To be posted on social media:
An Accounting of Systemic Extraction, Exploitation, Erasure, and Reclaiming My Narrative
I was a guest on the Intrepid Soul podcast on 11/12/2025, and I do not approve of the presentation published. This statement is to counter and correct the contortion and misrepresentation of who I am and my work especially, as the content and context I shared was distorted through edits, cuts, and reframing, whitewashing, of words I offered. It is also the very example of exploitation, extraction, and erasure in the multiple racialized and systemic transgressions I experienced, including appropriation. This statement is also an accounting of typical whiteness harms, describing their mechanics and why it perpetuates harm. It serves not only for correction and education, but as a boundary as well: I do not consent to being used as a token or instrument for someone else’s platform. I reclaim.
I do not link to her content so as not to feed the algorithm positively. It is the only podcast I did in 2025.
Definitions: Whiteness—an inherited anti‑cultural pattern that lives in the body below conscious awareness, shaping what feels “normal” in a dominant culture while disconnecting us from our full human wisdom; it operates regardless of melanin-load, rooted in the colonial project that conditioned people to suppress parts of their own humanity in order to build and maintain systemic dominance. White-bodied—in reference to one’s systemic positionality, not identity.
Surface Level Social Niceties
First, the host introduced me, giving the impression that we are long time colleagues and friends who’ve gotten to know each other well. We met in 2009, where she gave me a meaningful mediumship connection with a family friend, and any further connection since has been surface level likes on social media. She does not know me; we have never had long conversations to get to know each other. The whole podcast could have been done without that embellishment. I had initially attributed it to a usual neurotypical pattern to just fill the air with surface level social niceties, but I should have leaned into the red flag feeling of it. Instead, I leaned into trust, which is my nature.
Whiteness Presumes Epistemic Authority
She told me any editing to be done was for mistakes or “sounding bad”. I did not expect her to edit the content of my words and distort and misrepresent my work and lineage and being. She edited my voice to say something completely nonsensical about my own Filipino culture while also cutting out 2 of the 3 ethnolinguistic groups I named that I descend from. Not only is this an example of whiteness presuming interpretive and “corrective” authority over my own narrative and identity and culture, she reduces my credibility in putting out a recording of my voice saying “Filipino is a major ethnolinguistic group of the Philippines”. I said no such thing. It is a mechanism of whiteness to presume a hierarchical epistemic, “knows better”, position over people of the global majority and their stated lived experience. Really, if you don’t understand it as a white-bodied person, it does not mean we of the global majority are confused. If one were in right relation, they would have the wisdom to consult the person to understand what was being said.
Where I had maintained my relational and communal responsibility to my kapwa —literally meaning “shared inner self”, but here, naming all of my Filipino kin connections who carry each other within and without in spirit, mind, body, heart and community—where I had named why we say “Babaylan-inspired” when we speak of moving with the shamanic callings and skills of the Filipino priestesses and mystical women and trans women who are our consciousness leaders and healers, who hold the original wisdoms of our Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices, we do so so as not to appropriate from those Babaylan living within the Mother Islands who struggle to do their work due to colonial impositions—she stripped that important relational information and systemic critique from the recording as well. Again, reducing my credibility as a Filipino and the trauma-informed decolonizing, re-Indigenizing work I share.
Whiteness Neutralizes Language, Subverts Naming of Harms
In addition to editing context of my narrative around identity and culture and cutting out systemic critique, she was neutralizing my language. For example, I named the colonial harm of language erasure and that many Indigenous-descended peoples, including myself, who are reclaiming their Mother tongues can experience anxiety to even just speak our languages, due to centuries of make-wrong and violence by the dominant culture to enforce not speaking our languages. For Filipinos, it was covert violence. She rephrased and flattened what I said to, my “language was not accessible to me.” That is another form of racialized epistemic transgression, white-washing, to remove the naming of the harm and those responsible for perpetuating it, into something discrete and objective that names nothing but makes it a personal inconvenience instead, where no one is responsible except my self for not having learned my own language. It was a centuries long systemic cause. It is ironic that she was erasing the erasure of Indigenous language in that very act. Though this is how the harms of whiteness are perpetuated; it exists even at an embodied level of those not examining their implicit biases especially, so as to forever be preserving itself.
Whiteness Presumes Whiteness is the Default and Universal Experience
Furthermore, when promoting the episode on social media, she chose that clip and stripped it of the context from which I offered it, only highlighting my having language anxiety for using my mother tongue, using courage culture to “thank” me for my vulnerability. Courage culture is harmful and racist in how it flattens justice and responsibility into independent performative emotional sharing without action, where white-bodied people are congratulating themselves for doing “deep work” in “being vulnerable”. An additional critique here is that courage culture centers white experience as the default and universal experience that applies to everyone—this does not acknowledge that white people have the privilege to share “vulnerability” without risk, whereas those already living in vulnerable positions in marginalized populations do have risk, especially in a dominant culture that pathologizes Black, Brown, and Indigenous expressions that do not adhere to whiteness expectations. Courage culture also sets marginalized people up to be objects of voyeurism then.
Deeply Embedded and Unexamined Implicit Biases Prevent True Conversational Relational Regard
I responded directly to the posts to reassert the context, and contacted the host to give feedback that she was exhibiting the very power dynamic and the harm it causes that I work to dismantle. It did not register in her experience that she was doing harm, and instead of owning her impact, leaned into the power dynamic again, becoming paternalizing in offering to “affirm” my statement, which is still hierarchically positioning herself above as a “savior,” when she set up the problematic dynamic in the first place, instead of coming into relationship with me around it—which would be owning impact. When I indicated I preferred to delete the social media posts, she agreed and answered with a seemingly empowering let’s get back to communal sacredness and leave the episode as its own sacred space. I replied yes!, agreeing that sacred communal work is important, before realizing, that she would not go back and find an actual 15 seconds from our interview to highlight me in my expertise, as she continued to highlight other guests in their expertise on her feed. That is when all of the transgressions hit me altogether.
Whiteness Requires Narrative Control
She would not really have been able to find such a clip though, because she was defining and rephrasing my words and work to begin with, as well as monologuing over things I spoke in offering to a conversation. In the field of somatics that I also integrate into the work I share with people, she gave a preemptive, low knowledge definition of the modality that we typically see in social media on the topic that misses the mark and makes “somatic” an ungrounded aesthetic and buzzword, creating the lens and narrative for me to speak through. Instead of my just being able to come on to a show to share my expertise through curious interview questions, which is my joy to do, I was left in real time having to then respond with the unmaking of misleading information and the potential bypass mindset in which she was leading the topic.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” — Audre Lorde, 1979
Beyond controlling the narrative in this way, she was also reframing and rephrasing my words back into popular paradigm concepts. It is a mechanism of whiteness, and I can attest to this especially in relation to Filipinos, to tell us what our words “really” are. Part of my work as a healer is as an embodiment of the Sacred Rebel—a trickster energy that pokes holes in false structures, the aspect of the Great Mother that comes in like a force of nature to shake things down and nurture new birth to come in. I, by my very nature and spirit in my bones, do not use the language of the system or colonizer, and not even on purpose. It simply channels out of my being and speech, where I am midwifing the moment. Words are action and indicate consciousness (or lack of), and where there are false structures and paradigms, certain phrasings and words are programs that activate subconscious actions and beliefs. That is where unresolved traumas and chronic tensions get stuck, and also where harm perpetuates when acted out on others.
Embodiment of an Authentic Catalyst
This is how my embodiment functions as a catalyst: to channel words that break the spell of programs. I am not here to perform and defer to others comfort sensibilities and entitlements just because it “fits” conditionally and conventionally. No one of the global majority needs to have their words rephrased and co-opted to satisfy epistemic racialized impositions of hierarchy of who they think (even subconsciously) are the authority of knowledge spaces, especially when they are operating in Indigenous wisdom and communal technologies.
Specific Filipino Wisdom of the Sariling Duende in Our Decolonizing and Liberation Movements
Additionally, part of what I transmitted was learnings from my Filipino community regarding the trickster energy. The sariling duende (“inner fairy”, “inner trickster”) was a very affirming and grounding naming for me. It led me to release a lifetime of guardedness against this dominant culture’s persistent make-wrong regarding myself as a neurodivergent Filipino, who by nature is a catalyst and heals by seeing things that most would miss, avoid, and bypass as unusual or taboo. My Elder’s teaching was to make contact with your sariling duende as part of decolonizing. This is how I have always presented in my life—in order to ground healing and a new way of being, we must rebel even against our own internalized conditionings. That is the work of the Sacred Rebel on the inside, that evolves into service beyond the Self and into Other, Community, Nature, and Divine relations. To see that it was part of my culture all along gave me ground of Belonging that is not a reflection of Western modernity at all. This is part of our cultural and spiritual technology which is also linked to survival. Every Indigenous culture has land-based, communal and spiritual technologies that call all toward relational responsibility that are also linked to the culture’s and community’s survival maintaining respect and regard to land as well.
How Appropriation and Centering Whiteness in Liberation Movements Perpetuate Extraction, Exploitation, and Erasure of Black, Brown, and Indigenous People and Wisdoms
The host had indicated to me after the recording that she was excited to have something “new to share” for her audience. In my inner dialog, I was thinking, “this isn’t new… my people have been in resistance and liberation work for centuries…” I thought she meant “share” as in publishing the recording. This is before I saw that she had extracted it and turned it into a commodified meditation product placed behind a paywall. Whatever that is, it is stripped of relational and communal lineage and responsibility. There was no collaboration with me on it nor even communication on it. This is not Right Relationship nor is it Right Action. I saw more closely in the podcast description that while she left off my direct contact information, thepearlsflame.com, she was directing people to her meditation as a “deeper work” opportunity. While she is on the podcast claiming to “see” systems, she is acting out the very systemic harms of appropriation with me and my lineage, our communal decolonizing movement—or any decolonizing movement. It is not for consumption if one were to do “deeper work”. One does not decolonize in isolation through individualized meditation products. This is a somatic relational and communal responsibility and healing process that is not about comforting the senses. Discomfort is inherent to decolonizing, and meditating on it towards comfort misses the point, or doing it without relational holding and guidance reinforces implicit habits rather than disrupts them. Furthermore, stripping Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices from their lineage and communal and relational responsibilities and ethics associated with them unroots the wisdom.
Whiteness shows its understanding of relationship is through exploitation, extraction, and erasure. It has chopped off the dominant culture’s own roots and given its descendants a program, not lineage. This act of commodification is an example of the centering of whiteness that persists in the dominant culture, directing away from the work and wisdom of those—especially Black people in this country, as well as Brown and Indigenous voices—who have been speaking and leading on liberation wisdom for centuries—it is essentially co-opting and colonizing decolonizing and calling it deeper work, where again, there is a demonstration of low knowledge.
Ungrounded Spirituality vs Grounded Spirituality in “modern” Western Holistic Wellness
The host claims on the show to believe in Earth School as well, which is contradictory to justice-oriented work and actions. Earth School is a manufactured spirituality that itself appropriates from Buddhist and Hindu concepts to give it the credibility of “ancient wisdom”, but strips those concepts of relational and communal obligations and the ethics that is inherent to Buddhism and Hinduism. It does not transmit lineage; it is a replicating mind-program that promotes bypass and hyper-individualism. It reframes systemic harm as individual soul lessons, erasing responsibility, neutralizing oppression, and bypassing the interconnected collective accountability required for true liberation. I do not critique people who hold the belief if it holds meaning for them, though I wonder if it is likely unexamined, but I do hold the critique of its use in healing modalities. It is not trauma-informed when used by practitioners to presume authority over others experience and impose a context on their clients’ experience before they have processed and come to their own meaning-making over their own experience. That is perpetuation of harm that seeks to solve problems with the very same mindset that creates the problems. It is a further indication, that this person is not equipped to do “deeper work” at this time in justice-oriented decolonizing movements.
A Whiteness-centered Spiritual Ecosystem
This host boasts 11,000 international clients, while I am more than occasionally needing to do the UNPAID emotional labor and epistemic labor to stand back up on the stage after frequently being wiped off of it with these sorts of racialized actions. It is privilege not to have to do such labor just to be in pursuits of living when having positionality in a system that benefits it. It does not matter the “good” intentions of people, nor that they might not know the harm they cause with their implicit biases—it still has harmful impact, especially when ownership of impact is also frequently bypassed or defended against when feedback is given. If impact is not owned, dismantling harm is not learned. Ignorance is a privilege. And “Ally” is not a self-appointed title. Cultural incompetence coupled with unexamined whiteness is a fast, vertical drop to acting out racialized harms. For some, it must be so good to be winning at capitalism in the land of opportunism. That is not a quip nor gripe, it is a condemnation, where the spiritual ecosystem is a white-centered marketplace of extracted wisdoms stripped of lineage and relationship, and “deeper work” is a product and not a relational responsibility.
The Costs of Unpaid Emotional and Epistemic Labor Just to Stand in the White Field as an Authentic Expression of Indigeneity and Responsibly Carrying Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices
It has taken me some months to put out this statement because I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of transgressions and the heavy processing involved in the emotional and epistemic labor in responding—and it’s not just for me, but for my lineage, and really, for all lineages. A dear Wyandotte elder friend of mine, who is of mixed descent, and has worked in social justice, shared their experiential wisdom with me, when I asked them several years ago how do I walk this calling in this anti-culture. They told me to walk away. That is an Indigenous wisdom—there’s no more need for further “conversation”, when you demonstrate inability to receive or unlearn or listen; when you are all thoughts and no questions. Do you know how many Indigenous people have walked away in this “modernity” from positions, from sharing wisdom, due to compounding harms of implicit biases and microaggressions, because this dominant culture cannot hear from nor collaborate with nor be lead by empowered Black, Brown, and Indigenous voices? That is a great loss for this whole globe, especially when there is an underlying longing and seeking for this deep-rooted connection that is never really satisfied when done through a whiteness mindset. Because appropriation does not give one authentic embodied rootedness. It does not create authentic community connection to strip relationship to lineage. The result is a healing culture hamster wheel.
I felt I might walk away. The constant harms are actually violent to my being, especially as I keep walking forward as a lived‑experience example of something popular culture loves to romanticize but cannot hold in its real weight. I have experienced r @ p e before, and this specific occurrence felt an amplitude of 10 times worse than that felt. Because it is structural, in scope that is beyond personal, and this inhabits the general population’s subconscious and bodies, yes, even in New England.
My Narrative on My Values and How I Hold Care and Service as a Practitioner
I think on how to relate differently to create a discernment with my trust that gets me different results. But, you know what? The system is the system. It keeps on as it is designed, through the tools of the system, and the most dangerous sort of racism is the one that doesn’t know its own racism in implicit biases, that thinks it has arrived when it has barely scratched the surface of working out those embodied, implicit biases, that denies it exists. It operates covertly through gaslighting. Some are pretty good at the performance but only actions will show the truth. And if I didn’t have my trust the way it is, I wouldn’t be who I am. My trust is not naïveté. This is just my nature. Filipinos are seen as passive with our altruistic generosity and our shining smiles, not taken seriously as “little brown brothers”—an historical conditioning phrase that is born of the US’s original stance on subjugating Filipinos—and no one suspects that we are also inspirited by long ancestry of the warrior. Some of our dances are our hidden martial arts. Arnis is said to be the deadliest martial art. But no one in the general population would know it. It is our nature to be able to giggle in all seriousness—the paradox of lightness while empathically holding deep pains, even on a global scale, that can share care of deep rooted connection that is the flowing of our kapwa (“shared inner self”) and pakikiramdaman (“shared inner perception”). This is how we move and live undeterred in the face of any challenge. We are each others heroes—bayanihan.
And I live in the diaspora—this is what I have to share and offer of service here, with my healing, teaching, and intuitive gifts–this Indigenous body that is wired for constant conversation with the All, that now listens and converses with the lands, spirits, and people and their ancestors residing on this land I currently live and work to increasingly better dwell with. Gifts received from my ancestors through my bones, so as to walk as my ancestors on earth as they have told me in the dreamtime that I am here to do, connecting as best I can in this culture that is settled on N’Dakinna—the unceded ancestral lands of the Wabanaki, Abenaki, and Penobscot people, among others, in the Northeast Americas. I have lived what it takes to become so grounded, spiritual powers expand and your spirit soars in a whole-bodied, grounded, wellbeing no matter what is arising. What it takes to nurture one’s natural connection to wholeness. It is relational healing. And I did not get to where I am on my own–nobody does. I acknowledge those with platforms who’ve hosted me with real, UNEDITED, reflective back and forth conversation that are based in sharing community skills and supports and gifts. You can find their links on my media page on my site. As well as I acknowledge a number of other colleagues who operate from grounded, expanded spirituality consciousness, whom I’ve formed connections with in the past couple decades. I serve deeply, widely, from multiple dimensions when one sits with me in relationship, authentically attuned appropriately to your specific life and being, with no surface level, one-size-fits-all magic bullet mindset. And I serve, even if the service is to notice where resonances and roots land among my connections, sharing and recommending those like connections between my colleagues and clients.
All collaborations and client work moving forward with me will be by application, and that application is right relationship.
All I can do is shine like the sun.