We had the good fortune of connecting with Nat Vikitsreth and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nat, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
Parents of young children work with me to understand their intergenerational family trauma (I.G.F.T.) and internalized oppression (I.O.). These are the two invisible and sticky parenting roadblocks that keep unknowingly coming up in day-to-day parenting despite the parents’ values and intention. When you promised to never talk to your child like how your parents talked to you only to find yourself repeating those same words when you snapped at your toddler. Or, when you are trying to conform and perform parenting just to fit into the “good parenting box” that colonialism, patriarchy, and White supremacy demand you to.

There is nothing more humbling for me to see parents bring this awareness to transform their Autopilot to Bold, Conscious, and Decolonized (ABCD) parenting…most of the time (because life is real and perfection is not).
It is because when parents bring their intention to parenting and show up as their full selves, they are raising the next generation of compassionate leaders. In other words, they are passing down a legacy of compassion and liberation to their future generations.

At Come Back to Care, parents transform the I.G.F.T into the GIFT or legacy while using their privilege and resilience in social justice advocacy concurrently.

I believe that this socio-cultural transformation starts with one family at a time.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As a therapist I get to support a whole spectrum of people from my transgender clients to families with infants with special needs. I have the privilege of doing this work in various settings too from transitional housing centers to home visits. The pandemic (both viral and racial) gave me to the push I needed to reflect on what wellbeing and healing truly meant for me. Although my caseload got tripled, most of my clients and I kept addressing the same issues of family, historical, and collective trauma as we tried plug in to social justice advocacy that aligned with our values.

I found myself wanting to bring elements of this trauma work and liberation practice in therapy sessions to the public in a form of education and cohort learning.

One day at my altar, Thich Nhat Hanh’s quote, “The way out is in,” kept popping up in during my meditation and everything came together. The In-Out-N-Through™ Program was born.

Parenting and social justice advocacy are similar in ways that we go inside of ourselves, come out the other side of pain, and break through what we thought was impossible. When we go in, out, and through, we always come back to care. Because that’s what parenting is all about- coming back to home to who we truly are. It’s about coming back to care…for ourselves, our families, and our communities.

The In-Out-N-Through™ Program is unique because it’s a both-and kind of program. We address:
BOTH family history AND societal oppression.
BOTH awareness AND action.
BOTH family lineage healing AND social justice advocacy.
BOTH trauma healing AND safety.
BOTH care and connection AND accountability for you and your child.
BOTH the past, present, AND the future.

We do it through the three best ways we know how: self-reflection, storytelling, and somatic community practice.
So far the work has been so well-received and I cannot be more grateful.

The challenge so far is having a heart-to-heart talk with my imposter syndrome when it shows up. It is safe to say that I am practicing “both-and” in myself too now as both a therapist and an equity-minded business owner.

The most valuable lesson I keep seeing again and again is the resilience in parents who are doing this soul-deep work with me. They remind me each time that we can both honor our ancestors’ survival strategies that got passed down to us and update them so that we can build our family our way in a community of liberation-minded families.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Please come geek out with me around the city of Chicago at BIPOC-owned, independent bookstores like Semicolon and Kido. Then, let’s take a stroll around Chinatown and then Uptown to eat our hearts out. For community-based healing sanctuaries, Haji Healing Center is a must. Then, let’s go hang upside down on a pole in a pole dancing class at the Brass Ring Chicago. Then, we can end the night at speakeasy bars like Bordel or the Drifter for delicious dine and drink plus burlesque shows of course.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Because the work we’re about to embody together involves the past, present, and future, I would like to extend my wholehearted gratitude to the luminaries whose work I’m building upon and the beings who teach me to serve with unconditional love and courage.

I’m deeply grateful to be pouring my heart into Come Back to Care as a guest in the traditional land of the Objibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations.

It’s both a blessing and a dream come true to infuse my ancestral & cultural knowledge with my Eurocentric & institutionalized training in order to inform my liberation practices.

This list is evolving as I’m a lifelong learner, mistake maker, and norm agitator.

My ancestral traditions:
Theravaya Buhddhist teaching and meditation

Daoist energy cultivation practice, such as Qigong

Classical Chinese Face Reading

Traditional Thai dancing and Muay Thai

My liberation practices…
…began with the transgender sex worker community in Thailand. These fierce and beautiful beings first taught me how to practice transformative justice and mutual aid before I even learned the formal definitions of the terms. They taught me to survive and thrive outside the dominant system without losing my integrity and with a lot of lip liner (remember those overdrawn lips days?). The more contemporary influences include the following:

Transformative and disability justice: Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Mimi Kim, Mariame Kaba, Staci Haines, Stacy Milbern, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Their work guides me to center the humanity of the families with infants and toddlers with special needs I work with.

Healing justice: Prentis Hemphill and adrienne maree brown. Their work guides me to remember the importance of joy, pleasure, connection, and community.

Education: bell hooks, Paolo Freire, Leticia Nieto. Their work guides me to weave truth, courage, and equity in everything I do, most of the time.

My Eurocentric & institutionalized training:
Interpersonal Neurobiology

Polyvagal Theory

The Neurosequential Model in Education

Circle of Security

Infant-parent psychodynamic psychotherapy

DIR/Floortime

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

The Newborn Behavioral Observation

The Gottman Institute’s Bringing Baby Home

Website: www.comebacktocare.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crocodilelightning

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/developmentaltherapistnat/

Image Credits
Kyle Bice

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