Episode 13 : Tree of Life and Imbeleko Practices

This podcast episode has been published on Nov 24th 2025. Hereafter the transcript.

FO : Hello, Nazello. How are you?

[00:02:30.740] - Ncazelo Ncube (NN): I'm well, thank you. Fabiola.

[00:02:33.760] – FO: I am so happy to have you here. I was saying to you when we connected earlier that I am still in a cloud just after the wonderful masterclass that we had with you.

[00:02:54.500] – NN: It was such a lovely experience. I enjoyed myself. My heart is very full my experience in Paris. I think things went very well. I felt very comfortable. Thank you for the care that I got during my stay. I loved sharing my work with the narrative community in Paris. It was just an honor and a privilege to spend the three days with you, folks.

[00:03:25.700] – FO: I can tell you that the narrative community was very grateful. Thank you for coming to the podcast. I thought that maybe it could be the opportunity for people that were not there to hear a little bit about your work. I was telling you that this podcast is about honoring resistances from adversity and from dominant discourses. When I saw your story and the story of the Three of Life, I thought a lot about resistance. You were a young therapist, you began with the models that you had, and quickly you realized that these models were based on two very strong dominant discourses.

 

One : We, as therapists, have the expertise and we are here to fix people. And the second one, to fix people. it is very important that they talk and they talk and they talk about their trauma. This comes from this strong current of catharsis with a C and psychoanalysis. It is the very mainstream therapy. I wanted to hear a little bit more about those resistances.

[00:05:12.300] – NN: Yes. Thank you very much. I did really experience a lot of challenges earlier in my career, as you have said, as a young psychologist, trying to support children affected by AIDS who had experienced a lot of hardships. A lot of the children had lost not only one parent, but both parents, often in a relatively short time. A lot of them were experiencing a lot of stigma and abuse, abandonment and neglect because people were just not sure how to behave around them, whether to take them into their homes. Perhaps they would get infected by being in the same living space or environment with them. These are young people who had experienced a lot of stressors, and so they would come to our camp program for 10 days. And what we wanted is that, during that time that they are at the camp, they receive counseling, they receive the social support that would help them to cope, to be stronger, but also to be hopeful about life in the future. And so we wanted the children to trust us so that they could talk to us.

[00:07:09.240] – FO: Yes, you were telling us that at the beginning of the camp, the children were playing, they were doing outdoor activities, and the morale was high. And you were even using the activities as a metaphor of how they have overcome things and building this trust with them. On the fifth day, things were getting very difficult as that was when they come to talk about their experiences of hardship.

[00:07:48.260] – NN: Yes. On the first days, we had a lot of lovely experiences of playing. The camp was very well-resourced with activities that allowed us to find ways to talk to them about their experiences. Some of the activities were very challenging, and they needed to work together to problem-solve together.

 

We would use those sorts of ideas to talk about challenges that you experience in your life, and how do you work with others to solve those challenges. Do you have people that support you? People that you work with who help you through challenges? So we would juxtapose and look at the similarities between the activities and the children's experiences.

 

And so the initial days were filled with a lot of play and activity, and that worked very well. So the challenge became on that fifth day where we sat down to talk about their experiences in life, because we had learned from the children that a lot of them had not been included in funeral and burial and mourning processes because in many of their cultures and customs, it was really taboo to talk to children about death. It was something that communities would shy away from because it was said to be something that's very difficult and painful, and it would be too much for the children.

We found that many children had not been present when their parents were buried. We had some of them coming to the camp and expressing that they did not know that their parents had died and wondered why they had come to a camp for orphan children. And so this was a dilemma. And so we then thought, if children have not had an opportunity to be included, to be allowed to talk about how they have experienced these losses and what's going on, it's important that this camp program does that. And so we were hoping to provide a safe space where children would feel that they were able to trust us and to tell us stories about their challenges and the hardships they were facing.

And so we divide the children up into small groups, and they would sit with two or so camp counselors, and then the process of sharing stories would begin. And so as the psychologist, as the camp lead, I had really believed in this approach. I had been recruited into this idea that creating spaces for venting and for discharging and letting it all out would be helpful. But what I found was totally the opposite.

FO: That was the training that you had. That was really the mainstream of all psychology, isn't it?

NN: Yeah, definitely. Really believing that when we can let it all out and to discharge, it frees us, it takes away the burden and what it is that we are carrying with us, which is stuck somewhere inside us. Those were the ideas that were influencing and shaping how we would approach these conversations with children. But what we found is that it was very unhelpful because the children would trigger each other. As others are listening to the story, and they have similar experiences of hardship. It would just really lead to a total collapse of the group of the camp. Everywhere where these conversations were happening, there would be massive wailing and fainting, screaming and crying.

And it became extremely difficult for the camp counselors to support the children, to contain the spaces. Obviously, they would come and seek my help and my advice. How do we deal with this? They would talk about how it felt like opening a can of worms, and that a lot of the stories that they listened to and that they hear during these conversations were very, very difficult, even for them.They would stay in their minds. Even long after the children are gone, they'd be worrying and wondering about what's going on and so on. So it left a lot on them to process to think about, and it just felt really difficult. And we would see a lot of burn out amongst the camp counselors as they continued to witness these tragic stories. It was very depleting of them. And so, yeah, as the leader of that camp, I just started to realize: “Oh, my goodness! This is not working. There's something wrong here.”

[00:13:44.380] – FO: I was very touched with something you said: that at the end of the camp, you didn't have the feeling that the children were going home with this sense of hope. And at some point, this idea gave you the strength to say: “This is not working.” As a very young therapist, thinking that you had to find something else. That you had to go againts mainstream psychology.

[00:14:34.960] – NN: Yeah, I think it came with a lot of disappointment. I really felt quite disappointed with the field of psychology. It just felt disappointing that the things that I thought I learned, and I was applying them and didn't seem to be working. And added to that was children's expressions about what they thought would be helpful to them. Mentioning issues around rituals and cleansing ceremonies.

 

A lot of them felt that they had a bad luck because they'd lost so many people in their lives. And they felt that to solve these problems, they needed cleansing, and they needed rituals to be performed. And they really believed in these ideas. And I found that nothing in my psychology textbook had prepared me for that. I just felt quite sad that I did not know how to respond to the children and to meet them where they were at. I was quite struck and shocked. I said to myself : Is this what they believe is going on? Is this their reality? Is this the meaning that they've attached to their experiences? How do you then respond to them without invalidating their beliefs, their traditions, their cultures?

[00:16:10.360] – FO: You mentioned the fact as well that maybe this mainstream psychology was very anchored in an idea about that the person has the solutions and that they have to put in place a very individualistic process of healing. You said that there were a lot of cultural expectations as well of being in relationship with their heritage, with their ancestors, with the community. And those techniques that you had inherited from your studies were not responding to that.

[00:17:07.500] – NN: Yeah, they just didn't respond. It didn't feel like psychology was even alive to these issues. It didn't feel like I had been prepared to then think, if this is what happens, how do you then make your psychology relevant to the people that you work with. You know what I mean? I started to experience feeling very inadequate, unprepared, not very sure what to do. I think that is something that we need to question why somebody would study a discipline that doesn't help them to operate within their own context and culture. And there is no effort to try and align ideas to reality. So there was just a huge separation.

 

And unfortunately, in my work, even today, I continue to see that with young people who've done and completed their psychology degrees, who come organization for internship and how they are so surprised when they get to communities and they're like: “Oh, my goodness, is this what it looks like? Is this what people go through? Is this what people say?” Then you're wondering, so what have you been studying? Who are studying to help if you cannot understand your very own communities? It's still the same problem to this very day, which I think is a very big disappointment.

 

We need to understand that people are shaped by their cultures, their beliefs, their traditional values and systems and how they attach meaning to life and their experiences is based on those very things. But we cannot rubbish or dismiss them. There needs to be efforts to meet them where they are at and not to express shock and when we listen to them tell their stories and invalidate all that. And that is what was worrying for me, that these young people were so much into these ideas. They really believe there was something wrong, and that community had to be involved. Families had to be involved for them to realize their healing and so on.

[00:20:08.440] – FO: And at the center of it is the narrative posture where there is a deep respect about what is the meaning that you give to your life, what makes sense to you and that you have in you the expertise and the knowledge to perform your own healing. And that is my experience as well, mainly in coaching. Sometimes, you end up having therapeutic conversations about topics that are different or more profound. And people say to me, this conversation has been very healing in a way that I haven't been validated by my psychiatrist or my therapist. That is in the DNA of Narrative Practices: that people are validated in their own knowledge.

[00:21:18.940] – NN: Yes, definitely. For me, that was the missing piece in terms of how I could be more understanding, empathetic, and having a conversation that would give young people confidence in who they are and in their own knowledges, and guiding them in terms of what steps they needed to be taking so that those things that are important to them are performed or realized and without a sense of judgment and so on. But it would then become very clear that a lot of the young people that we were working with believed in those ideas. They held them very close to them. And it didn't seem very practical to remove them from that, to take that away from them.

[00:22:23.940] – FO: Because those practices were the key of the healing as well. And I find very interesting what you said about the double entry conversation, because, to speed up a little bit, that reflexion made you, at some point, came up with the Tree of Life and you began this as an experience: “Let's see how this goes.”

 

This day that you called the day of doom, because it was the day where everybody was very affected and fainting and crying and everything. You saw that double entry conversation: that maybe the point of entry was not the trauma. I would like to hear you again on that.

[00:23:22.740] – NN: Yeah. So I think Masiye Camp and working with the young people, brought a lot of questions. I started to really think deeply about the need for a way of working that was less retraumatizing for children, that would bring in and usher hope and validate them in terms of their beliefs, their cultures. I realized that the answer would not be in Western psychology. It was somewhere else.

 

Therefore, when I first encountered the Tree of Life through an invitation to participate in a regional multi-country workshop led by an organization called REPSSI. Someone who was asked to lead that meeting brought a tool called the Tree of Life. He asked us to use this tool to tell stories about our lives. It was just his hope that, as we tell the stories about our lives, we might find inspiration thinking about what we can be doing with children affected by AIDS. Jonathan Brokaw, he thought that we've been children ourselves. We've probably gone through a lot of hardships. Perhaps in the stories of our lives, they could be clues.

[00:25:08.420] – FO: That is very interesting. He used that tool to introduce yourselves and to create a space of creativity to the predicament. And you adapted this very tool.

[00:25:30.240] – NN: He did that.

[00:25:31.280] – FO: And then you said: “Wow, if we adapt this, maybe the entrance point of the conversation with children will be the stories of life that make them stronger and create islands of safety.

[00:25:54.220] – NN: His idea gave me an idea. I thought: “This could be fantastic for the children at Masiye Camp. Let's turn this methodology into a counseling methodology.” And so, we started working with the Tree of Life at Masiye Camp, and we worked together with the camp counselors to think about the stories that we thought would be helpful for children to talk about. Therefore, how do we use this tree metaphor for these stories to be shared?

 

But we were also excited that we're introducing a new element, which would be drawing of trees and having the children become creative and use this metaphor to tell their stories. And so that's how the earlier version of Tree of Life went to Masiye Camp: trying to find a solution and an antidote to the day of doom. We wanted a medicine. We didn't want that whaling and fainting. And so we were wondering if we added this Tree of Life on that fifth day, would that change things?

 

And it did change things quite significantly. Day of Boom became a thing of the past. Children started telling stories about where they come from. We didn't have the ground then, but we had the trunk, which was your achievements, things you've done well. Then we added these ideas about the leaves of the tree being important people in your life because we thought it would be so important to help children to grow their safety nets and to think about relationships. And then we added the fallen leaves, we added thorns on the tree, just to get them to talk about some of the things that were challenging.

 

And then it's afterwards that I encounter Narrative Practices, because I got excited about storytelling, and I wondered if there were other ideas?

[00:27:52.680] – FO: This was really before you met Narrative Practices and Michael White and David Denborough.

[00:28:00.000] – NN: Yeah. So we had already started using the Tree of Life. A colleague, called Jonathan Morgan, saw how excited I was about finding the Tree of Life and using it for counseling. And my hope came alive, and I had a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm for the work. And when he saw how we were using the Tree of Life, he then said to me: “You might want to look up Michael White's work because you might learn a lot more there around using stories.” So he just pointed me that direction. And that's how I got in touch with the narrative worldview.

 

It's after learning narrative ideas and collaborating with David that we came to rethink the tree. These ideas about the entry point are so important. When we meet people who've gone through trauma and hardships, we need to think about creating islands of safety so that people have a sense of a distance from the problem, stories of their lives. Because when we use the single story, the story of the trauma and the problem, and we use that approach where we are just talking about the problems that people experience in life, there's a risk of retraumatization. It can increase their sense of vulnerability.

 

It's this new knowledge, this understanding of narrative and what it seeks to do, that really shaped what the Tree of Lifeis now. We were able to adapt it so that we strengthened what we started at Masiye Camp, and we made the methodology more wholesome, if I could say.

[00:30:06.760] – FO: Yes. There is something in the work that I have read and translated of David Denborough regarding this idea of getting people to the shore. During the masterclass, you used a metaphor that I like it very much: you talked about islands of safety. The way you were expressing it: If you find someone drowning, it is not the place or the moment to have a conversation about “ How are you feeling? What is your experience of drowning, what is that came to put you in this situation?” At that moment, what matters is to put the person into safety. And it is from a position of safety that maybe the person can think and have distance and resources and ideas about their own solution to their predicaments. And that is very important in Narrative Practices. And I say it because some of the people that hear this, that listen to this podcast, are not narrative practitioners. The entry point in Narrative Practices is always what makes you stronger and put you in contact with this personal sense of agency.

[00:31:41.520] – NN: Yes, definitely. That was so helpful. The reason I was very drawn to these ideas, is that I had seen serious retraumatization, quite extensive, with the day of doom, with the whaling and the fainting of children. At that time, not quite understanding why things went so wrong on that day.

 

But the islands of safety metaphor helped me to appreciate that what had produced the day of doom was the single-story telling. It as the retraumatization. We were just staying with the story of grief, of loss, of AIDS. And as each child told their story, they were basically repeating the same kinds of tragic stories, very problem-saturated stories. And that became a trap. That became a problem. And so now I could appreciate that it's important to create islands of safety for people who are drowning in their former stories. It is a trap because this story is already very dominant in their lives.

[00:33:17.200] – FO: And so we repeat and repeat. These stories have all the space. And as you were saying, it is interesting to go and seek to extend the territory of identity because people, their identity, are not defined by trauma.

[00:33:39.120] – NN: Yes, definitely. Those ideas were very transformative in my work, and I got to understand that when people come to consult us, sometimes they are drowning in the stories of trauma. They are overwhelmed. They are very vulnerable, and we need to help them to be sustained, to have something to hold on to as they navigate the dilemmas of their lives. But if you're only standing in the trauma stories of your life, you can become very vulnerable because there's nothing to anchor you. There's nothing you're holding on to.

 

But these second stories, these alternative stories, can become islands of safety because you then realize that you have skills, you've got knowledge, you've got important people in your life, you're rooted in your values, in your beliefs, all these things that trauma can erase because trauma is very corrosive of what is important and helpful for people. It separates them from those things that can be supportive to them. And so part of the work that we have as therapists is to help people to reconnect with their skills, their values, with their knowledges of living life so that they are not so vulnerable. So that was so liberating.

I think it just gave me a different sense of understanding that people can find healing without even talking about the trauma stories of their lives. But we've always been thought to believe that to find healing, you must talk about the trauma, you must address the problem, and so on. But I've learned in my journey that the idea is to help people to reconnect with their own knowledge and skills and to become independent in finding their own solutions to their predicaments. And so as we support people to connect with the preferred stories of their lives, the neglected stories of their lives, they can create pathways to healing to preferred ways of living and so on. And so second stories are a medicine in themselves.

[00:36:24.380] – FO: Second stories are alternative stories. There are other stories and people are not defined by the trauma. We are multi-storied, and there are a lot of other stories that maybe we cannot access yet as we are so overwhelmed by trauma.

[00:36:50.580] – NN: Yes. And that was so helpful to learn.

[00:36:57.940] – FO: I understand that all this reflection about the Tree of Life marked a lot your approach of therapeutics and that you began as well to put the focus about how to respond to people in ways that are culturally meaningful for them. And today you have a very lovely name for your posture for the practice.

[00:37:37.350] – NN: Yes. I've been inspired. I think a lot of my work comes through inspiration, really. I was inspired to come up with this concept of Imbeleko. In an African context, Imbeleko is a blanket that is made of animal skin that women use to carry their babies on their back. You will find that it's a practice that's quite widespread across most of Africa. Then in Southern Africa, we call the blanket an Imbeleko blanket. I think I mentioned how I first encountered the use of the concept during my time working for Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, where a research project was conducted to investigate community knowledges about child protection and safety, to try and learn what indigenous communities do to protect their children and people who are vulnerable. It was really trying to come up with a bottom-up approach to child protection services and ensure that they are aligned to communities.

 

I was really fascinated that the Imbeleko practice was used to symbolize knowledges about protection and safety and nurturing children. I think I was drawn to it for various reasons. I did mention that I was a beneficiary of the Imbeleko practice when I was a child, when my parents divorced and separated, and that I had an aunt who moved in with us during a time that was very confusing in our lives. We could see that something was wrong and it was affecting us as children because my mother had to move out of our home during that time. To this day, I don't know what my aunt saw in my eyes that prompted her to pick me up and put me on her back with the Imbeleko blanket. And she did that for many, many months.

[00:40:22.150] – FO: You mentioned that you were three years old, something like that. It's difficult because you're not longer a baby, so you have a lot of interpretation about what is happening, but you are not a grown-up child to who are being explained some things. I imagine, a very confusing time.

[00:40:47.460] – NN: She'd pick me up and just put me on the Imbeleko blanket, and she did this for quite some time. And I remember feeling safe and warm and loved and nurtured. I felt very secure. My aunt became a very significant figure in my life as a child. I know that the Imbeleko practice that she used on me was a huge influence. I always say, I think she saved my life in many ways during that time. I had no doubt that communities have knowledges around healing and supporting children and people who are vulnerable, because I have my personal testimony of how a very cultural, traditional practice saved me as a child.

 

And so, this got me very excited to think that in our communities there is knowledge that we often ignore or push to the sidelines because it's not evidence-based, it's not researched scientifically. As we are told that if there is no evidence, then it doesn't work. I started to think about the things that we lose out on. I wondered, as a narrative practitioner, as a psychologist: “What is out there that I could be using? What could I be encouraging people who consult me, the communities that I work with, to tap into that could help them in their healing and recovery journeys?”

I started to envision an Imbeleko practice, which is founded upon cultural knowledge, cultural wisdom. And for me, Imbeleko became a symbol of warmth, a source of emotional in physical security and nurturing environment. Just thinking about the blanket and what the blanket makes possible. And therefore, how do we hold people who come for therapy?

And so Imbeleko started to become increasingly about holding. When we join in with people in therapy, how do we hold them in Imbeleko ways? What are some of the community knowledges and wisdom that we can draw on or deep into that can create that element of safety and sustenance and just comfort and then so on. As I pondered more around these ideas, I really became excited about an Imbeleko approach to therapy and how communities can define for themselves how to create the Imbeleko effect and what needs to be done culturally that fits with this metaphor.

And so today the Imbeleko blanket has become what inspires me. I've listened to people say: “Oh, the Tree of Life is such an amazing methodology! and it's lovely to do. But beyond that, what has really kept me coming to Phola Sessions is how I am treated, is the experience that I have. It's just being in those spaces alongside other women and how we are respected.”

There's just an amazing energy that exudes out of the facilitators and how they create an environment that's nurturing and just really inviting in ways that are life changing. They say: “That is what keeps us coming beyond the methodology, that experience.”

[00:45:37.800] – FO: The experience of how you are seen. Yes. You know, that reminds me of something. You met Julian Betbèze at the masterclass. This is something that he says, and I found very interesting his medical point of view about how trauma, it is as well about not being seen, not being in connection with people. He says that the first job of therapy is to create the first space where the person can be seen and seen in their singularity. And seeing that this singularity is enriching for the life of others.

 

And you were talking about this therapy that is collective and collaborative. And even, sometimes that you participate yourself on the exercises. And so that is very powerful because it means that the person is having this experience: “My singularity is enriching the life of others” That experience itself is healing.

[00:47:03.500] – NN: Totally! I've come to believe more and more that a lot of people who experience marginalization and abuse and exploitation have been disqualified, made to feel very unworthy. They've been dismissed, and their voices have been shut out in many, many ways. And that for me, therapy must be a way of addressing that. Being able to redress to say: “If I've been silenced, therapy must allow me to find my voice. If I have been marginalized, therapy must be an experience of inclusion. I must feel seen and heard and that I matter and that I'm important.”

 

If we are really to help people to heal, we need to provide a totally opposite experience from what they've been subjected to in communities that has led to negative identity conclusions people feeling hopeless and that they are just not important or valuable in any way. And so part of the healing practice must be about changing all that and giving people a totally different experience.

[00:48:49.040] – FO: How powerful is that! Having that experience in the space of therapy opens up a lot of possibilities. And to connect to sense of agency, to put things into place, to come to terms with the effects or to cope with the effects of trauma.

[00:49:11.500] – NN: Yes, definitely. I've seen with the graduation event. We do a celebration at the end of the therapeutic journey, when we complete our journeys with people seeking counseling. I've seen people stand up and say: “I have always struggled to speak out. I've always felt that I'm not good enough. But during this event, I want to make a speech. I want to stand up and say something.” I don't know how many times on those ceremonies, have I've had people who'd lost their voices, stand up for the first time and say something and have people listen to them. I've seen it with children; I've seen it with adults. It marks the beginning of a different person altogether. It's just so powerful when you start to see that happening people.

[00:50:27.920] – FO: It is very inspiring: At the end, this is a key idea of Narrative Practices as well: that identity is a social construction: And around the problem and the trauma, your identity has been influenced to make your identity poor and helpless. So, the idea is to allow, with the therapeutic space, to create a different construction and to rediscover how rich your identity is.

[00:51:22.980] – NN: Yes, I totally agree, and I've seen it over and over again. And I've seen it with COURRAGE work, where women who really felt totally unwanted and unattractive, and that they had failed in their relationships, and they just started to live their lives anyhow. The pride in who I am comes back, how I show up. I want to do my hair, I want to I want to dress up. I want to look good for me. That is another huge surprise, and COURRAGE normally has that effect on women.

[00:52:14.440] – FO: Yes, I was mentioning that I am very interested in this practice, this methodology that you developed as an extension or declination of the Imbeleko practices. And that COURRAGE is a methodology that is based on a series of workshops that acknowledge the courage of the women that sometimes were being very devalorized by the environment that was very patriarchal. That gave them a renewed sense of hope.

[00:53:21.240] – NN: Yes, definitely. Listening to communities talk about them as being immoral and irresponsible. I obviously know from my work that that's not the complete story, the hazards of the single story. That's how COURRAGE work began. It was when I participated in community meetings and heard people talk about women in very demoralizing ways. It felt immediately to an alarm bell that this is not a complete story. This is a single story. I want to know what women in this community have to say about what's going on, because I think what's developing out of these conversations, these dialogs, is a very problem-saturated view of women, but also something that it feels very unfair.

 

I then met these wonderful women who I was introduced to to help me to understand their community and what was going on. As I explained, the dialogs had come about because of child killings that were going on, and the community was meeting to talk about the reasons behind these murders. The reason became that women were irresponsible and immoral. They would leave children unattended and go to be with boyfriends. That's why the children were vulnerable to abuse and being murdered and so on. I then noticed in the meetings that when these things were mentioned, women became very shy, they didn't say much, and it became more about the men's voices and the men's views.

And that is when I asked the convener of the dialogs if she knew how I could talk to women from the community and create a space where they could tell their story without feeling attacked by the way that started to develop in the dialogs. And I then met these women. After several sessions trying to get to know them and meet them over coffee and lunch, they say to me: “We are women. We've gone through a lot, but we don't want people to see our pain. We don't want to attract pity. We don't want our children to see how difficult life is. We want to give our children hope. We are women with courage. We are women of courage. We've learned to be courageous through our own mothers and our grandmothers. Because women in Africa are courageous women.”

There was something very beautiful about the story of courage, and I thought: “Oh, my goodness, isn't it wonderful to be meeting with women and celebrating their courage and honoring stories of courage.” It just gave me an idea that our meetings could be about courage and hearing more stories about the courageous steps that those women were taking in the face of trauma and hardships.

It then inspired to me this idea of using the word “courage” as an acronym, where each letter in the acronym represents a specific step in a group counseling therapy. But to further shape what this methodology would become was paying attention to what women said was important to them. I asked them to tell me what would keep them coming to join in with me, to be with me in sessions. What would they look forward to? What did they want the time together to be about? They mentioned a couple of things that they wanted to talk about things that worry them, how to make men responsible for children, talk about issues of health, but also to have fun and time away from problems, find inspiration to reclaim their power, to learn about their rights. They listed a whole lot of things. Then I said, I would take these things very seriously and draw on them to shape what our courage work would be about.

Then COURRAGE becomes a product from the word “courage” and honoring stories of courage, but also the hopes that women expressed in terms of what they would want the time together to be about, as well as narrative ideas that talk to trauma and how we respond to trauma.

The methodology has become a fusion of all these things. I'm very glad to say today, COURRAGE is used in the UK, in Australia, in Canada, in Zambia, and other countries that I've been training on the methodology. Now in France, I hope.

[00:59:12.240] – FO: And now in France! I will definitely put the methodology into practice. I was telling you that I've been working for a long time on a book and on therapeutic techniques about the trauma linked to sexual abuse in childhood. That is as well my experience. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and that there is a lot of silence, shame, and a sense of guilt around that. That is crazy, but it's a lot of sense of guilt around the experience of childhood sexual abuse. I think that this is a very relevant methodology for talking about this experience.

 

And I am really, really admirative about how humble you are. You are an incredible professional with a lot of experience, with a lot of expertise. You incarnate what you are saying. You really walk the talk and you are able to say to a group of women: “Well, we will be constructing together what we will do. What is relevant for you?” And that came up with a methodology that has been adopted by a lot of people. I wanted to give a token of admiration about how you manage to bring new eyes to every situation and to bring this posture that is about “I don't have the knowledge of what we have to do”. And that is very inspiring.

[01:01:54.000] – NN: Thank you very much for those very kind words. I think when I encounter narrative, I don't work with narrative as a technique. There is something in my head about: this is what you can do. I think narrative has become a way of life for me. The narrative worldview has influenced me in a very big way in terms of how I live my life and how I join in with people. It has become more about heart work rather than intellectual.

[01:02:44.140] – FO: Your posture was already very narrative when you dare to say : “What I have learned from the big masters of psychology is not working here, and I would like to try something else. And what can I do to be more effective in those situations that are very difficult for the people I am working with?”

[01:03:11.920] – NN: I think so. I think the start of my journey as a psychologist was very traumatic. It just led to a need to do something different. And once I got that, I really held onto it and just took to the invitation to think outside the box and see what else It can teach me what else can be made possible. And I think it's taking that posture that has really helped me to continue to learn, to grow, to explore.

 

The beginning was very difficult. I never wanted to go back where I started. I was very clear about what had not worked and what was working for me, and I wanted to grow what seemed to work. I've had very recent conversations with people about how I have found in my own practice and in my own work that people who have studied professionally to be psychologists don't do very well in community mental health. I sit with a situation where it's my ordinary community people, people who haven't been that much to school who do the most amazing community work, even in mental health. It's made me really see that sometimes the education that we take up removes or separates us from our own knowledge of living life and what works.

We start to lean more towards the professional, the intellectual stuff. That separates us, I think, more and more from what is helpful, from what we know helps. I've really learned that people want connection. They want human connection. They want to be heard. They want to be in spaces where they are not seen as “the other”. They want to join in, even with professionals as humans, in the most authentic ways. It's those understandings that I think have contributed to the growth of my work.

Unfortunately, people who've been trained in the professional disciplines are told about: “You can't do this. You have to do this. You can't say this.” I mean, I've had experiences where people are working in a hospital context who say: “We're not even allowed to greet our patients. Because it's the job of psychologist to do that. If you are a nurse, you can't even greet your patient. All you do is just to give them the drugs, the treatment, the medicine without saying anything. Because those who are allowed to talk to patients are only the psychologists.” I'm like: “What???”

[01:06:51.520] – FO: How crazy! People that are isolated and they are denied the experience of a human warm conversation about coffee, weather, whatever.

[01:07:06.480] – NN: Yes. “How are you today? How did you sleep?” He says they can't. It's not allowed. So they just get up in the morning and be like that. Can you imagine what it's like to be treated in that way? That you don't exist. You're just your diagnosis.

[01:07:27.260] – FO: Yes, that is very sad. And what I liked very much in the training you gave us on COURRAGE and, we will be pursuing that work, is that there are a lot of things that are articulated around celebration, honoring the wisdom and competencies in life. There are conversations about deconstruction, about what in the culture and in the social environment has made that we come to these predicaments. And so, the workshops are a place for meaningful discussions. This is what I saw in that methodology. A meaningful discussion, whose entry point is the richness of the identity, not the trauma. Maybe some people can go through the whole courage workshop without telling this and this happened to me. Sometimes maybe they would like to share because there is not the only story. It's not anymore, the single story. But you said, they are willing to share once they have an understanding of their identity, that it's richer than the trauma.

[01:09:36.980] – NN: I just love the entry point of COURRAGE that it's about celebrating survival, and we celebrate that we have survived. Despite everything else that's happened to us, we are here, we are still standing, and we are going to celebrate We talk about how we celebrate in different cultures, and we give people a chance to share a song of celebration, a dance of celebration. We perform dances, the dance of life celebrating that you are here.

 

As I've said a lot of people look at you and they think, I don't feel like I should be celebrating right now in my life. It doesn't quite feel like it makes sense to celebrate. But two, three sessions down the line, they'll say: “That was probably the best they have ever done in a long time. I don't celebrate myself that much. I don't look at myself as being worthy of being celebrated or celebration. I think this introduced something new that I need to celebrate myself a bit more. I need to celebrate my life a bit more, that I've actually overcome a lot of things.”

 

It's fantastic. It's just introducing a new way of thinking, a new idea completely. It's just lovely to see that people can step into a different way of understanding and see themselves.

[01:11:32.380] – FO: The French narrative community will certainly be remembering your visit for a very long time. And we hope it's not the last, that it's just the first, and that you will come back. Anyway, we were extremely grateful for your generous teachings, and it was wonderful. I don't know if you have a message for the French narrative community, and I will give you the conclusion word for the end of this episode.

[01:12:11.380] – NN: I would like to just say : Thank you very much for the invitation. I loved being in Paris. I loved being around the narrative community. I was really honored. Just the way that my work, my ideas were taken. People were very thoughtful in their reflections, in their questions, and they really engaged in a very deep and warm way with what I shared. I think it really grew me in a very significant way. I was very surprised how well the experience went with translations. I had wondered if that was going to work, but it went extremely well. I feel very grateful for everything that was put in place for me to be able to share the work that I do. I can only hope that it's going to inspire new ideas, new practices, so that we can continue to support people who are struggling with the effects of trauma and hardships. So thank you for allowing me to contribute to your work, to your practice. And I do hope that our paths will cross again. Thank you for the opportunity.

[01:13:40.080] – FO: Thank you, Ncazelo. It has been an honor to have you in this podcast, and certainly your mark has been very inspirational. We will be talking soon, I hope. Have a lovely stay in London. You are now in London. And see you soon. Thank you.

 

NN: Take care, Fabiola. Bye-bye.