From Extraction to Co-Liberation

Finding My Way to Belonging

When was the last time you woke up with energy, hope, and a deep sense of connection? If that feels far away, and you’ve tried everything - books, yoga classes, talk therapy, breath work, meditation, activism, still, there is a feeling of deep dissatisfaction and disconnection that doesn’t seem to loosen its grip on you. You are not alone. The world is on fire, and it’s hard to feel ok.

You are not making this up; it’s not all in your head, or even about individual “determination” and “willpower.” What you are feeling might be pointing to something bigger, a pattern that we are feeling stuck in collectively.

This is a pattern of extraction.

The Pattern

Extraction is when something is taken from you to the point of depleting your energy, time, and creativity. The rate at which energy, time, labor (physical, mental, or emotional) is being withdrawn exceeds the rate at which you can rest, recover, and replenish. In other words, this is unsustainable. Extraction is based on the colonial and rigid systemic hierarchy that takes and takes without giving in return.

If you have ever felt pulled between work, school, children, family, friendships, partnership, and your own health – and felt like you were failing at all of it – you know what extraction feels like. It can show up as chronic stress, fatigue, or pain, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, changes in mood, anxiety, depression, autoimmune issues, sleepless nights, and, perhaps most painfully, as tension or distance in the relationships that matter most to you.​

These are not signs that you are broken; in fact, this is good. It is your body’s alarm system working well. It means your body is trying to protect you. It means that your reaction appropriately matches the strain it is experiencing.

We live in a culture that extracts from the earth in the same way we extract from our own bodies. Our consumption patterns have pushed the planet beyond crucial limits, drilling, mining, and taking until there is crisis. Food and water insecurity, climate instability, and mass displacement are all part of this same colonial story. We take without replenishing, accumulate without dispersing, and then wonder why we feel so empty, exhausted, and depleted inside​.

Many of us have learned to do to our bodies, minds, and spirits what colonial extraction has done to our home, our planet, Earth.

You may find yourself waking up exhausted and still going through the motions: dressing for work, caring for the kids, showing up for your partner, trying to be there for friends and community. Yet no matter how much you give, it never feels like enough. You lie awake at night replaying the argument you had with your partner, critiquing your reactions, or worrying about the things that slipped through the cracks – the forgotten birthday, the unanswered message, the project left undone.​

Maybe you’ve tried desperately to read, communicate, journal, or organize your way to change, pushing harder every time. You hope that if you can just fix yourself, everything around you will finally settle. But the more you do, the more there seems to be to do.​

I want to share another perspective, that giving more of yourself can become another form of extraction. We become our own cruelest critics, demanding more from ourselves, punishing ourselves for mistakes with shame, and constantly pushing our limits. It leads to isolation and loneliness when what we need most is connection.

Take a breath with me. What was your body’s reaction to hearing this? Did your muscles tense? Do you feel doubt, relief, or grief? Whatever you are feeling, make space to feel it, write it out, and keep it so you can look at it later in your sacred journey back to belonging and dignity.

Nature shows us the path if we can hear and honor what it says to us about cycles of growth and transformation, reciprocity, and community through equity. It has always been the medicine for our bodies, minds, and souls, and our path back to our aligned and authentic selves. True transformation is not a matter of striving, but, like nature, requires the right combination of elements, metabolizing our grief, pain, stress, and practicing authenticity by replanting ourselves in ancient truths and earth wisdom.

The Roots

My own path into and out of colonial extraction mentality began long before I had the words for it.

I grew up with grandparents who lived through the Indian freedom movement. They were activists, freedom fighters, and spiritual leaders. At night, they told me stories of collective struggle, courage, and dignity – stories where ordinary people refused to accept a world built on hierarchy and dehumanization. From them, I learned reciprocity, the healing ways of the earth, and the truth that all life holds equal worth.

These stories kept me anchored even as I moved through a world that often told me the opposite. After migrating to the U.S., I absorbed messages about who was “right” and who was “less than,” whose pain mattered and whose did not. I learned that even if I give more, staying quiet, working harder, and proving my value over and over, belonging, dignity, respect, and reciprocity were still just out of reach.

The Breaking Point

Equality became my passion that I pursued through activism, academics, and career. I poured myself into this, but while I was running into things like fatigue, I was unable to see a real transformation towards equity. I had arrived at my breaking point, which I have come to see as an invitation to a deeper alignment with my values.

I was there, not so long ago, in that place of extraction, even valuing extraction by calling it productivity, helping, or efficiency.

I was a new mom and a full-time student. I was also navigating the complexities of an interracial family that brought racism into my home. I endured white supremacy, male supremacy, and individual supremacy, a perfect storm in my intimate relationships and at school, all while carrying the emotional labor of a household. I cooked, cleaned, cared for my infants, studied, and poured myself into a decade of therapy, self-help, and difficult conversations around social injustices. Still, the conflicts in my marriage and family felt stuck on repeat.​ Internally, I was exhausted.

I kept thinking that if I could just be more organized, more patient, more generous, things would change. I thought that love meant giving more of myself – more time, more energy, more emotional labor – to my partner, my children, my friends, and my family. But no matter how much I gave, how many conversations we had, it never felt like enough.​

I watched myself losing patience, snapping at the people I loved, or dissociating during small talk, and even gossiping. I’m not proud of those moments where I was there in body but not in spirit, going through the motions while feeling numb or furious inside. My self-extracted, depleted self was turning my relationships into arenas of conflict and competition, instead of spaces for responsive care.

Transformation – for my family, my community, and the wider world – began to feel like a foggy dream I could no longer hold.​

There were moments when the weight of it all felt unbearable. I looked at my children and wondered what kind of world they would inherit: a world of inequality, violence, and extraction, where they must carry the same wounds I am attempting to heal - an unending cycle.

I realized that the harder I pushed for change – in myself, in my relationships, in the systems around me – the further away it seemed to get. My body was shutting down under the load, even as I tried to convince myself that this was what love and responsibility required. My breaking point became a door to reconnecting.

Reconnecting

My liberation was always within me like a compass. When I stopped trying to outrun my pain and started listening to it, I began finding my way back home.

I turned toward my elders, my indigenous roots, and the earth itself. I found arms ready to hold me in places I had overlooked: in ancestral stories, songs, ritual, in the quiet presence of land and sky, in the wisdom passed down through generations. Earth wisdom started to loosen the grip of scarcity and self-extraction, inviting me back into relationship rather than endless striving.​

I trained in Ayurveda, a plant-based, natural, holistic medicine that comes from my ancestral traditions. As I learned to honor my body’s cycles, nourish myself properly, and work with nature rather than against it, my energy levels began to shift. I reconnected with my spiritual roots, pushing deeper into the values that guide and ground me and my choices. I began to connect with the natural earth medicine that my family relied on, relearning recipes, remedies, and ritual. I discovered that my lineage carries every caste in my blood, due to an intentional spiritual decision against caste oppression made more than 200 years ago. I follow in the steps of my ancestors who chose interconnectedness and reciprocity rather than segregation and privilege.

At the same time, I committed more deeply to speaking truth in my closest relationships. I began naming the systemic forces – racism, colonial mindsets, and gendered expectations – that were shaping our dynamics and my mental health. I practiced having courageous conversations with my partner, releasing myself to speak from a place of dignity and honesty, even if it meant not being liked. Over time, this opened space to begin cultivating reciprocity and equity, rather than silently carrying the load with resentment. I lost many friends, but I hope one day that our paths might reunite when we are each ready.

As I did this work inside myself and in my family, the wider world pressed in. We are living through times of profound violence and grief – genocide and atrocities in places like Palestine, Congo, and Sudan. My heart could not ignore that if one of us is hurting, all of nature is hurt. The pain is not only personal; it is collective and relational.

In this grief, I found a deeper understanding of what liberation means. I saw that my healing is inseparable from the healing of the earth and all beings. As Maya Angelou reminds us, “no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” My story is just one thread in a web of co-liberation.​

Recovering a caring relationship with the earth, with one another, and with ourselves – a relationship grounded in honoring needs and responding with compassion – is how we come back into balance. Vulnerability, speaking our truths, and responding to each other’s pain with a sense of responsibility and compassion are core elements that release cyclical, harmful patterns of extraction. It is how we move from survival mode into creativity, authenticity, and joy.​

I am still on this path. I am a work in progress, with many lessons ahead and failures to face. I have been harmed and have harmed, but I can see that those who truly care for me offer me their honesty even if they do not have space or time for me to grow, even if they do not have space for forgiveness; their honest feedback is a gift, a door that allows me to walk a more aligned life. I am growing, I am more at home in my body, in my mind, and in my spirit than I was even a few years ago. I experience a deeper sense of belonging within myself, a returning home that feels hopeful. And while I am not entirely free, our stories of liberation are bound together, strengthening the roots of connection and bringing healing into our lives and those we are in relationship with.

Join me on this sacred liberation. I follow my ancestors, indigenous wisdom keepers, and the ways of the earth, through which we find belonging and oneness with one another.

How I work Today

The work I offer now is an integration of these learnings.

I support women and couples who feel depleted, overwhelmed, or stuck, even though they are doing everything they can to heal and show up for the people they love. Together, we slow down and listen to what exhaustion, conflict, and overwhelming emotions are trying to say. We make room for grief and anger. We honor indigenous ancestors in relationship with their ways and the body’s wisdom. We unlearn beliefs about love, productivity, and conflict patterns that are connected to colonial extractive mentality. This is the part where we clean the wounds of extraction.

I draw on narrative therapy and ancestral practices, on my training in psychotherapy and Ayurveda, and on earth‑medicine rituals that help people remember their inherent dignity. It is about walking with you as you move from extraction to reciprocity, from isolation to connection, from internalized oppression to a felt sense of worth and belonging.

An Invitation

If you recognize yourself in these words – if you are tired of feeling like these problems, systemic and personal, are too big to overcome, tired of giving more and more while feeling less and less like yourself – you are not alone. There is nothing wrong with you for struggling in a world built on extraction.​

If you are ready to explore another way, a path of co-liberation rooted in earth wisdom, relationship, and dignity, I would be honored to walk alongside you.

Together, we can remember ourselves as a beautiful part of this living world, capable of nurturing our bodies, our relationships, our communities, and this beloved earth.​