Q&A: Finding Liberation Through Reconnection with Emily Roh
"Just like there's intergenerational trauma, there's also intergenerational resilience." - Emily Roh, liberatory coach and facilitator
Every Sunday(ish), I place a stick of incense in my bamboo holder, light it, and bow my head in prayer to my ancestors. It’s one of the many practices I’ve committed to while healing my body, my spirit, and my mind while living in…well, you know, the world that we all live in.
Feeling at ease with asking for attention comes part and parcel with healing. But given the landscape of our lives, it isn’t always clear how the small actions we take to heal can make an impact on “everybody getting firsts before anyone has seconds,” as Ricardo Levins Morales likes to say to describe liberation.
That’s why I wanted to speak with Emily Roh, a Korean-American liberatory coach and facilitator, who has created a framework that I haven’t stopped thinking about since I saw it.
In this conversation, we’ll answer questions like:
What is liberatory reconnection?
Which specific messages do we receive from systems that keep us from asking for attention?
What is on our menu of options for moving from disconnection to reconnection?
How does the common practice of “ghosting” prevent us from bringing a vision of liberation into our world?
How can we widen the lens from intergenerational trauma to intergenerational resilience?
I hope you enjoy it.
AUDIO RECORDING
ABOUT EMILY ROH
Emily Roh is a liberatory reconnection coach and facilitator working with Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and organizations seeking to divest from supremacy, capitalism, and colonization. She supports individuals in unpacking their “invisible knapsack” and transforming their relationship with themselves through courageous self-compassion. With organizations, Emily creates transformational spaces to help teams align their actions with their values, fostering cultures of trust, care, and liberation.
Rooted in somatic and embodiment practices, Emily helps clients move beyond intellectualizing their experiences to tap into the wisdom of their bodies. Before stepping into this work, she spent years in education and nonprofit leadership, advocating for educational equity for low-income, queer, and BIPOC youth. She holds a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and an M.Ed in Counseling and Personnel Services from the University of Maryland.
Emily is a daughter of Korean immigrants, a bisexual/queer cisgender woman, and currently resides with her spouse and child on unceded Tongva/Kitz land (Los Angeles).
IMPORTANT LINKS
Website: https://myinvisibleknapsack.com/
Full Framework: https://myinvisibleknapsack.com/framework/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyroh/
TRANSCRIPT
Cher (she/her): Emily, welcome to Doing it for the Attention, the podcast that's not a podcast, posted on Substack that I spontaneously produce sometimes when I need to have a really deep, thorough conversation like this.
Emily Roh: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Cher (she/her): Of course. You shared, before it was ready, a framework with me that when I saw it during our session, I was like, this is thorough and necessary and so deep in terms of thought that I had to have you on here to discuss it in the context of asking for attention. So I want to hear all about this framework. You call it liberatory reconnection. Can you walk us through kind of like the highlights of the framework and then how you created it?
FROM DISCONNECTION TO RECONNECTION
Emily Roh: The framework's premise is that we live in a system of capitalism, colonization, and many different supremacies. Those systems thrive on us being disconnected. They want us to be disconnected from ourselves. They want us to be disconnected from each other. They want us to be disconnected from the earth and other living creatures, and they want us to be disconnected from our spirit and our ancestors. And it needs us to be disconnected because then the systems can continue to manipulate us and exploit us. We are seeing the impacts of that every day in the world.
When I sat and thought about, what's the answer here? It's reconnection.
It's so simple and yet so incredibly difficult.
How do we reconnect with ourselves, not just what we think, but what we feel in our emotions, feel in our body, what we know in our bones, right? How do we reconnect with each other? Because it's not a mistake. It's not by accident that our society is so fragmented, right? When we're pitted against each other, then it becomes much easier for those in power to continue to do what they want. When we reconnect with the earth, right? When we shift our relationship from the earth away from one of exploitation and a resource to be used up, we can realize that we can actually have a relationship with the Earth that would actually give back, right? And then she would continue to give back to us. But we haven't done that for generations. And again, we're seeing the effects of that every day. And lastly, reconnecting with our spirit and our ancestors. Thanks, colonization. I've been completely removed from my ancestral practices that kept me in a relationship with my literal ancestors. And so when we lose that, we lose a sort of a sense of meaning and purpose, not only individually, but as a culture. And I think in our culture, we've replaced it with like, greed and individualism and competition and materialism, and we feel empty. And again, we're seeing the impacts of that every day. So that's it in a nutshell.
WHY WE NEED THIS FRAMEWORK NOW
Cher (she/her): Yeah, just a short blurb about hundreds of years of histories of colonization and supremacy. Easy. When you were creating this framework, what brought you to this point? What made it feel like this is urgent? I have to say this now.
Emily Roh: Those are two different questions, right? The first one… I was watching TV one night and I saw these messages coming at me that just like crawled under my skin and just bothered me. And I paused whatever I was watching, I don't even remember what I was watching. I started writing Post-It notes. I just started taking out Post-It notes. And every single message, I just wrote on a different Post-It note. And I continued watching. After a while, I just stopped watching. And just like my brain started exploding in a million different directions. And they just had this huge collection of Post-It notes. And then I went over to the wall and I started grouping them together. It's like, what are the messages here? Where do they belong? And this pattern started to emerge. It was very clear, these messages about disconnection from ourselves and each other. And it was less clear around the earth and our ancestors, right? But still, they were all there. And so just from that night, I just started building out, what does this look like? What is our culture trying to tell us? And what does that lead to? How does that disconnect us? What was your second question? It was around, why did I need to share this with the world? The world is trash right now. I realized we need something, I think, that is simple, so easy to understand, and yet complex enough to capture the complexities of how this is showing up. It just kind of felt like a way that just sort of, like, crystallized lots of little disparate things I've been feeling and reading about and knowing. And so, like, I realized I can't just sit on this anymore. I came up with it last year, and I really need to share more loudly with the world because everyone I have shared it with has just... it's had such a profound effect on them to hear it.
Cher (she/her): Yeah. Hearing you tell that story, I can see very clearly the image of going from fragmentation to integration, where we feel the sense of. Oh, yeah, when we see all of these messages, and it's an impressive amount of them in one place, we have this sense of the full scope of how we've been influenced without our consent or awareness. And I think that we can offer ourselves more compassion in the process toward healing, toward reconnection. So I'd love to hear, when you think about us needing to ask for attention as entrepreneurs and often feeling hesitant, scared, embarrassed about wanting attention or needing to ask for attention, what are some of the messages that we're receiving internally from our systems? Like, what have what have we perpetuated in our minds that are stopping us from doing what we need to do?
Emily Roh: Yeah. Oh, such a great question. I feel like for most of us… we all have something that makes us feel less than, and that's where supremacy comes in, right? And I'm not just talking about race, but, like, based. It could be, like, how you look or whether or not you talk with a lisp or anything that. Where people judge us and say we're less than, we're less worthy. Right? And so some of those ways, some of those messages are that, you know, as a woman of color, I can tell you that I'm supposed to be quiet and small and not take up space, right? Or that asking for attention is asking for help. And, like, that's weak, right? We have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, which is a total lie. Right? You can't do that. What else? Societal messages…that we're not enough, that we don't belong, that we're not safe. Right? Like, so there are so many messages that we ingest every day that keep us feeling afraid, keep us feeling insecure, and keep us feeling small.
Cher (she/her): And to be fair, much of our history, as women of color, shows us that there is real consequence to being seen and visible and heard and loud.
Emily Roh: Absolutely. Yeah. It is a survival feature, for sure. But it gets framed at us that we're, again, less than or not worthy, that we need to take up more space. The problem is us and not the systems that want us to stay this way and tell us to stay this way and use violence against us if we don't stay in this little box.
A PRIMER: SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION
Cher (she/her): Yeah, just give us an idea of these systems at large. What are they and how are they intersecting? Or I might say, like, in the back of the room planning to deceive us together.
Emily Roh: Oh, goodness. So the big three I really name are
1. Capitalism, which is not only the economic system we live in, but also a political system, right? So both Democrats and Republicans are supporting the system of capitalism.
2. Colonization, where one country spreads out its empire, whether through military means or through cultural means, its values, its beliefs, its way of life.
3. Then supremacy, which I define as just the desire to be better or more valuable than another person or group or even living creature. It's a system of competition that's always having us compare ourselves against each other and finding ourselves or the other person lacking in order to create a false sense of worth.
So how do they work together?
Capitalism needs workers. And in the US context, specifically, it needs us to be consumers. It needs us to buy. We are no longer a manufacturing society. We're a consumer one. right? And so, I mean, marketing is a prime example of that. This is why I'm fascinated by this boycott going on right now. It's like people are realizing we don't need to actually buy all these things that we've been told we need to buy. And so it wants us to consume and just clutter up the world and our houses with more junk so that, you know, those who have the most wealth continue to greedily hoard it.
Then, in terms of colonization, we are in the land of indigenous Americans on Turtle Island. This land does not belong to us, and we are not good stewards of the land. But the beliefs, the norms that we exist in are based on one group who have kind of established the norms and set the rules for power. And again, it keeps those in power. It keeps them hoarding resources. It helps them exploit the rest of us as labor so that they can continue to extract.
Then supremacy, I think, is the glue that kind of keeps it all going right by keeping us insecure, feeling insecure, and competing with each other and disconnected from each other. It keeps us looking externally for a sense of worth and validation. And when that always lands as empty, right? We never feel good enough, right? It's a game set up for us to fail. Then we consume. The solution is to consume, right? And then back to capitalism we go, right?
Cher (she/her): Consume to harm ourselves, to harm others in the process…
Emily Roh: to harm the earth.
STRATEGIES FOR RECONNECTION
Cher (she/her): Yes, I know that everyone listening to this is nodding along right with me. Because we are swimming in this soup of …we have this awareness of what is wrong, what is not working on an individual and collective level. But many of us feel unsure of how to move forward. And your answer in this framework is reconnection. And I'd love for you to share a few of the practices that can facilitate that process. Maybe a couple from each of the categories.
Emily Roh: Yeah, sure. Starting with ourselves, I think it's by changing our relationship with ourselves. A prime example of this is what do you do when you're tired or you're sick? Just pause, letting people answer that in their head. Because the message that we've internalized most often is that we have to push through, that we have to continue to work, that that is a measure of our value, our productivity over our bodies literally telling us, hey, I need rest. But we've been conditioned to believe that we don't deserve rest or that we can't financially handle resting because it would economically destroy us, right? So, you know, a practice would be to actually rest when our body says we're tired, to take a break, to take a walk. I love naps, right? Like, naps are awesome. I have trouble sleeping. I have insomnia. So, like, if a nap hits, I'm going to take that opportunity because it's so hard for me to actually fall asleep otherwise. And so just listening to my body as a valid source of wisdom, listening to my emotions as a valid source of wisdom is, I think, a huge and powerful way to help people reconnect with themselves and is what I focus on when I work with individuals as a coach.
In terms of reconnecting with each other, we need community. How do we build community? And I think a key practice that we're lacking, that we're not taught these days is how to navigate conflict. I think learning how to repair after the rupture, because conflict is inevitable in any human relationship. But when you actually practice the repair, when you actually say, hey, this hurt my feelings, and the other person takes accountability and makes amends, then the relationship actually becomes stronger. It becomes deeper. Because that level of trust is a new level of trust to know, hey, if I come to you with a problem, you're going to listen to me and we're going to work it out together, right? And instead, ghosting has weirdly become the norm, or not weirdly, intentionally, right? And that fragments us. So we can't actually build the communities we need to survive and resist the systems at play, which is how our ancestors have resisted throughout generations. That's the playbook they've passed down to us that is kind of conveniently being erased. But learning how to navigate conflict well, and being able to do it. Not that it doesn't hurt or that it's not hard, but there's also an opportunity for healing there. But it takes two to tango, right?
In terms of our relationship with Earth, I highly, highly, highly recommend reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. Yeah, her book just completely blew my mind and just helped me look at the world differently. And one thing I've done as a result of reading her book is I started paying attention to the plants when I take walks. I'm learning which plants are signaling what's happening. When I see the camellia bushes bloom, I'm like, oh, the winter is ending and spring is coming. When I see the maple trees starting to change color, I'm like, oh, that's the sign. Fall is coming. And yes, we have these dates on our Gregorian calendars that tell us officially when these things happen. But when I find that when I listen to what's actually happening on the land and around me, and especially with the climate change that's happening, that makes all these seasons less reliable, like, that is actually a more reliable indication of what the season is going to be like than the calendar.
And then lastly, spirit and ancestors, I think, like having a spiritual practice. And I don't necessarily mean religion. It can be a religion, but it doesn't have to be a religion, right? One of the things I've done, so I'm Korean American, my ancestors practiced, I think in English, it's called ancestor worship. But that doesn't sound right to me because it feels like it's more paying my respects and being in conversation and having a relationship with my ancestors. I'm not worshipping them. I'm like, hey, I see you. You know, here's some fruit I brought for you to munch on. And let's hang, let's chill. What do you have for me? So I have a little altar actually behind me, where the ancestors are represented more….what is it? Metaphorically, symbolically, through an art print I have. Because I don't know who all my ancestors are. Right. And then, you know, I consulted with a shaman, a Korean American shaman, who taught me how to construct the altar. And like, what my ancestors were saying and, you know, it's just having that belief that their energy is still present and around us and has wisdom to offer us. And so how do I listen? And it's not going to be, you know, in a rational way. It's going to be in a much more intuitive, energetic way.
Cher (she/her): The through line in all of the different practices you offered us feels to me like building the skill set of deep listening combined with the willingness to attend to our feelings and to others feelings. This deep sense of empathy, and what I say is to attend to, but what I really mean is to offer attention, right? Because when it comes down to it, as you were saying, the systems that are currently in power, that are oppressing us benefit from us not paying attention, from being silent. And when we attend to what's around us and to each other, we are subverting the system successfully.
Emily Roh: Yeah. I mean, we still have to exist within these structures. Right. But there is a sense of liberation that is present, that was not there before, right? There's a sense of choice. There's a sense of groundedness.
ACCESSING INTERGENERATIONAL RESILIENCE
Cher (she/her): I think often of my client, Dr. Crystal Menzies, who taught me all about the history of maroon communities. So the slaves who fled plantations and developed their own towns and civilizations within, usually very dense, overgrown, or difficult to reach locations environmentally, and then created their own systems for liberation. That they found liberation in the midst of so much oppression, and I find so much power in that, in those stories as we exist today, where we do have access to liberation, if we can learn to reconnect with ourselves and with each other.
Emily Roh: Yeah. And, you know, like, just like, you know, there's intergenerational trauma, there's also intergenerational resilience, right? And they have passed those things down to us, but we have to relearn them, right? We have to….they are asking us for attention, right? Talk about doing it for the attention. Right. We are doing it. We need to do it because they also need the attention. And in doing that, it also heals us. Right. It's all connected. It's not this solo person in the world, like, that just doesn't exist.
Cher (she/her): One of…I also have an ancestral Altar, being Taiwanese American and, like, black American. And I put up until a few, maybe six months ago, I only had my Taiwanese family on the altar, and I realized that that was also a kind of suffering that I was doing to myself by not including both aspects of my lineage and have thus, of course, remedied this. But in attending to them weekly, I do it on Sundays, which is, like, not on purpose, but just a day that I chose. I often ask, like, and say thank you for allowing me the chance to heal backwards and forwards in time and, like, may you assist me in this journey.
Emily Roh: Oh, that's beautiful.
Cher (she/her): There's so much that I noticed now that I was given by them both that's not working for me, and that's working for me. And I think, to your point, seeing the full expanse of that story, like, really honoring the nuance is… there's power in that.
Emily Roh: Yeah. You know, and, you know, it's also important to remember the ways, the things they have passed down that are no longer working did work at some point in time. It did protect them and keep them safe, right? That allowed you to be born into this world. And so, like, again, shifting that relationship with ourselves. You know, a lot of clients come to me because they're battling themselves. They're at war. And it's about, like, no, like, we're not enemies. Like, let me help you all get to know each other. right? And when you understand, like, how they're trying to protect, how they're trying to serve, what a hard role it is for them and how exhausting it is for them, that part of themselves, you know, like, when you're able to befriend your parts, it is, you know, one, you could. Sometimes people can't even rest because of these parts, but they can take a nap afterwards, right? Or they feel just a sense of relief and release, right? And it's. And it's, again, recognizing that that part, even when it's in this, like, unskillful place, is trying to help and wants to be seen and recognized that way.
ON SLOWING DOWN OUR PACE
Cher (she/her): Yes. You mentioned parts work. What else is working for you on your own journey to reconnection?
Emily Roh: Honestly, taking it slow, right? Even though I'm putting this framework out there, I am not an expert in all of this. I am very much a beginner in some of these areas. And so I'm resisting that pressure to present myself as someone who has it all figured out and knows all the answers and is practicing it perfectly because that, again, just feeds into that supremacy mindset. I struggle with consistency, so I would love to have a weekly practice at my altar. Usually it's whenever I feel like it, but that might just be my ADHD talking. That might be because that's kind of what works more for me. And so, yeah, I think it's just about, like, noticing when my body is actually asking for attention, right? Usually, like, and then actually paying attention, then that is, like, the two biggest things that have shifted my relationship with myself.
Cher (she/her): So noticing what is asking for attention and then engaging with what must come next to offer care.
Emily Roh: Yeah, so what does that look like? Right. I'm sure a lot of people are wondering. Tara Brach is a Buddhist meditation teacher, and she has this practice called RAIN that I highly recommend that. I think it's just a beautiful illustration of what that can look like where, like, you just basically pay attention to a sensation in your body and you just sit with it and you ask these really gentle, compassionate questions. And for me, whenever I've done it, I felt a powerful shift in my body. What does it look like when my body is asking for attention? Usually something's in pain. My anxiety might be higher than normal, right? Like, I'm having trouble focusing or sleeping. Like, these are all signs I've learned over the years that, like, something's not okay, something's not at peace. And then sitting down and, like, listening to that piece and I love that practice of RAIN of just, like, sitting with it. And then my mind wanders, and then I come back and just try to sit with it over and over until.. and sometimes it's not like a full, like, what is it like? Ah, epiphany. Everything's okay now. I'm fully released. Sometimes there are some parts in my body where I feel like there is such a strong protection that if I were to try to break through that wall, I would actually end up hurting my relationship with myself. And so just… it's like when you're sitting with, like, trying to gain the trust of a wounded animal, you know, you just kind of sit far away and just kind of let it get used to your presence. And sometimes that's all it is for that day, right? It's just, like, be able to get a little bit closer and get them to get that part to get a little more comfortable with you being there. And eventually, like, those parts take years to open up. And then when they do, when they're ready, they will. Right?
Cher (she/her): Yeah, because there is a lot of wisdom and not rushing this work. When it comes to…I've been doing a lot of nervous system work lately. And it can be really easy to say like, okay, well, I have a plan. I'm going to listen to this audio for 30 minutes a day for the next, I don't know, two weeks. But not taking into account that my nervous system might not be ready for that level of attention or care. So just really letting 5 minutes or 10 minutes be enough and trusting…this is a key part of that process. Right. Trusting that what will come from that is beneficial and right on time, which is hard for us to do in a society that values productivity and needing to be accomplished or get things done in a timely manner.
Emily Roh: Yeah. This pacing we live in is ridiculous. It's not sustainable. People are burning out right and left. Right. And so, yeah. Taking this, listening to the signals for rest. Right. Not working over. Don't work for free. right? If you work at a 9 to 5, don't give them that extra hour. Again, we're sort of brainwashed to have a sense of loyalty or dependence on our supervisors or employers. Again, that's just a method of manipulation and control, which is all business school, by the way, teaches in management school is how to manipulate and control. That's what they call management. Using air quotes here.
HOW WE CAN SUPPORT EMILY
Cher (she/her): Yeah. I really appreciate you calling attention to that specifically and then helping us all see the muck in which we are wading through so that we can make better choices for ourselves. We can be choiceful and have agency. Now, as you know, we talk a lot about doing it for the attention in these parts. What aspect of your work do you want to put the spotlight on? How can we support you?
Emily Roh: Oh, such a juicy question. My request is that you all hold me accountable. My goal is to have my newsletter launched again by the date of this podcast airing. If you are listening to this, please sign up for the newsletter.
If it's not up, message me and be like, why isn't it up? Lovingly, of course. And you know, if this resonated, you know my newsletter comes directly… if you respond to my newsletter, it'll come directly back to my inbox. And so, yeah, ask me questions, tell me what lands, tell me what you still have questions about. Like, let's engage in a conversation because I don't hold all the answers. And you know, I would love to hear other people's experience of this framework or what connections you all are making.
Cher (she/her): Thank you so much, Emily. I really appreciate that. And I will drop all of those links and ways to find you in our show notes so that you can continue to build and co create.
Emily Roh: Thank you so much.