe you don't call yourself a changemaker but the way you live your life says otherwise. If you're called to tend to the opportunity held in the mess then welcome. I'm so glad you're here. You've found yourself in We Heal For All. Hosted by me, Liz Moyer Benferhat — I'm a collective healing practitioner and author of When the World Hurts. With nearly 20 years in sustainable development, I know how much heart goes into caring about our world. That's why in each episode I go deep on topics tied to the emotional and spiritual dimensions of caring about our world. Through conversations, guided practices, and reflections you'll have space to explore your relationship with the world's pain these days, and better understand how what you're feeling is tied to this time of change and the unique role you're meant to play. Thank you, to you and your heart. Let's collectively heal.

  1. 2d ago

    The Life-Giving Power of Grieving Collective Wounds with Irish Grief Practitioner Claire Killilea

    So many of us are carrying grief that reaches beyond our own lives — it’s what we might call ‘collective wounds.’ Grief due to war, ecological destruction, abuses of power. For what our families and communities have lived through, and what was never given space — intergenerationally — to be mourned. But in cultures that praise stoicism and make grieving a private affair, where does all of that pain go? In this conversation, Liz sits down with Claire Killilea, an Irish grief tender and ritualist working to reclaim and carry forward the tradition of keening—an ancient Irish grief tradition of wailing or lamenting over a dead body to support the soul’s transition from this world to the other world, and to support the release of grief in individuals and the community. Claire shares how reconnecting with this tradition brought her into a deeper relationship with her own grief and, through it, her connection to life. Together, they explore how shame and cultural suppression shape our relationship with grief, why understanding our pain isn’t always the same as allowing ourselves to feel it, and what becomes possible when we have spaces to grieve together. They also explore how to honor the roots of ancestral practices while adapting them to meet the needs and realities of our times. If you’re wondering how we grieve all that’s happening in the world—and all that went ungrieved before us—grab your headphones and join us for a rich dive into the deeply embodied ritual of keening. Keening’s traditional role in honoring the dead and supporting communal grief.How colonization, religion, and stoicism suppressed grieving.Why we praise “holding it together” and shame emotional expression.Giving grief space in the body and voice.Grief beyond bereavement, from identity loss to ecological destruction.Where personal, ancestral, and collective grief meet.Emotional sensitivity as a gift with a role in community.Respectfully reclaiming and adapting ancestral grief traditions.Building our capacity to grieve as part of living.Connect with Claire Claire Killilea is a grief practitioner, mentor and coach devoted to helping people navigate life’s thresholds with greater honesty, humanness and authenticity. She is essentially a midwife of the shadows, seeing behind the veil and turning the unseen into your power. Drawing on trauma-informed approaches, shadow work, somatic practices, the Irish grief tradition of keening and ritual, she creates spaces where people can tend to grief, reconnect with themselves and honour the profound transitions that shape a life. She spent over two decades in the corporate world and continues to work as a workplace wellbeing consultant, sharing corporate wellbeing programmes and keeping a foot firmly in both worlds. Through CLAIRITY, she offers 1:1 mentorship, coaching, rites of passage, keening, retreats and hosts The Unspoken podcast. More than anything, Claire believes that grief is not something to overcome. It is our birthright to experience, witness and express fully. She is deeply committed to keeping our old ways and traditions alive while allowing them to evolve to meet the needs of modern life. » Website » Instagram Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  2. Oct 7

    I could only clench my butt cheeks for so long

    What are we actually feeling when the world’s pain hits? Sometimes it’s the event right in front of us. Sometimes it’s a much deeper well—historical heartache, intergenerational harm, fears about what’s ahead—all mashed up together. This month’s theme is Giving voice to our collective wounds, and in this reflection, I explore why naming what’s under the surface helps us understand ourselves and gives us agency in these times. I share a date-night story that started with empanadas, craft beer, and a comedy, and ended with tears on a Manhattan sidewalk. Those tears were holding more than frustration with a movie. They were touching collective wounds around misogyny and patriarchy—the history, the ongoing harm, and the fear of what my daughter might encounter. Through this experience, I offer a framework for recognizing collective wounds tied to the past, present, and future, and understanding why different layers need different kinds of care. We can’t heal what we don’t see or feel. Giving these wounds a voice helps us stop discounting our experiences and start working with them in constructive, loving ways. In a time of breakdown and uncertainty, this is about caring for ourselves—and supporting our capacity to participate and show up in the ways we’re called to, in our families, communities, and the wider world. Would love to know what you think and connect. Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  3. Sep 23

    Drink water. Take care of yourself. with Fatima Mann, Leading Voice in Cultural Mindfulness & Human-Centered Change

    What if the change you want to see in the world starts with whether you drank water today? Most of us were taught to keep personal healing and social change on separate tracks. Fatima Mann, co-founder and Chief Visionary of Love and Healing Work, never did. She has spent her career helping individuals and organizations become more culturally mindful, healing-centered, and non-harmful, and her core conviction is simple: if we want to create a less harmful world, we have to start by lessening the harm we do to ourselves. In this conversation, Liz and Fatima get into what it actually means to put your own mask on first — not as a platitude but as a daily practice. They talk about how trauma disconnects us from our bodies and own knowing, why shame is a shackle rather than a motivator, and what it looks like to question every behavior by asking whether it’s causing harm or harmony. She also shares how she works with leaders and organizations — from helping a coffee shop owner transform her hiring and culture so that Black and brown customers felt welcome there, to working with CEOs who see turnover drop and trust grow when they start leading like humans first. If you care about changing the world and you want to understand why taking care of yourself isn’t separate from that work — it is the work — this episode is for you. Fatima Mann, JD. TCYT, CYT is a social justice advocate, healer, and the co-founder and Chief Visionary of Love and Healing Work, a consulting and training company that helps individuals and organizations show up in culturally mindful, healing-centered, and non-harmful ways. Fatima’s path to this work was forged through direct action — co-founding the Austin Justice Coalition to combat police brutality, helping pass the Sandra Bland Act, and founding the Community Restoration Project during Hurricane Harvey, where she led the rescue of over 400 people and reimagined disaster relief by placing families in hotels instead of shelters. A lawyer by training, a trauma-conscious yoga instructor, and a deeply embodied practitioner, Fatima brings all of who she is — her legal mind, her activist roots, her healing practice — into her work with organizations and communities. At the heart of everything she does is a conviction that the way we treat ourselves and each other is where culture actually changes. Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  4. Sep 9

    "You're having another baby? ...In this world?!"

    People often ask me how I can raise kids in a world that feels this messy, painful, and uncertain. But motherhood doesn’t make me feel more helpless about the world. In many ways, it gives me a place to practice what I want to see more of in it. Culture change can feel so outside of us. Something that’s happening “out there.” But the reality is that so many of us are actually already doing the work of culture change right now, in our own lives—whether we think of it that way or not. We’re asking questions, looking under the hood of the car, poking at things that no longer work—and then using our lives to try things differently. In this episode, I explore motherhood as a deeply personal site of culture change: a place where big ideas about emotions, relationships, healing, and how we want to live get brought down to earth. I share what this looks like in my own family—from raising a big-feeling three-year-old and learning to meet emotional sensitivity with support instead of control, to thinking about the patterns we inherit, the ones we want to interrupt, and the everyday choices that shape the cultural waters around us. This is a reflection on parenting, emotional health, intergenerational change, and what it means to live our values when the world around us can feel so stuck. 00:48 — Welcome + culture change through the way we live03:10 — Updates + what’s coming from We Heal For All04:00 — “How do you handle motherhood with everything going on?”07:44 — Motherhood as a place to live our values11:00 — Raising a big-feeling three-year-old14:28 — Presence, attunement, and choosing what to prioritize16:54 — Attachment and what gets passed down20:00 — Knowing something is one thing. Living it is another.23:52 — Building the relationships and support systems to live differently25:44 — Parenting as an informed experiment27:51 — Emotional sensitivity isn’t something to squash30:10 — Big emotions vs. harmful behavior34:39 — Our families at the cultural edge37:02 — Closing Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  5. Jul 22

    The Art of Giving Without Losing Yourself with Counselor & Mentor Emily Holmes

    In this conversation, I sit down with licensed counselor and dear friend, Emily Holmes explore what it means to be a "giver": someone wired to help and to feel deeply, and how to refine that into a real craft — make it something skilled, effective, and life-giving rather than depleting. Emily shares the mentors who shaped her, including Jerome, the group counselor who threw her into the deep end of the work and taught her to read a room like a conductor. We dig into the tender, complicated parts of being heart-centered in a demanding world: the porousness of empathy and the struggle to know "what's mine and what's someone else's," how the pull of perfectionism is tied to burnout, and how a savior complex can hide inside even our best intentions. Along the way we reframe self-care as something far grittier than bubble baths — the willingness to sit in your own muck with people who can help you find the gold in it — and land on a surprisingly grounded meditation on hope: how it comes and goes, why its absence isn't the end, and what it means to feel it return with a little more wear and wisdom under your belt. This is a conversation for you if you’re someone gives a lot, feels a lot, and is learning how to do both in a way that actually regenerates them. About Emily Holmes Emily is a very special, gifted human. Someone who epitomizes what it means to be a “giver.” Naturally connection-oriented, she has channeled those gifts into being a mental health counselor, working with kids with disabilities, now helping to coordinate services for families. As an adjunct professor at the University of Scranton, she now mentors young people going in the field. And on any given day you’ll find her volunteering at a local community event, throwing a party for one of her cousins, or just being there for the ones she loves. About the series This post is part of my monthly rhythm that offers Reflection, Practice, & Conversation on collective healing and the times we live in. This month’s theme is: Becoming exquisitely skilled givers. Enjoying these? Then give them some love by liking, subscribing, or forwarding to a friend. Your support means a lot. Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  6. Jul 9

    Becoming Exquisitely Skilled Givers

    We live in a world built to take — a culture running on greed and extraction that keeps asking more of us. For those of us wired to give, it's easy to feel responsible for being the counterforce: to give and give until we end up burning out and needing to step away from the very work we love. In this July reflection, I explore why it’s so important to become an exquisitely skilled giver in these times — someone who serves from a place of self-awareness rather than self-abandonment. In the co-exploratory spirit of the We Heal For All podcast, I unpack the savior complex and the victim–perpetrator–savior triangle it sits in, and the difference between helping and trying to save. I share three boundary mantras for givers from the work of Bert Hellinger and Family Constellations — I am here, you are there / That's your story, not mine / I offer myself until I'm no longer wanted. And sit with the harder questions underneath this work: Can we actually save anyone? Can I keep showing up even if I never see the fruits of my labor? And what becomes possible when we ground our giving in a healthy dose of self-centeredness. This is an invitation to get seriously skilled - and honest - about how we go about our giving. To clean up our own side of the street, fortify our inner home, and give in ways that can actually be sustained. Come sit in the questions. I'd love to hear what edges you’re working on in becoming an exquisitely skilled giver. Time Stamps: 00:00 - Welcome 01:49 - The importance of becoming an exquisitely skilled giver 02:44 - Systemic roots of greed and extraction in our culture 03:40 - The challenges for naturally compassionate givers 04:27  What "giver" really means (an orientation, not a humble brag) 05:59 - The types of professions naturally inclined toward giving and healing 07:54 - The risk of burning out and abandoning one’s calling 08:49 - The vibe of this space: co-learning, not teaching from on high 10:16 - The spirit of co-exploration vs. hierarchical teaching 14:30  Liz's journey: international development and Kenya 15:33  The victim–perpetrator–savior triangle 19:04 - The arrogance of the savior complex and the importance of mutuality 20:30  Bert Hellinger, Family Constellations, and three mantras for givers and empaths 22:32  Mantra 1: "I am here, you are there" 24:01  Mantra 2: "That's your story, that's not mine" 27:17  Cutting cords vs. fortifying the heart center 31:28  Mantra 3: "I offer myself until I'm no longer wanted or needed” 35:01  Can the world be saved? 38:02  Can I participate without seeing the fruits in my lifetime? 39:31  Grounding giving in a healthy self-centeredness 42:46  Cleaning up your own side of the street Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  7. Jun 17

    What Comes After Religion? with Integral Coach Michael Stern

    You have one of those friends where as soon as you open your mouths or sit down with each other you just go deep? That, my friends, is Michael Stern for me. With this month’s theme being about integration and maturity — the evolutionary draw towards social-spiritual maturity, and how that naturally moves us away from black and white approaches to… everything, and towards a more integrated, integral view and approach to the world — I knew he was who I wanted to talk to. Michael Stern is on a mission to help humanity navigate The Great Transition and create The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. He believes the key is to integrate evolutionary spirituality, relational coherence, and regenerative systems. He attempts to do that through being a father, partner, meditator, coach, facilitator, event organizer, and community builder. In this conversation, we explore what the Great Transition is — one of the many meta-narratives used to make sense of the times we live in — and what it asks of us, in practice, as everyday people. Michael shares his vision of a "trans-lineage planetary spirituality" — the possibility of weaving humanity's wisdom traditions into something genuinely new — and why re-centering the sacred is at the heart of the big challenges we face. We zoom out into big picture thinking, exploring things like healing collective bodies and why a transformation of consciousness may be our best chance to navigate all that’s going. And then we bring it down to Earth by getting personal: what does this initiatory threshold we're crossing as a species mean for the nuts and bolts of our daily lives? What does it mean for him, personally? Questions like: Where to live? How to invest? Healing childhood wounds? Raising a family?   Here are some quotes from our conversation: "If we think of religions like languages — one language is not better or worse than another, but languages reveal different things about what it means to be human. Now we're living at a time where all of those streams are converging." "I'm in a phase of strengthening the vessel — getting my home life in order, doing my therapy, healing those early childhood wounds, to be a channel for all of the goodness to come through me that I sense is possible." "How does leveraging or investing in a kind of transformation of consciousness give us the best chance to navigate this great transition skillfully and successfully — to steward that process in a positive direction?"   Timestamps: 00:00 — Welcome to this conversation with Michael Stern 01:02 - Defining the "Great Transition" and its various names 02:17 - The meta crisis and our unprecedented acceleration of change 05:12 — "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" — the spectrum from collapse to breakthrough 07:13 - Leveraging consciousness transformation to steward the transition 08:44 - The importance of inner practices for resilience and response 10:12 — Trans lineage planetary spirituality: religions as languages 14:45 - Re-centering the sacred: Post-secular spirituality and integrating diverse wisdom traditions 17:15 - The metaphor of spiritual and systemic birth and maturation 23:27 - The importance of collective, ritual spaces for grief and healing 25:04 — The expansive notion of social change work: breaking cycles, worldview shifts, inner work 29:28 — The nuts and bolts: where to live, how to invest, knowing your neighbors 32:08 — Finding the others: why community is non-negotiable 34:14 — Inside the Emerging Leaders Project: the three keys to intentional community 37:00 — Our relationship with the world as a living being; personal optimism vs. collective pessimism 48:58 — Hospicing the dying system while midwifing the new one 50:55 — Why collective experiences must be grieved in collectives: "It's too much for one body" 52:38 - Connecting with Michael and his current projects   Connect with Michael Stern: Website & one-to-one coaching: integralalignment.com Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence courses: danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com For information on six-day Mahamudra meditation retreats (online and in person), reach out through Michael's website   Teachers & Resources Referenced: Duane Elgin (the great transition, the living universe) — https://duaneelgin.com and the Choosing Earth Project: https://choosingearth.org Charles Eisenstein (Mother Earth to Lover Earth, "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible") — https://charleseisenstein.org Elisabet Sahtouris, evolutionary biologist — https://www.sahtouris.com Valarie Kaur ("sometimes it's time to push and sometimes it's time to breathe") — https://valariekaur.com bell hooks — https://bellhookscenter.berea.edu (the bell hooks center at Berea College) Otto Scharmer — https://ottoscharmer.com and the Presencing Institute: https://presencinginstitute.org Josh Schrei, The Emerald podcast ("everything that's alive is growing out of the decaying body of what came before") — https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast Our World in Data (surveys on personal vs. collective optimism) — https://ourworldindata.org/optimism-and-pessimism Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

  8. Jun 3

    Would A Matriarchy Actually Be Better?

    These times we live in are awakening much-needed cultural conversations about what needs to change. Unfortunately, though, the loudest versions of these cultural conversations tend to be the oversimplified ones. There’s a tendency within the cultural dialogue that happens around social change to swing hard in the opposite direction of what we want to fix. To see a deficit within society, and to conclude that the solution is its mirror image. When I think about this pull - towards black and white thinking, towards clean solutions that are the opposite of the problem - it makes a lot of sense. It feels like a necessary step within a larger process. In this episode,  I unpack the opportunity that these times invite those of us who are called to help guide these cultural conversations and the social awakening that’s fueling them. To offer a spiritually mature lens that takes them out of the binary and towards something more whole and nuanced. I hope you enjoy, and would love to know what you think - what do you see as the evolution of these cultural conversations? Where are they now and where could they go? 00:00 Welcome + what's alive right now: social-spiritual maturity 02:23 - Post-awakening phenomenon: the stage of maturity 03:50 The heat wave and the matriarchy comment 05:00 Feeling the longing underneath — care, relationality, representation 06:50 "Would a matriarchy actually be better?" — when the opposite isn't the answer 08:30 Liz at nineteen: Marxist theory and black-and-white thinking 11:18 How a worldview gets humbled by real life 12:00 The body positivity movement and Gabriella Lascano's NYT piece 16:38 Why the loudest cultural takes are the simplest ones 19:25 Romanticizing what's in deficit 23:26 Humanizing rather than romanticizing Indigenous culture 24:00 Otto Scharmer: taking the best from all the timelines 26:21 Empaths, narcissists, and the savior complex 29:55 Bringing it home: inner worlds shape outer worlds 31:41 Closing reflection Connect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat: Subscribe to my Substack to get episodes directly in your inbox. Website: www.wehealforall.com IG: @wehealforall Youtube: @wehealforall Check out my new book, When the World Hurts Facilitate healing space, We Heal For All Circle Training Deepen your collective healing, Guided meditations

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You feel the world deeply — the pain, the injustice, the disorientation of living through so much change. But you also sense possibility. You're someone who cares about what's happening and knows that your inner life is connected to how you show up in the world.. and maybe even more. Maybe you're trying to bridge your spiritual practice with your political values. Maybe you're a helper or a healer. Maybe you don't call yourself a changemaker but the way you live your life says otherwise. If you're called to tend to the opportunity held in the mess then welcome. I'm so glad you're here. You've found yourself in We Heal For All. Hosted by me, Liz Moyer Benferhat — I'm a collective healing practitioner and author of When the World Hurts. With nearly 20 years in sustainable development, I know how much heart goes into caring about our world. That's why in each episode I go deep on topics tied to the emotional and spiritual dimensions of caring about our world. Through conversations, guided practices, and reflections you'll have space to explore your relationship with the world's pain these days, and better understand how what you're feeling is tied to this time of change and the unique role you're meant to play. Thank you, to you and your heart. Let's collectively heal.

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