Pablo Cerdera is a Restorative Justice (RJ) Practitioner and Educator and serves as the Deputy Director of Restorative Practices at the University of Pennsylvania. They live on the Indigenous territory known as Lenapehoking, the traditional homelands of the Lenape or Delaware People, in what is now called West Philadelphia. They are committed to sharing the restorative approach and firmly believe in the power to transform harm, promote meaningful accountability, and develop strong and healthy communities through this approach.

In this heartfelt conversation, Pablo and I get into:

• how grief manifests when we are "intellectualizers"
• the breakdown of their last relationship and how it forced them to grapple with the fact that their brain can’t make all the choices
• the gift of having friends who can receive and sit with our ugliness
• the Ojibwa/Anishinaabe medicine circle that they were taught and their orientation to body, mind, heart and spirit

• neglecting body in the relationship, through skin and muscles “you’re not with me”. Looking at self and not recognizing self.

• the difference between choosing to listen to grief and not having a choice

• their parallel griefs as an anti-zionist Jewish person around the unfolding genocide in Gaza

• the ways that grief and trauma can make people turn inwards that can lead them to make harmful decisions and how generational trauma blinds people to reality.
• The way that grief work helped them access anger

• Voice, song and sound as both expression of and expulsion of grief and how doing it in community shows what is available
• How grief helped move them from being in denial of their spirituality towards a deep relationship with their jewish religion and spirituality

• Spirit as is the truth of connection and the tug in their chest

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