Joanna Kent Katz

In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler is joined by therapist, healer, and social justice educator Joanna Kent Katz, as they explore how to move from inherited patterns of trauma and cultural assimilation toward a heart-centered state of collective liberation.

Together they discuss how healing your personal lineage is a vital step in dismantling systemic oppression and understanding your belonging in the world.

About Jo Kent Katz

Jo Kent Katz is an intuitive healer, social justice educator, and an ordained Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess) dedicated to the work of transformative justice. With a lineage rooted in Ashkenazi Jewish history across Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and Poland, Jo brings a deep understanding of how historical trauma and cultural assimilation impact our modern lives. She is the creator of "Transcending Jewish Trauma," a comprehensive resource that maps out inherited trauma patterns specifically for white Ashkenazi lineages. Jo also offers For Sacred Consideration, which are spiritual teachings Jo receives through channeling.  Jo bridges the gap between ritual support and social change, helping individuals navigate intergenerational healing to foster a deeper sense of communal and personal belonging.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How your brain creates survival strategies based on ancestral fears.
• Why personal ancestral healing is a prerequisite for collective liberation. By addressing our own inherited trauma, we stop projecting survival patterns onto our community spaces and social justice work.
• The cost of "whiteness" and assimilation for those with immigrant lineages.
• How to map out the specific traumas of your lineage—such as displacement or systemic violence—to understand how they manifest in your nervous system today as hyper-vigilance or a sense of not enoughness.

Connect with Jo Kent Katz

     https://www.jokentkatz.com/

     https://www.transcendingjewishtrauma.com/

     https://www.patreon.com/SacredConsideration

Resources

Blintz information: https://chompies.com/the-history-of-the-blintz/

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kaye-kantrowitz-melanie

Connect with the Show

We would love to hear your family stories.

• Website: justlikenana.com

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Theme music by Carter Penny.

Transcript

Ancestral Healing and the Path to Collective Liberation with Joanna Kent Katz

Amie Penny Sayler 0:22

Welcome to Just Like Nana. So excited you're here today. It is such an honor to be talking with Jo Kent Katz today. She is just a lovely soul pouring light into this world and has so much wisdom and softness to share. So really excited to be talking with her today. Jo is an intuitive healer. Her people are Ashkenazi Jews from New York, Buffalo, and Toronto, and before that, from Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus. Joe grew up surrounded by poplar and dogwood trees in Northern Virginia, which is the land of the Algonquian speaking Doge peoples. Jo is an ordained Kohenet, which is a priestess of Jewish lineage, as I mentioned, an intuitive healer. She's a social justice educator, a youth worker, a theater of the oppressed practitioner, a garlic planter, and an auntie. Jo, so excited to have you here today. Welcome.

Jo Kent Katz 1:28

Thank you.

The Story Behind the Name “Joanna Kent Katz”

Amie Penny Sayler 1:29

Jo, I love that you're a three-name type person too. Jo Kent Katz. You know, my name is Amie Penny Sayler, and I would love to hear the story of your name, Jo Kent Katz. Would you share with us?

Jo Kent Katz 1:44

Yeah. So um I grew up Joanna Michelle Kent, and I was the only Jewish kid in my classroom, but also in my school until my sister was old enough to go to school, and then there were two of us. And a big part of my story is so much about assimilation as fully as possible into like white Christian culture. And my father grew up also with the name Kent, but his father's last name was Katz, Charlie Katz. And that grandfather changed the name from Katz to Kent to open a business. He wanted to open a drugstore. Meanwhile, around the same time, my other grandfather, my mom's dad, whose name was Lidivitz, changed his name from Lidivitz to Lang. And so Katz became Kent and Lidivitz became Lang. And my parents met both with these whitened Anglicized last names, both passing kind of out in the world as Christian and white. And when I was in school at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for social justice education, I had this real strong desire to reclaim the name Katz and to have that name like on my graduation certificate to say, like to have that reclamation be part of my justice work. And I chose to keep Kent because there's a really powerful Jewish activist who's past, who's an ancestor now. Her name is Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz. And Kaye /Kantrowitz is the same as my Kent Katz. And she chose to keep Kaye as like an ability to like to do exactly what we're doing right now, which is me telling you the story about how whiteness and Jewishness kind of intersect and create lots of different experiences that then have lots of complexity to untangle. So that's that's where the name comes from.

Amie Penny Sayler 3:31

What a beautiful story and how empowering.

Jo Kent Katz 3:34

Yeah, totally.

Blintzes with Grama: A Grandmother Memory

Amie Penny Sayler 3:35

Yeah, love that. Do you have a favorite or powerful memory of one of your grandmas? And what did you call her? And if so, will you share that?

Jo Kent Katz 3:44

Yeah. So this is my mom's mom. We called her grandma, G-R-A-M-A, name was Sylvia. And it's been really sweet to hear all the stories of folks that have come on your show, Amie, to get to hear the little, the little peaks of the grandma stories. And mine is it's not something that happened once, it's something that happened many times, which is making blintzes in my Grama's kitchen. And we used to make everything from scratch. And she just was so precise in how she did things, but she was also so generous with her praise and encouragement for how we did things as kids. I know that we are not doing it up to par, but she was just, yeah, she was so kind. And it felt like you were just kind of tucked in as if you were like part of a batter, like you were just tucked into the experience of it and all the smells and the tastes and the warmth of the oven. And there are many steps to making blintzes. And I felt like so proud of myself under her gaze of like getting just the right amount of cheese into the center of the crepe and folding it just so, she would say, and then like laying it so that the open side was down so that when it puffed up in the oven, it didn't spill, and then getting to eat them together. And she just would like giggle with delight at the like delight that we would have as kids. And ugh, I miss her.

Amie Penny Sayler 5:04

That is beautiful. Do you still make blintzes?

Jo Kent Katz 5:08

Rarely. It's a big project, but I have, yeah. But I can't definitely can't do it without thinking about her.

From Social Justice Educator to Intuitive Healer

Amie Penny Sayler 5:14

Thank you for sharing that. I would love for listeners who are new to your work, and when I say your work, Jo, it's so expansive, and you just have so much lightness and healing opportunities and just learning opportunities that are out there and available. So I know it's really expansive, but if you could kind of talk a bit about it, and I'm I'm sure you're going to include this, but also include like the intuitive healer aspect of your work and just describe that for our listeners.

Jo Kent Katz 5:46

Yeah, thank you. So my grounding in my work is really as a social justice educator. And I love to work in community spaces talking about whiteness and racism and kind of all the different intersections of identities and the way that that connects with systems of power and also connects with movements for liberation. But from there, I got into like all different layers of what we call healing work. And that work, that justice education work is also healing, very much so. But I got really enticed by what it would mean to follow someone's story and their own ancestry and their own layers. And so I still work as an educator. And I also used to work as a therapist. I studied drama therapy, and I no longer do that. But that all circuitously brought me to the work that takes up most of my space and time right now, which is as an intuitive. I am part of a lineage that is my mother's father's maternal line, who are also channelers. And I didn't know this until, I don't know, just a bunch of years ago when I came into enough fluency in what I do intuitively that I could actually receive information from them saying, like, hey, actually, this is who we are. And we've been helping you learn this and you do it just like we did. That's how, that's how we know. So I work with individuals and I work with couples and I work with groups and I work with organizations who all come with like beautiful, intricate, kind of very difficult or impossible to answer questions and inquiries of all sorts. And my role is to be like a divine messenger where I just have learned to open really wide and really clear and receive information, sometimes specifically from ancestors. Sometimes it feels like they're talking on the phone as well, but oftentimes from kind of a wider open layers of consciousness that I don't even really know how to understand. I just know how to read them like the matrix. And so information comes through and it's lots of guidance, lots of details for rituals, lots of frames or reframes for how to understand inherited trauma, and also lots of support for orienting towards healing and liberation. And it is humbling and really an honor.

Amie Penny Sayler 8:10

What an incredible gift to share with the world. Thank you for what you do.

Jo Kent Katz 8:16

Thank you.

Mapping Inherited Trauma Through Ancestral Lines

Amie Penny Sayler 8:17

Absolutely. How you, you know, without obviously getting into anyone's specific story, but just generally, how do you see that show up? And then what are your steps for sort of, okay, this is what I'm seeing. Here's a direction we could go when you're working with someone.

Jo Kent Katz 8:49

Yeah, that's great. Amie, that's totally such a good entry point. Thank you. Okay. So oftentimes someone comes to me with like in some pain, or even just in some question about a pattern in their life, or a belief that they have, or kind of a stuckness, a way of doing things that aren't working anymore. And what I'm shown is it's almost like a little map that goes back from this person I'm speaking to, like following one of their ancestral lines. So maybe it's like then I'm shown their mom and then their mom's father, and then their mom's father's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother. And it looks like a little pathway back until I'm shown, it's like watching a movie unfold. It's like an entire experience that an ancestor had. And I'm following along and explaining what I understand as I see it. And that experience that we're tracking ends up being like the source or one of the sources of that inherited trauma. And so we're getting to go back to the context where the original pain happened, and then, of course, kind of snowballed as it goes through the generations. Sometimes it's very obvious, like what the belief is. A lot of times it's just really deep grief that didn't get to be relieved or processed or resolved. And then it kind of shapes the person at the time and then shapes their descendants and on and on until then we have like our experience now in bodies here totally decontextualized, like Resmaa Menakem would say, from the actual experience of what happened. So we're trying to make sense of it. We're trying to work with it as best we can, but it actually is a way that our people got formed or shaped. And so oftentimes what comes through is like it's almost like getting to actually touch, emotionally touch the experience that you've been reliving without having the context for it. And so that oftentimes is like the initial sense of it's like a key opening a door to actually start to allow things to move through. And I know that some people work somatically this way, you know, like you don't have to know the story, but you can actually touch the place, you can find the place energetically in the body where that energy is stored and start to unravel it from there. And my work is like kind of in the cosmos realms. And so I get the information as information and get to get to speak to it there. But what I find is that as soon as we touch it, something starts to unravel. It's like as if it's been waiting there, kind of frozen and just like waiting for some kind of like warmth and care and attention. And as soon as we offer that, something starts to move. And then oftentimes there's instruction for the person I'm working with, like, okay, as this is moving, here's what can support you. Like, here's how you can tend to your body. Here's perhaps like a ritual with fire or with immersing in water that you can do that supports the continued unraveling or unfolding. So it's not like a one and done, but we get to really be then like accompanying ourselves, like accompanying the undoing and the unraveling of what has been frozen or kept us bound. And, you know, every story is different. And also, if you do anything long enough, you start to see patterns. And so it's been exciting for me to start to recognize like there's just this undoing is happening all over the place right now. I think all over the planet now. And it's so it's powerful and it's also intense to be alive when there is this much consciousness and this much capacity to actually do that healing in real time. And I'm saying that in part because I think that some of it happens when we're deliberate and intentional about it, like I'm speaking. And some of it I think happens without having to intend. Where, you know, we like do something for the first time that felt hard and we feel like, whoo, I did it. I made it, even just like, I don't know, like when on a bike ride up a hill, something, let's keep it like really simple in this way. When on a bike ride up a hill, I felt amazing at the top. What I don't need to know is that like there's ancestors who tried to do something that was hard and they didn't. They couldn't do it. And so they're, I'm carrying around this belief that, like, you know what, we can't really do things that we want to do. And just having that moment where I challenge myself in my body in this plane to actually move through that belief in a way that feels benign has the impact of rippling back and kind of loosening the tension around that commitment, that internalized commitment of what we can't do or what's not possible. And so I think this is this kind of thing is happening all the time when we're making choices and moving through our lives in a way that has alignment and potency and aliveness, which to me is very hopeful because we can't attend to everyone's exact healing path individually, but to know that we're possibly part of like an energetic movement towards that healing all the time feels hopeful to me and also feels true.

The Power of Acknowledgment & What Ancestors Really Want

Amie Penny Sayler 13:40

And when that's happening as a community, you know, I know you mentioned before sort of a snowball through the generations of the effect of the original event or the trauma, but this sort of seems like a positive snowball. You know, this is happening in the community and it kind of sweeps us all in the path of, hey, let's head this way toward the unwinding. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's just beautiful. Let me ask about I had about three or four questions, and I was just so drawn into what we were saying that I wasn't mentally preparing the questions in my mind. But so let's start with one of the themes, and I I haven't been recording Just Like Nana episodes nearly as long as you've been doing your work, but agree, patterns tend to emerge, you start to see themes. And one area that I see emerge, and this is from therapists, storytellers, neurobiologists, you know, so many different experts from different fields, is this notion of acknowledgement, that simply the acknowledgement of an event, the hardness of an event, appreciating that someone else, one of our ancestors, went through something, some life experience, famine, abuse, whatever that life experience was that was incredibly difficult. Just acknowledging that. It sounded like that was sort of the key that you were describing, just sort of, oh, someone sees it. Someone is looking. And that's kind of a first step. Is that fair and accurate?

Jo Kent Katz 15:19

Yeah, it's really beautiful how you're saying that. I think it's true. Maybe not for everything in every situation, but I do think that it's almost like touching it, like touching the place where it happened with your mind, with your heart, like touching that energetic place where that original like wound, like a cut occurred. Yeah, I do think that some of the pull that we experience for the healing of our ancestors is exactly our reach for that acknowledgement and validation. You know, oftentimes people come saying, like, I think that my ancestors need something from me, or I think they're angry with me, or I think they're a lot of people are like afraid that ancestors are upset. And, you know, I'm shown like one micro slice of the entire cosmos, Amie. So I don't really know. I can't, you know, maybe they are, but what I'm shown is almost never that. It's almost always that there's just this pull. There's like this real longing for exactly what you're talking about, the recognition of what happened. And when we can offer that recognition, then it's not that the whole thing clears, but that that pull releases. And then without that pull, there's the capacity for the pain to unravel and unwind and resolve.

Practical Ways to Feel and Commune with Your Ancestors

Amie Penny Sayler 16:44

Can you talk a little bit about as far as ancestors go, how can we sort of hear, access, commune with, have a relationship with our own ancestors? I love this question.

Jo Kent Katz 17:02

One of my favorites because when I'm kind of in this inquiry with people's people, with people's ancestors, there's so much levity there so frequently. People often go into these questions like, this is something I want so badly, and how can I ever have it? And inherent in that is this idea that we can't or that we don't. And I think so many of us are navigating that sense because in this Christian hegemonic, racist, et cetera culture, there's such a necessity for us to kind of starting when we're school age, like let go of the truth of our own interconnection and the truth of us being escorted and held and guided, because that would be threatening to the state. That would be threatening to whoever the authority is. We wouldn't need them as much. And so there's something about like the sweetness of the reclamation of what is true, which is this interconnection that is such like a delight for me to offer. So I'll tell you a few things that I hear when I'm going in with those inquiries. One is that oftentimes when we're reaching, we're actually reaching too far. Sort of like someone's here to give you a hug. And instead of hugging them, you like put your arms like out past them. And then your hands aren't feeling them. There's nothing there. And so we're literally like we reach for them, there's nothing there. And then that's the belief that goes in to our mind and our heart. Oh, there's not, there's no one there for me. Now, oftentimes when we believe that, it's because we've already inherited a belief of there being no one there, which comes from so many different experiences of trauma. But oftentimes what I get to share with people is that is to imagine, and in this case, imagine and intuit get to be uh interchangeable. So imagine or feel into or intuit that they're actually far closer than you imagine or that you believe. And what happens with this is that we're invited to feel for an intimacy rather than feel for an absence. And with that imagination, you can like use your mind heart to feel like the space around you get a little bit thicker and a little bit warmer, and just literally imagining that you're just being kept company. And to kind of hold yourself in the tenderness of that sensation is such a beautiful and I think accessible entryway in to actually getting more precision in that communication. But I do think that's a good place to start.

Amie Penny Sayler 19:38

I sincerely hope that everyone, nearly everyone who listens to this tries that out. Because I will be. And I hear what you're saying about I'm reaching so far that all I'm getting is air, and then that reinforces my belief that, well, I knew it, nothing's there. Exactly. And instead, I'm just I'm not seeing it because it's it's right there, and I'm just looking past it. So that kind of getting quiet and really sensing what is right here.

Jo Kent Katz 20:16

Yeah, exactly. And I'm gonna add one layer to that, which is that I'm often encouraged to invite people to like drop the reverence, which is very different than some people's tradition. But this is what comes through for me, which is that there's something about reverence accidentally creates more separateness or distance. That if I'm gonna like be in reverence of, I'm gonna inherently, accidentally be like putting an ancestor up on a pedestal or putting them separate from me, which is, you know, from what we're just talking about, of like that intimacy, that like closeness doesn't require a kind of like bow down to. What it requires is like a kind of like a gentle hand on your heart recognition that we all are connected and that we all get to have that, not because we've earned it, but because that is just inherently true about us as humans on the planet, that we are intrinsically interconnected and that there's nothing we can do to stop that. We can believe our way differently try. Sure try. We sure try. My goodness how we try. Yeah. So there's something I think like sweet and tender about just catching all of the ways that we unconsciously practice feeling separate from and see what happens if we like dare to permission ourselves to feel that kind of intimacy that we long for.

The Dance of Healing, Belonging & Collective Liberation

Amie Penny Sayler 21:50

That sort of gets to the next question, which is I'm curious about the the healing and the connection and kind of dance between, okay. Me here now on this plane as a living human and my ancestors. And we, you know, we kind of talked about, okay, there's this attention, this warmth, the seeing of, oh, that happened and that. And I want to be clear, I don't think that that necessarily, and you tell me, needs to be, I know exactly the event that happened in your life, but it's more of a felt sense. Is that fair? I agree. Yeah, I agree. And so sometimes that can provide that sense of relief that I think, but I would like you to address kind of goes up and down the family line. But also my sense is that our ancestors are probably consistently giving us more than the attention and healing that we're giving them. And I'll just give one concrete example from my own life. So I'm I'm writing this book about my grandmas, the Elizabeths. And part of the idea was, oh, these, you know, are women from 1600s, 1700s, 1800s whose voices are lost to history. Their stories weren't told. And I want to tell their stories, and that will be really powerful to them. And in the meanwhile, you know, then this podcast develops. Well, then I'm talking to my therapist about, I like who am I to be putting this out in the world? I'm not an expert. I'm not, and she's reflecting back to me. Well, your ancestors are helping you find your voice. And so I would love it if you just kind of address that relationship that we have with our ancestors and how the healing kind of goes back and forth and up the line and down the line and how that works.

Jo Kent Katz 23:40

Yeah, you know, I don't know. I find that totally mysterious, that part. I think because I'm aware that the framework that's accessible to me is kind of one understanding, but that there's so many different ways that people relate to kind of where the agency lies of who's healing who and who's attending to who and who's in service to who. So my first answer is I have no idea. And, you know, I'm in the business of knowing things that are unknowable, but that one I'm just like, I don't know. I don't have the full picture. But okay, that's my first answer. My second answer is that is that I think that it's less about up and down the line and more about everybody kind of moving forward or unbinding or becoming more and more liberated together. And that there's actions that I can do, like that silly bike analogy that I use, biking up the hill. There's things that I can do in body that I don't even know contribute to the freedom and the kind of breaking free in powerfulness of my ancestors. Um, and then there's, I think, also so much that my ancestors have done and offer me that I can choose to receive as pain or punishment, or I could choose to receive as opportunities for immense healing and growing. And the way that I take that on then contributes back to them. So it just feels like a real dance. And my sense is that it's like the direction that we're going is a full embodiment of the truth of our own belonging.

Amie Penny Sayler 25:28

That should be on t-shirts, on bumper stickers. It should be out in the world for everyone to read every day.

Jo Kent Katz 25:37

Thank you. You know, I um like along these lines, that just a personal story is that I just a few years ago was told by my own ancestors that there would be these transmissions coming through me that I didn't really have a choice about receiving, but that they were meant to be shared with a collective. And I said, no, absolutely not. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that person that that is like channels for the wider. I don't I just, I don't know. I have some bias, or I just don't want to, or I don't like that idea, or I want to do something else. And I think that there's some lessons and some pathways that we really do have incredible agency around. Just because spirit says doesn't mean we have to, is something I've learned. And then there's other times where you do. And so I'm sharing this because the truth of belonging is a phrase that came through one of these transmissions. There's a whole collection of them now called the for sacred consideration. And the truth of belonging is like a core piece in here that from my understanding, I feel like when as I move along with my ancestors, along with my family, along with community towards more and more collective liberation, the truth of our belonging becomes so evident that there's no need to perpetuate systems of oppression, that there's no need to keep ravaging the earth, that there's no need to keep layers of status and privilege in place to secure our safety, that we actually get to like nestle ourselves deeper and deeper into the truth of belonging, along with our ancestors and in a dance with our ancestors who are also learning this and teaching us at the same time.

Amie Penny Sayler 27:16

I am imagining a world where that sense of belonging is felt by all and it would be perfection.

Jo Kent Katz 27:31

Yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler 27:39

Can you talk a little bit about um sort of the broader community? As, you know, I know that's come up a few times, and you've talked about sort of this unraveling. Do you have a sense of why that's happening now? Is it just we have the wherewithal and, you know, where we are as far as resource-wise, like we have the luxury, if you will, of starting to look at that, address that. Just what are your thoughts around why or how this is happening on a more communal and global level?

Jo Kent Katz 28:09

Yeah, another great mystery. So my first thought was about the now ancestor Joanna Macy and her understanding of this time as the great turning, of a time when there's just this really planet-wide collective transformation that's happening. And the way that transformation happens can go through destruction and it can also go through the like awakening. And I think we're seeing that on both levels right now, both like the massive level of destruction that humans are perpetuating and paired with and in relationship with an ever-widening level of consciousness for more and more people. And I think one of the pieces that feels contentious in there to me, contentious because it doesn't line up with a justice framework that I feel committed to, is that I do believe that through the violence, there's more liberation that unfolds. And that is not to say that we should get behind violence in on any level, but to me, it is to be able to recognize that we can't get outside of a closed system of our earth. And if I believe that we're moving towards liberation and belonging and resolve, then I'm I'm challenging myself to consider that everything that happens moves us in that direction, even though so much of it is devastating and unbearable. And I'm sharing this, it feels like uh vulnerable to share this because I don't totally know how to make sense of it. It just really feels true. I see it in channel all the time, where something that's happened that is just so, so painful ends up being in service to the wider healing. And, you know, on some level, like I'm so grateful to consider it that way because that would mean that it's not about denouncing or always swimming upstream. It's like, what if we just were holding that we're all all of us, actually all of us, are actually all moving towards more liberation together, more alignment together. But the way that we do that can be painful or can be empowering. And what does it take to encourage each other to move towards that place of liberation and alignment with less and less harm? So there's something though about this time on the planet that does feel, and I know there's so many different spiritual traditions that have named this time as being potent in this way, where there's just more attention on and more capacity for this growing awareness and healing. It's not a mystery to me that there would also be a growing level of capacity for destruction. But if those are working in harmony, if it actually is all truly interconnected, then it's just it's flooring that we get to be alive right now, to be witness and to be participating in such a time.

The Heart as a Doorway to Healing

Amie Penny Sayler 31:09

It is truly a privilege. Thank you for being vulnerable. It's very difficult. And perhaps society has, you know, society in big air quotes has has always been like this. So this is not unique in any sort of way, but it does feel so polarized or like there are dichotomies, and you have to pick one or pick the other. And there's not as much space and room for things that are different from one another can both be true. Right. As you've used the word, it is a mystery, and it is uh complex to say the least. And just to have that space and that grace within ourselves to understand and appreciate that one, we do not know everything, two, things that appear to be even opposite from each other can both be true. And just to hold that and to be able to say that out loud and not have that misconstrued or misunderstood or attacked. So thank you for that vulnerability.

Jo Kent Katz 32:16

Yeah, thank you. It feels complicated for the mind to hold it all. I think because of the wounding that we've inherited and because of the wounding we experience just from being part of society now, our mind is so shaped by these severances, by these ruptures and the black and white thinking and the good and bad and the this way or that way. And it's, I think it's it's almost impossible for our minds to actually kind of fully embrace the polarities. And one thing I'm learning is that the heart energetically is not bound to wounding or trauma or severance, that the heart is actually the doorway into that reality we're talking about where you know you belong and you know it's the truth, and there's nothing, nothing anyone can do about it. And from that view, like entering through the heart or like inviting ourselves to drop from the mind into the heart, where all sorts of contradictions just kind of like buzz together, even when the mind feels them to be like absolutely intolerable. The heart can hold something that's so much wider. And when we get scared, you know, our bodies are trained to jump into not just the mind, but these very intricate places in the mind that are wired for safety. But the heart doesn't need that. So there's something about like, again, that like soft hand on your heart, like inviting that care and that warmth and grounding to allow the heart and the the wide perspective that comes with the heart to just to escort us, even gently, while we're trying to parse out these truths with our mind. That's what I'm trying to do.

Amie Penny Sayler 33:56

No big deal. Just that. You know, when you were saying that, it was just resonating with me that the heart doesn't, as you said, need to go into those same places the brain does, because the heart understands that we belong and it belongs. And so it doesn't need that false sense of safety feeling. Yeah. Well, Jo, this has been absolutely incredible to talk with you. I am so appreciative that you talked with us today. Where can listeners find you?

Jo Kent Katz 34:24

Well, it's such a pleasure to do this with you. And thank you for like, I don't know, encouraging me into those places that are harder to name. I didn't expect to go there, but there we go. That's the those are the things that need to be said. Yeah, so I have a website. It's jokentkatz.com. And through that website, you can also find For Sacred Consideration these transmissions that have come through the last few years. And I didn't mention this, but I also created a website that's called Transcending Jewish Trauma, which contains a map that kind of well, it maps out these different patterns of inherited trauma, specifically for Ashkenazi, for white Ashkenazi lineage. Yeah, that's where you can find me.

Amie Penny Sayler 35:04

We will also link all of that in the show notes. Thank you.