Home feels like a return to me. The path to liberation is very much about coming home, returning to our full potential, and I have found that home is the container that allows us to unfold in this way. Whether it’s a womb, a place, a person, or a spirit, home is where we witness ourselves becoming ourselves and discover the wonder of ourselves.
Elia Fushi Bekene
It’s been a while since we launched anything “new” in this space. From last fall to this year, it was a year of deep, purposeful rest. no Keep up, with as little labor as possible.
So it feels extra special to be back “home” in my little shop for this amazing interview with a creative therapist Elia Fushi Bekene.
Elia lives in Berlin and is a black genderqueer woman, artist, tarot card reader, somatic therapist and care consultant (among many other things!) Their extensive work is rooted in radical care and homecoming principles, Currently on deck to bring them, Ancestral Healing Tarot,exist.
I spoke with Elia last week to learn more about their practice and the “journey home” that inspired this work.
Hey Elia! How is it over there in Berlin? It’s a bright, warm, windy day in October – blue sky, billowing clouds and lovely autumn colours.
Hey Beth! It went well. Even though winter is coming, we also have beautiful fall. I love the seasons between fall and spring, they are the easiest for me to meditate on.
Can you introduce yourself to our community? You describe yourself as a creative therapist – what a beautiful “job description”! You are a holistic practitioner and artist, and I definitely get the feeling from your website and from talking to you that the two are very much one – do you feel that way?
Yes, my art practice and my therapy practice are closely intertwined.
I do a lot of things – I practice astrology, tarot, Reiki, hypnosis, somatics, and I’m currently training as a full spectrum doula. I am also a Transformational Justice (TJ) practitioner and all of my work is guided by TJ.
But everything I do is caring, and this is truly my favorite thing to do, caring.
world
high priestess
Sometimes I call myself a care artist, but now, my email signature reads: “Trauma-informed care practitioner and artist dedicated to remembering awe, connection, wonder, and experiences of care.” I am also a care consultant and belonging designer. I advise businesses on how to practice caring in a more authentic way. I design experiences that make people feel at home and take them home to their loved ones.
For me, this really encompasses the full spectrum of what I practice every day in my relationship with myself, others, land, and spirit.
I also often say that I focus primarily on black interiority, somatic memory, and queer intimacy.
All the work I do relates to these themes in some way. And my art practice. I firmly believe that nursing is an art form in a society that constantly devalues nursing, so this is how these two practices find each other.
Historically, art and care have been survival tools for marginalized communities.
Care and art continue to save our lives in so many ways as it allows us to transform pain into something greater and connects us to spirituality.
My Queer Relationships Workshop is one of Elia’s community events.
How did you get started in this job?
need. All the work I did was really the work I always needed and still am.
When people ask me about my path to this industry, I often think of Chiron. Chiron is an asteroid in your birth chart that represents your greatest wounds. You will be called to heal the wounds in others, but you may never fully heal the wounds within you. Each of us brought medications that we had always needed as children. The devotion I bring to this world is the medicine that helps me heal my greatest wounds.
You’re busy publishing the Ancestral Healing Tarot…wow, congratulations! ! It’s been brewing for a while, right? How do you feel about the project now?
Thank you! Yeah like a baby I’ve been working on this project for the past 9 months but it still doesn’t feel right knowing that at some point people will use this deck to get closer to themselves and their souls reality. What an honor.
Sadness always floods my body after the birth of a creative project. It’s beautiful, but also painful.
Now I have so much hope for this baby and am so grateful to be able to share this baby with Beth and anyone reading this interview (thank you!) I really feel like this baby is going to go places that I can’t even imagine right now, but I would love to See this baby become a solo exhibition in a beautiful space.
In this tarot guide, I have included QR codes to guide people into a somatic hypnotic poetic state about the four elements (fire, air, water, earth). I want people to be able to physically feel these elements, they are crucial to the development of my work.
I am currently working on an exhibition in Sweden where I will be offering these audio works. I hope that at some point I can do the same with the Major Arcana and create a series of workshops around tarot, radical imagination, love, and collective liberation. Fingers crossed!
On your website you write: “I often say that we all send each other home, so I hope that through the work we create together, we can bring each other closer to our home”. What does that mean to you, sending each other home, coming home, and how does it come to fruition on deck?
I really like this quote from Rumi, “We all walk each other home.” I am also a Pisces Sun 4th The house, therefore belonging and ancestral healing have played an active and important role in my life (just like the sun in our solar system!).
Just before the pandemic changed our lives, I created a series about home called what does home mean. I attempt to answer this question through this series of photographs and a film shot during the year of Ghana’s return.
Home feels like a return to me. The path to liberation is very much about coming home, returning to our full potential, and I have found that home is the container that allows us to unfold in this way.
Whether it’s a womb, a place, a person, or a spirit, home is where we witness ourselves becoming ourselves and discover the wonder of ourselves. Home, although it shouldn’t be, is a privilege. I often dream about what it would be like if anyone, at any given moment, in any place, had the ability to feel a sense of home if they wanted to. In their bodies, on land or in water…I think our interactions with other people and the world will be very different.
A sense of belonging is one of our core needs as humans, along with safety and dignity. So for me, home is a feeling that I long to give to the people I love.
I hope it makes it into this deck too!
I created this deck when I was most disconnected from my family. I feel really frustrated and helpless about the world. Harnessing the energies of deceased ancestors and the stars (astrology) saved my life.
I hope this deck can help people find some kind of witness that is necessary in hard times and in times of great joy and joy.
water set
air suit
earth suit
fire suit
The Minor Arcana cards in the Elea Ancestor Healing Tarot.
This tarot deck is reimagined through the lens of ancestral healing and belonging. I often tell my clients that while it’s never comfortable or easy to face our fears, that doesn’t make the fear any more real, but rather easier to disprove. I hope that through this deck, people can face their pain and make peace with it.
I know you were considering a crowdfunding campaign to publish the deck, but then you decided to work with an independent publisher – can you talk about why you made that choice? I’m always happy to see creators go this route instead of burning out on a big Kickstarter – I think people often feel like that’s their only option.
Yeah, I’m also glad I chose this route instead of the Kickstarter route. I found Flower Press due to a series of interesting events and it felt like it was meant to be.
I decided to work with a publisher because like many artists, especially Black trans artists, I was overworked and underpaid. I was also practicing asking for help more, and I slowly realized that doing everything myself would be an easy way to keep myself from burning out for at least a year. (I created everything in this deck, images, boxes, guides, etc!)
I also faced homelessness and a lot of difficult situations that made me realize I didn’t need to do this on my own. It is very vulnerable to ask for help from those who are willing and able to help you.
I’m glad I made this choice.
What will the next few months look like for you?
I’m sure they look like work! I feel like I’m riding a wave right now, it’s really a motivation this time around, and like a lot of artists, I’m worried that if I don’t take every opportunity that’s given to me, it’s going to be over. I’m trying to solve this problem.
I would like to be able to open an online store offering a large number of derivative products of the platform (prints, notebooks, handbags, phone cases…). I also hope to return to the United States to work and create life-changing exhibitions, workshops, and residencies centered on ancestral care and imagination.
Elia, thank you so much for taking the time to share your life and work with us. I’m excited to see the finished deck and wish you all the best in this busy final stretch!
Thanks so much for this interview! Thanks Beth!
You can find Elia’s work online at selflovetribute, where you can explore their products and subscribe to their newsletter. You can also follow them on Instagram @selflove_tribute.
We are proud to be stockists of the Ancestral Healing Tarot Deck (you can sign up on this page to be notified immediately when it becomes available.) Alternatively, if you would like to support the creation of this deck, you can pre-order now from Flower Press (USA)!