Kinnected: Relationships will Outlast Empire

What if the most durable force in a collapsing world isn’t power, but relationship? We kick off Kinnected by tracing how our paths crossed through decolonizing therapy, shared immigrant lineages, and a stubborn belief that care grows stronger underground. From that starting point, we make a case that relationships will outlast empire because reciprocity, not extraction, is what sustains life.

Together we unpack the everyday web of interdependence that culture teaches us to ignore. Farmers, drivers, neighbors, co-workers—our days are stitched together by people we rarely acknowledge. We explore how mental health often narrows healing to the individual, and why zooming out to communities, histories, and ecologies creates more truthful care. Right relationship becomes the guiding practice: with each other, with systems, and with the planet that remains generous despite harm. Climate change, burnout, and disconnection show up as consequences of poor relationship, not personal failure.

We slow the pace and move from outcomes to process. Relationships have seasons, terrains, and cycles of rupture and repair; each landscape needs different skills. You can’t navigate a desert like a snowfield, and you can’t force trust on a deadline. We share practices for expanding capacity: honoring pace, cultivating repair, and archiving “glimmers” of joy that resource the body amid the news cycle. Along the way, we invite listeners to recover imagination—because better futures are built in relationship long before they’re seen in policy.

If the idea of being “of the earth” shifts how you relate to yourself and others, you’ll feel at home here. Subscribe, share with a friend who holds you up, and leave a review to help more people find this space. Tell us: what relationship in your life is asking for a gentler pace right now?

Thanks for listening, 

Tolu & Gitika 

You can reach us at kinnected.squarespace.com

Tolu is the Founder of Re-member Counseling & Gitika is the Founder of Pranh Healing & Wellness 

Transcript

Welcome To Connected

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Alright. Hi Tholo. Hi Gitika. So welcome to our uh first episode regarding Yes, it's our first.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

We've been talking about this for months, so it's actually nice to just do it.

Relationships Will Outlast Empire

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yes, indeed, just do it. So we're gonna go ahead and maybe just share with our listeners what we are trying to do here and why. So firstly, of course, everybody, welcome to Connected. This is the podcast that Tolu and I envisioned as a podcast that we center collective care and relationships that outlast Empire. We are your hosts, Tolu and Gitka, two mental health professionals in the so-called United States of America. But uh we share more about ourselves in a bit. I'm just wondering, Tolu, whether you would like to share a little bit about how this podcast really came to be. Because I think you had an important role to play.

Interdependence In An Individual World

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Sure, yeah. So I learned about you through another colleague, Nicole, and she was like, Gitaka's doing really good work that you're interested in. I think you guys should like connect. And then I saw that you came to like a training that I had, a virtual training that I had called like decolonizing therapy. Right. And that's how I kind of was familiar with you because you had interacted with some of my like curiosities, questions, prompts of the group. There, I was like, oh, that's hard. Like, let me reach out. I don't remember if I reached out or you reached out. I don't remember how we did. Okay, I did reach out. I reached out, and then from there we kind of were just like, I like your vibe, you like my vibe, we like similar, we have similar ideas, beliefs, politics, similarities around like immigrant backgrounds, right? I'm a child of immigrant immigrant, right? So kind of that third culture, third cultural experience as well, too. So I was like, let's kind of cultivate this relationship and see what happens. And then from there, we were like, let's start a podcast. And here we are.

Relationship As Universal Organizing Principle

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, pretty much. And I think what would also happen was that I attended your training about decolonizing mental health or decolonizing therapy. And I thought of reaching out to you, but I'm going through a period in my life at that time where I was just like, I am going to have less doing energy, and I'm just going to that people I'm supposed to meet, we will cross paths eventually, but I'm not going to keep initiating contact because I think I was in this really exhaustive period in my life. And I happened to offer a training around immigration and mental health. And I believe you were in that training also. So I was just like, oh, look, you know, we're again paths of crossing. And then you reached out, and this was sometime in 2025.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So I think sociopolitically, historically speaking, 2025 has been a fairly intense year across the world, and especially in the United States, and also like originating from the United States. There's been a lot of stuff happening. I think when I spoke, I think one of the things that you and I seem to really resonate on was the importance of relationships.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Yes.

Process Over Outcomes In Relating

Right Relationship With Planet And People

SPEAKER_01 3:51

But it is going to be true relationships, you know, built underground, built, you know, building a root system that's really, really going to take us through these times. And then I can't remember whether it was at that meeting or at a different meeting when you said, Well, we do know relationships will outlast empire. And I was like, I think this needs to go on a t-shirt, it needs to be our byline, it needs to be our slogan, it needs to be everywhere. We need to do something with just this, just this line. This is going to be our mission statement for the rest of our life. Relationships will outlast empire. Yeah, and I think that's where it started picking up speed. And because you and I are mental health professionals, we are technically in the relationship building profession, but I think we all we were also recognizing that there are limits to speaking about relationship building when so much work happens at the individual level, and we are both as people who have groups in other cultures and other countries, we are very familiar with the prominence of interdependence. I think interdependence exists within an individualistic societies, but I don't think they recognize it. Like everybody needs a farmer to pick food at their table. Exactly. Recognize our dependence on the farmer. Or do we pretend the food just magically appear because you supposedly earned it? You know? So I think we were both cultures that were willing to center in the interdependence or at least talk about it. But also, you know, we've we've both known colonization and our previous generations as well. So we know the challenges to interdependence. So you and I, of course, then started talking about how do we actually speak about relationships in a way that's not about fixing what's broken or anything like that, but truly connecting. Right. But in a period of polarization, polarization did not begun begin in 2025. I trust everybody knows that. Yes. But polarization has been around for the eight of ages. So I think just that idea of having spaces where we could speak about relationship building.

unknown 6:14

Yes.

Seasons And Terrain Of Relationships

You Are Of The Earth

Beyond Couples Therapy Frames

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah, absolutely. I I heard this quote. Oh, I need to remember her name. I don't remember her name, but she said something that likes really settled in my body. When she said, I said, yes, relationships are the organizing principle of the universe. Nothing exists outside of relationship. I think we have bought this lie or this idea that like I can be independent, I can do it on my own. I don't need anybody. That's not true, right? And relationships are what keeps us alive, even if you are antisocial. Somebody has to bring your Amazon packages to your door. Those are relationships, right? So I think about how much of relationships are really embedded, they're ingrained throughout the fabric of our lives. We just don't recognize it as relationship. Right. And we are so oriented to the outcome of that relationship, whatever it is. It'd be like you said, like how we're disconnected from the process of how our food gets to our plate, right? I think we're very disconnected from the process of relationship, right? And then we're just oriented to the outcome of okay, what can I get out of this? Right. Okay, I know I need to get food on my I neah, I know I need to eat. So can I just get to the grocery store? And we forget what happens between the farm and the grocery store, right? We're just like going to the grocery store. So the goal and hope is that this podcast can kind of slow us down and open up some curiosity around how can I deepen my relationship to relationship, if that makes sense, right? How can I deepen and understand how, again, relationships are the organizing principle of the universe, right? That probably is a key to my flourishing, that's a key to my liberation, it's a key to my growth and evolution, right? So, how can I better understand how to show up in a relationship from a more embodied place, a more slow place, right? Because that's really what's gonna help us be free, right? I really believe as a human species, we have everything we need to survive, we have everything we need to solve the world's problems. It's just that we are not in relation, we're not in correct relationship with one another and with the universe and with the planet. But if we can learn how to be in relationship with the planet, because the planet is very generous, right? We live on a very generous planet, right? Despite how we treat her, right? Yeah, she's gonna have a reaction. All relationships have a reaction to how it's treated, right? If we treat the planet poorly, you're gonna see climate change. That is a consequence of being in poor relationship to the universe or to the planet. So we're gonna talk about different things, different aspects of relationships, because relationships aren't easy, right? And you know, there's rupture, there's repair. Everything is cyclical too, right? Relationships are cyclical as well. They're not always just kind of stacked, right? There's ups and downs, there's rifts, there's rivers, there's mountaintops, there's valley, there's low valleys, right? My hope is in this podcast to that we can explore the terrain of relationships. Relationships have seasons like the planet, right? There's different terrains, different landscapes, right? Same, I think, principle applies to relationships too. You have to learn how to navigate. You can't navigate the desert like snow-cap mountains, right? There's different skills and tools required to navigate, there's different landscapes. Yeah. What's coming up for you? I'm curious. What's landing for you?

Zooming Out From Individual To Systems

Imagination, Glimmers, And Joy

Closing And Ways To Connect

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Well, because I think what's showing up for me is also realizing that sometimes we even separate our relationship with the earth from our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with those around us. And somewhere I think through this podcast and also whatever offerings you and I have envisioned, at the heart of it, in inviting people into right relationship with the earth, we are actually inviting people to recognize that you are very much a part of the earth. You are the earth from the earth. So how you treat yourself and how you treat the person you're in relationship with, whether it is your family members, your friends, or the person who delivers your packages, these are all opportunities to practice right relationship. It's not easy. It's not easy. So I'm not pretending just be good and everything will work out fine. There are challenges to this, and that's what Tolu and I are hoping to speak about more through our own experiences, personally, professionally. And I do want to name up the upset, we are not married and family therapists. Those are therapists who've specifically gone to school to study like family systems, couple systems, dyads, like you know, two people in relationship or multiple people in relationship. They're specifically trained to address relationships. So we have not been trained in that. What our, so to speak, wisdom comes from is from reading a bunch of different literature from a range of fields within and outside psychology. And we are practitioners who are we are therapists. We do a lot of trauma or informed work, so we are always working with mind, body, and spirit. And our experience with the mental health field has also been that the mental health field becomes very narrow in its focus because it typically treats the individual and max the individual's family as the unit of focus. And we, Tolu and I are like the unit of focus is bigger, brighter, because people come with histories. Histories that are also not limited to their families, histories that are about communities, they're about countries, they're about the civilization. So a lot of our understanding of relationships is also informed by a bunch of different knowledge systems basically outside the field. So we come to this podcast as your hosts with people who have been taught by our own experience and by a bunch of teachers from a variety of traditions. So we are hoping that as folks listen, you will get something from us and we will receive something from you, not as a transaction, but more as that's just how knowledge has always grown by people listening and sharing and resonating and also clarifying. So our hope is that our conversations will mirror conversations you have perhaps had in your own mind or in your own lives. And we hope we continue to plant seeds that will either start something new or help folks feel reassured about you know wherever they are.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

So, yes, we are not trained like as far as like couples therapists, families therapists, right? Too, but we want to help kind of expand folks' ideas around what healing looks like. Healing, I think in the West is very individualized, very you take on the responsibility, you take on the burden, right? Like it's all on you, and I'm putting that responsibility on you, but really we're not in good relationship with the systems unless we live under which cause right the mental health, right? The issues, quote unquote mental health issues, right? But usually our appropriate responses to a system that is unwell. Depression makes sense, your burnout makes sense, yeah, right? Psychosis makes sense because this stuff, this is the things we normalize in our our society, right? Yeah. We're supposed to act like everything and go to work. So I also too want us to zoom out because we need to question the society in which we live in. I think it's good when a group of people who live within the society are always questioning, always pushing back, always have questions, right? About is this the best that we can do as a society? Because I feel like when we have access to our imagination, there's so much possibilities there for us. Do you have access to an imagination of what could be better? I feel like that has to be cultivated in relationship. You know, my therapist recently asked me, What have been some glimmers that's happened for you this week? And I was like, Oh, like glimmers, sorry, glimmers are like good things that are going well, highlights, things are beautiful throughout the week. Like it could be small things, big things, just things that made you feel good or just brought joy to you know. And I was like, Oh, wait, I need to think about that more. And I want to be better about archiving my joy, like that's a relation, relationship to what's going well, right? Because turn on the news, turn on social media, it could put you in a spiral, right? So even like our relationship to going well too, I think in society, by design, we're oriented to terror, to violence, the new cycle, that's a relationship in itself as well, too, right? Can we cultivate the capacity to have a relationship to what's going well amidst all the horror horrors that we're experiencing?

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Underlying, underlining, identifying what you just said about can we even look for the glimmers in everything that's going on, what's giving us energy, what's keeping us going, and how are we also building relationships not only with what's going wrong, because that needs relating as well. But can we also build relationships with what's going well? Because that's where we will feel energized, awakened, alive. And if anything, we do need more people coming alive. Yeah. So we're just gonna leave folks with this. And I hope you follow along. Please subscribe to our podcast whenever you're listening. This podcast connected will be available on any podcasting platform you use. And we hope to see more of you. And we are hoping to go ahead and record episodes at least once in two weeks. We look forward to hearing from you. If you want to drop us a message, our email address is in the show notes, and of course, subscribe so that we can be in your inboxes whenever we drop an episode. Thanks everyone. This is Vidya signing off. Bye, totally signing off. Thanks everyone.