Multi-hyphenate author, therapist, and activist Prentis Hemphill shares their refreshingly optimistic framework for a stronger society in What It Takes to Heal, a positive imagining of humanity emboldened by deep connection. Intrigued by the promise of collective healing, I asked Hemphill to share more about their message and mission. Here, they share the impetus behind their vision of communal healing during a challenging moment in time, and how each of us can help drive change.

Rachael Xerri: So much self-development and self-help advice is focused on individual change—your audiobook goes a step further and dives into the importance of connection and community action. What inspired you to share this message in an audiobook now?

Prentis Hemphill: Ultimately, I don’t think we heal without relationships and I believe that a large part of what keeps us from healing is systemic. A lot of people don’t think about it this way, but our society’s value around rugged individualism permeates everything—even how we think and go about healing. We often get sold the idea that if we can somehow buy the right things, go on the right retreat, or even read the right book that we’ll be able to heal. There is something incredibly important and necessary about each of us exploring our own stories, processing what perhaps we haven’t been willing to address. I also think that when we do that, the result is that we are better able to be in relationships with people and the world around us.

I see powerlessness, a resignation, setting in over a lot of people in this time. The fraught and often scary nature of both national and international politics right now is more than enough to demotivate people from engaging. What I see, though, is that many of the issues that have caused lasting wounds for us—childhood abuse, neglect, poverty, sexual violence, oppression, and war are individually experienced but often implicate our cultures and institutions. The antidote for communal trauma is communal healing. We have to end the things that harm us and build the things we need. This is why community action, organizing, to me is not just a thing we leave to some people, but a part of each of us regaining our sense of agency in our own lives and lessening the load for those that come after us.

In addition to being a writer and podcast host, you’re also a therapist, somatics teacher, and political organizer. How has your work in each of those fields influenced your writing and vice versa?

It seems like a lot—and it is! But I’d say that each facet of what I do serves the others quite well. I love learning about people, about their lives, their longings and their triumphs. And I get to do that from so many positions. Therapy and teaching somatics, when I’m in my groove, are co-created poetry in a way. It’s communicating, verbally or through the body, underneath or around someone’s defenses. Attunement is a dance, so it already activates a part of me that is creative. And to describe emotional terrain, to connect with another person is a deeply creative process. Political organizing is too. It’s often a world that people describe in dry or academic terms only, but I’ve wanted to talk more about the texture, the feeling of moving together and building power. These are very visceral experiences for me and ones I’ve felt that it was important to write too. To affirm what people feel, but also to make it more interesting to people that have stayed outside of those spaces of community action.

You also narrated this audiobook. Was there anything in the audiobook that stood out to you or that surprised you during the recording process?

I felt like an MC at times! Which, I have to confess, I’ve always wanted to feel. The breath control you need to move through a sentence with a steadiness, the rhythm that you hear in your own writing. I also write with music and often talk about having the words sing. When you’re reading it, though, you can hear quite clearly the musicality, your tone and voice.

If you had to choose, what’s the one lesson you hope resonates the most for listeners?

It is that it is deeply courageous to heal and it is deeply courageous to contribute to the healing of our world. Both are also rewarding in ways that are difficult to capture in language. Our lives get filled out when we choose to live them as changing, healing, growing beings that are responsible for each other.

Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan.