Claiming Each Other

Joanne Lockwood is joined by somatic trauma worker and educator Lorie Solis to explore “Claiming Each Other” — Lorie’s approach to building resilient relationships when charged, values-led conflict shows up in our closest circles.

Together they unpack somatics as a whole mind-body practice and how emotional charge, threat responses, and a sense of dignity and belonging shape the way we argue, withdraw, or escalate. Lorie shares practical, body-based ways to create more capacity in moments of tension, including how to pause and de-escalate before conflict takes over.

The conversation also moves into lineage, identity, and decolonisation. Lorie reflects on her mixed ancestry and what it has meant to reconcile both colonised and coloniser histories, including how relocating from Texas to Portugal created new space for healing, reflection, and re-connection to land-based practices. Joanne explores her own feelings of disconnection from ancestry and how community, including queer lineage, can offer a different route to belonging.

Throughout, the episode returns to the possibility of staying in relationship across difference — treating conflict as potentially generative, practising repair, and learning how to be connected imperfectly while remaining rooted in values, care, and authenticity.

One-sentence summary

Lorie Solis is trying to teach us that even in our most charged conflicts, we can choose connection over collapse — if we are brave enough to hold complexity without abandoning ourselves or each other.

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Synopsis

Lorie Solis is a somatic trauma worker, healer and edge-walker whose life has been shaped by layered identities — Afro, Taíno, Chicana, Lipan Apache, Texan, queer — and by the quiet complexity of holding both colonised and coloniser ancestry in the same body. She grew up with a sense of belonging in her family that she now recognises as rare, yet has spent much of her life living on the edges of communities rather than at their centre. After a series of personal tragedies and feeling increasingly unsafe in the political climate of the United States, she moved her young family to Portugal, seeking nervous system safety she did not yet have words for. “I never really understood what it felt like to be safe until I moved somewhere where there are no guns,” she says. That move became more than geographical; it was an invitation to reconcile parts of her history she had not claimed.

What she is trying to change is not simply how people argue, but how they relate when everything feels threatened. Through her work, which she calls Claiming Each Other, she teaches that conflict is not proof that a relationship has failed — it may be the very force asking it to deepen. “I like to think of conflict as a generative force,” she says, “a healing that wants to happen.” In a world fractured by political violence, identity battles and loneliness, Lorie is asking whether we can stay in belonging even when we profoundly disagree — whether we can resist the narrowing impulse of “with me or against me” and instead practise the courage of complexity.

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10 Small, digestible concepts for easy learning

1. Conflict is not always destruction — it can be birth.

Sometimes what feels like an ending is something trying to grow.

2. Emotion is not the enemy of logic.

When dignity or safety feels threatened, emotional charge is rational.

3. Belonging does not require agreement.

You can love someone and still see the world differently.

4. Lonely is a feeling; alone is a story.

Feeling disconnected does not mean you are without connection.

5. Your body knows before your words do.

The tightening, leaning in, narrowing vision — these are data.

6. Leaning back is sometimes courage.

A small physical shift can interrupt threat and make space for choice.

7. Repair is a relationship skill, not an admission of failure.

Mistakes don’t end belonging; avoiding repair does.

8. Identity is rarely single-threaded.

Most of us contain contradictions our systems struggle to hold.

9. Safety changes perception.

A regulated nervous system sees more options than a threatened one.

10. We are wired for connection — even when we sabotage it.

Often the conflict we create is an unmet need for closeness.

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The “why” in the story

What they believe is true about people

Lorie believes that people are fundamentally interconnected — that “we can never be alone” — and that beneath reactivity sits a longing for dignity, safety and care.

What they cannot unsee

She cannot unsee how quickly conflict narrows perception into “me or you”, nor how fear — especially unnamed fear — drives ideology, hostility and rupture.

What they are no longer willing to tolerate

She is no longer willing to accept that polarisation is inevitable, or that harm in relationships is just the cost of conviction. Nor will she tolerate abandoning whole parts of her own lineage to fit simpler narratives.

What they are trying to build instead

She is building relationships strong enough to survive political, ancestral and personal charge — sanctuaries where complexity is not punished, and where conflict becomes a site of growth rather than exile.

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Narrative structure

1. The trigger:

A string of personal tragedies between 2012 and 2017, paired with a political climate that left her feeling unsafe, forced Lorie to confront her own nervous system. Moving to Portugal was not only escape — it was a search for safety and integration she didn’t yet realise she needed.

2. The tension:

She lives on the edges — geographically, culturally, politically. She is surrounded by the descendants of both colonised and coloniser histories, while carrying both within herself. She regularly faces the loneliness of being misunderstood and the risk of being perceived as a threat by multiple sides.

3. The insight:

She realised conflict is inevitable — but our reaction to it is trained, not fixed. “Our basic training is fight, flight, freeze,” she says. Generative conflict requires new training.

4. The pivot:

She developed a somatic first aid approach to moments of escalation. When the body leans forward in threat, she teaches people to literally lean back, to “connect to love”, to widen perception rather than narrow it.

5. The destination:

A world where people can sit across difference — grief, politics, history, identity — and still feel held; where belonging is not revoked by disagreement, and repair is normal.

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Five key takeaways and learning points

1. Your nervous system shapes your politics more than you think.

When fear drives perception, everything looks like threat — which limits compassion.

2. Belonging gets tested where it matters most.

The real work is not harmony over trivial differences, but love across painful ones.

3. Repair builds resilience.

Relationships deepen not because conflict is avoided, but because rupture is mended.

4. Identity is complex — and that complexity is strength.

Holding multiple histories can expand empathy rather than fracture it.

5. Safety is foundational, not indulgent.

Without felt safety, growth work is almost impossible.

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Ten distinct ideas explained

1. Generative conflict

Conflict can signal suppressed truths or unmet needs surfacing. When treated with care, it deepens understanding rather than fractures it.

2. Somatic awareness

The body narrows, braces or leans before the mind forms arguments. Noticing these shifts gives us choice.

3. Fight-flight-freeze as relational default

Most of us are trained to defend or withdraw, not to stay curious under pressure.

4. The pause as harm reduction

Even a breath-length pause interrupts automatic harm and opens alternative responses.

5. Loneliness as disconnection from care

Trauma often embeds in prolonged isolation — feeling unseen or uncared for.

6. Edge living

Living between identities can feel isolating, yet it also builds tolerance for paradox.

7. Reclaiming lineage

Integration includes claiming not only the parts we’re proud of, but those that complicate us.

8. Safety as nervous system regulation

When violence is normalised, vigilance becomes default; remove threat, and perception softens.

9. Imperfect love

Letting oneself be loved imperfectly requires humility and trust.

10. Capacity for complexity

The more regulated we are, the more opposing truths we can hold without collapse.

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How people should change as a result

1. Think

• Move from “Who’s right?” to “What is happening in our bodies right now?”
• Replace “This disagreement is dangerous” with “This disagreement may contain growth.”
• Understand ideology as partly emotional regulation, not just belief.
• See repair as strength, not weakness.

2. Feel

• Shift from defensiveness to curiosity.
• Shift from fear of rupture to willingness to repair.
• Shift from loneliness to remembered connection.
• Shift from certainty to openness.
• Shift from hostility to steadiness.

3. Act

• In conflict, physically lean back and widen your gaze before responding.
• Name what you are feeling without accusing the other person.
• Ask, “Can you help me understand why this matters to you?”
• Practise repair quickly — apologise, clarify intention, reconnect.
• Spend time in environments that calm your nervous system (nature, quiet, movement).
• Stay at the table a little longer when disagreement surfaces — unless your safety is at risk.
• Build at least one relationship where you can practise staying through discomfort.

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One thing to remember

Conflict doesn’t have to exile us — it can be the doorway where we choose each other again.