I was walking the neighborhood, listening to a therapist training on a decolonized approach to attachment when my mind wandered deeper.
Let me take you on this morning’s grand meander.
I ran into my neighbor and told her how I periodically pause to think about how bizarre it is that I “own” a half-acre of planet Earth. It’s just… weird. There’s something that doesn’t feel quite right about that.
Pause. Try that on.
How can I possibly own a portion of the universe? Or any part of creation? I don’t even own this body—it moves through the phases of life whether I will it to or not.
I certainly don’t own my children. They showed me early on that they are their own beings. My role was never to claim or control them—but to guide, to influence through connection and respect. To see them as fully autonomous, creative, equal. And only then could I offer reflection, propose considerations, and support their growth.
That kind of connection took intention. And maintenance. And mutuality.
Honestly? They’ve been some of my greatest teachers.
So this training I’m in, led by Linda Thai, is striking all the right notes. She’s teaching that secure attachment—and more grounded, regulated states of being—don’t come only from parent-child dynamics or romantic bonds. They come through connection. To nature. To ancestors. To culture. To body. To time.
She’s inviting us beyond ownership and into interconnectedness.
It’s truly resonating.
This, she says, is the wisdom that’s been lost—erased—by Western systems that conquered and colonized peoples who lived this truth all over the world. Systems that turned connection into domination. Mutuality into ownership.
Now, I know these are big, weighty words. Colonization. Supremacy. People often flinch at them. It’s a lot to digest—especially if you’re already in survival mode, let alone trying to grow.
But here’s the thing: to own land, we have to disconnect from it. To see it as something separate, something to be used. Just like I’d have had to disconnect from my kids to think I they or anything they do were “mine.”
And once we do that—once we disconnect—we begin to see all of life as a resource to be extracted: land, bodies, labor, even love. It leads to things we all grieve, if we let ourselves feel it—slavery, genocide, domestic violence, exploitation, environmental devastation.
Linda introduced a diagram by Marya and Patel that shows just how fragmented we’ve become.
But here’s the part I know is true in my bones:
When I root into nature, into ancestry, culture, body, and time, something shifts. I get calmer, more expansive. I feel more fully myself—but not in a separate or superior way. In a part-of-it-all kind of way. A way that feels sacred.
I know I’m getting a little “out there.” Maybe I’ve lost some of you and firmly planted myself in the woo category. But honestly, this might be what a more evolved human state feels like.
And that brings me to something else: I found a diagram by Michelle Holliday—a kind of response to the diagram above. Maybe a guidepost. A vision. A way to crack my thinking even wider open.
We’re so broken. And don’t we need something to help us imagine our way back to wholeness?
If you’re interested in this kind of exploration, I want to share a few of the books we’ve read in Important Conversations that helped me see beyond the system I was born into:
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley
Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Man Enough Podcast episode with Alok
There’s so much to learn.
And this week, especially, I want to learn from our Black and Brown neighbors—those whose ancestors endured the worst of what this broken system created. I want to honor the liberation they’ve fought for and continue to dream into being.
Juneteenth marks one early milepost on that long road. And I want to celebrate the journey and the destination—complete interconnection and the end of extractive economies. That vision gives me hope. It helps me orient toward the change I believe in.
Thanks for walking with me.