Traveling Through Multiple Worlds of Wicked: For Good

Welcome to this latest episode. I am so thrilled to welcome back Jamie Marich to the podcast. In this episode we returned to Wicked and dove into a discussion about how Wicked: For Good can connect to therapy, trauma, parts, and of course politics. Jamie is a leader in trauma treatment, EMDR, dissociation, queer-affirming healing, and expressive arts therapy. They are also the author of many important books and a powerful voice in the trauma community. So, Jamie was a perfect guest to speak about how deeply Wicked has touched both of our systems, and how we can connect this powerful story to our work in the field. We explored some of the symbolic language of the movie, and how the narrative could be integrated into trauma work. Wicked offers a story about oppression, identity, longing, courage, and hope. We can also see our political climate of fear and manipulation reflected in this story. The resistance to this, we learn, is friendship.  A powerful message of this movie was how we can see things from multiple perspectives. It was great riffing on this with Jamie in this episode. We explored how Glinda was able to step outside of her "bubble" and observe some of the ways she was adding to the evil of the universe. For my system it was also so interesting to see the multi-dimensional aspects of Glinda, and how she had a lot of sadness that was being exiled in her system. It was so much fun to speak with Jamie about the magic in this movie, and about the magic of being a part of multiple worlds (such as Elphaba). Stepping out of our perspective, and being able to hold the multiplicity really does seem to enable magic!  We even got a chance to speak about Jamie's new book, Queering EMDR, which is such a gift to the therapy community! I hope you enjoy this special episode!   You can learn more about Jamie's work at: jamiemarich.com Jamie's newest published book: instituteforcreativemindfulness.com/queering-emdr. Jamie's Substack: jamiemarich.substack.com David's Substack: empoweredthroughcompassion.substack.com.