Content Note: This episode discusses grief in many forms, including pregnancy loss, queer and trans community loss, and intergenerational trauma. Please take care of yourself as you listen.

Episode Summary: In Episode 13 of The Inked Therapist, Del Knight dismantles the five-stage model of grief and replaces it with something more honest — and more useful. This episode covers what Kübler-Ross actually intended and how her framework was distorted into a checklist; what grief actually looks like in the body and why it is non-linear, cumulative, and relational; the decolonial critique of private, time-limited mourning and what Indigenous, Black, and global majority traditions have always known about grief that the Western model suppressed; ancestral and intergenerational grief and why your grief may be bigger than the visible loss; and disenfranchised grief — the losses that go unacknowledged and unsupported because the culture doesn't recognize them as real.

Topics Covered: Kübler-Ross and the five stages · Continuing bonds theory · George Bonanno and grief research · Non-linear grief · Grief in the body · Grief vs. depression · Somatic grief · Decolonizing grief · Indigenous and African mourning traditions · Día de los Muertos · Closure as a colonial concept · Ancestral grief · Intergenerational trauma and epigenetics · Disenfranchised grief (Kenneth Doka) · Ambiguous loss (Pauline Boss) · Pet loss · Pregnancy loss · Queer and trans grief · Grief for identity, future, and land

Clinical References: On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross · The Other Side of Sadness by George Bonanno · Continuing Bonds by Klass, Silverman, Nickman · Disenfranchised Grief by Kenneth Doka · Ambiguous Loss by Pauline Boss

Companion Blog Post: 'Grief Is Not a 5-Step Checklist'

BuyMeACoffee Link: Support the Soma Roots Therapy Access Fund — monthly or one-time

Links: Soma Roots Therapy Website · Schedule A Free Consultation

Instagram: @somaticrootstherapy

Next Episode: Episode 14 — Thinking, Feeling, and Sensing

Episode Summary: In Episode 12 of The Inked Therapist, Del Knight goes deep on rest as resistance — not as a wellness trend or a productivity hack, but as a political and ancestral claim rooted in Black feminist tradition. This episode credits the lineage that built this framework (Tricia Hersey, The Nap Ministry, Audre Lorde, womanist and abolitionist thought), names grind culture as a system of extraction with specific racial and capitalist roots, explores the clinical and somatic reasons why rest is genuinely difficult for many people, expands the definition of rest beyond sleep, and makes the case that rest is not an individual wellness practice but a collective political commitment.

Topics Covered: Rest as resistance · Tricia Hersey and The Nap Ministry · Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto · Audre Lorde and self-preservation as political warfare · Womanist and abolitionist frameworks · Grind culture as system · Racial roots of productivity culture · Nervous system effects of chronic overwork · Why rest feels dangerous · Productivity identity · The unfreezing problem · Seven types of rest (Saundra Dalton-Smith) · Rest for disabled and chronically ill people · Economic precarity and access to rest · Collective rest · Community care · Structural conditions for rest

Referenced Work & Resources: Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, The Nap Ministry · Sacred Rest: Saundra Dalton-Smith

Thematic Companion: Episode 11 — 'Staying Informed Without Burning Out'

BuyMeACoffee Link: Support the Soma Roots Therapy Access Fund — monthly or one-time

Links: Soma Roots Therapy Website · Blog companion post · Reach Out & Get Started

Instagram: @somaticrootstherapy

Next Episode: Episode 13 — Grief Is Not A 5-Step Checklist

Episode Summary: In Episode 11 of The Inked Therapist, Del Knight explores one of the most pressing clinical questions of the current political moment: how do you stay informed without destroying your nervous system in the process? This episode covers the physiology of news overload and why the chronic scroll activates the threat response; credits the Black feminist, Indigenous, and abolitionist lineages that have long understood rest and regulation as tools of resistance; offers practical guidance for designing a sustainable information diet without disengaging; walks through somatic practices for before, during, and after news consumption; and reframes the scale and shape of political engagement as a nervous system question, not just a logistics one.

Topics Covered: Sympathetic nervous system activation · Cortisol and chronic stress · Window of tolerance · News overload research · BIPOC lineages of rest and resistance · Tricia Hersey and The Nap Ministry · Rest as resistance · Trauma organizing · Doom scrolling as hypervigilance · Information diet design · Orienting and grounding practices · Vagal nerve activation · Somatic discharge · Scale of engagement · Constructive journalism · Mutual aid and local organizing · Sustainable activism

Referenced Work & Resources: Tricia Hersey - The Nap Ministry

BuyMeACoffee Link: Support the Soma Roots Therapy Access Fund — monthly or one-time

Links: Soma Roots Therapy Website · Blog companion post · Reach Out & Get Started

Instagram: @somaticrootstherapy

Next Episode: Episode 12 — Rest As Resistance