Photo courtesy of Emma Quirk '26
Prentis Hemphill '04 (left) and Kai Cheng Thom (right) pose for a photo in the Williston Library’s atrium.
By Emma Quirk ’26
Photos Editor & Staff Writer
Prentis Hemphill ’04 recently returned to Mount Holyoke College to discuss their book and host a QTPOC Somatic Healing Workshop. On Oct. 16, students, faculty and staff gathered in Gamble Auditorium for an event called “What It Takes to Heal with Prentis Hemphill ’04 and Kai Cheng Thom.”
The event began with a land acknowledgement read by DEI Fellow Raven Joseph ’25. Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, vice president for equity and inclusion, then welcomed everyone to the space. Oct. 16 was also International Pronouns Day, which Sanders-McMurtry discussed the importance of. They thanked everyone who participated in celebrating it.“Pronouns Day allows us to center our queer and trans kin during LGBTQ history month in special and important ways,” McMurtry said.
Joseph returned to the microphone to introduce the speakers. Hemphill is a political organizer, author, therapist, host of “Becoming the People” podcast and co-founder of the Embodiment Institute: an organization dedicated to creating cultural change through workshops and trainings. Thom is an author, performance artist and community healer. Thom has hosted multiple events of her own at the College and is a somatic healer and author like Hemphill.
Thom began by asking Hemphill why they chose to write “What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World.” Hemphill shared that “the book is sort of a record of a decade plus of my life. It’s like 15 years of learning and practicing and making mistakes.” They discussed learning about somatics and embodiment work in school, and then using it “in unexpected locations,” such as with incarcerated people or on the streets. This book is a collection of what they learned and “noticed along the way, because it felt worthwhile to share,” Hemphill said.
While they were working to get the book published, many people encouraged Hemphill to “assume the safe distance of the clinician.” Hemphill refused, stating, “I’m gonna have to show you through stories … in order to do this, I’m gonna have to be a human being that has been on my own journey.” They continued, “That clinician-client dynamic, it almost feels impossible … I’m writing to show you that more is possible.”
We all have to work toward a better future, a different future, but “we can only do that as these fallible, growing people that need each other,” Hemphill said. The book explores how “healing is not this quest for perfection, and even social change cannot be this quest for perfection, but it has to be a softening into being alive and living.”
Thom and Hemphill also discussed love, despair and more. They ended on the topic of healing. The process of healing is “allowing yourself the livingness to be pulsating, breathing, changing, growing, dying, alive,” and it “requires the restoration of our relationship, both with our interior worlds and each other,” as explained by Hemphill. They said we must let go of our grip on the world as it is, “because this world is built on our grasping … healing necessarily is jumping off of that cliff and into it with each other.”
The event ended with a few questions from J.T. Martin, director of LGBTQ+ Initiatives and Resources, and DEI Fellow Lily Rood ’27, then several audience questions. Attendees were then able to chat with Hemphill and Thom and enjoy some refreshments catered by Willits.
In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Hemphill discussed their time at the College, their work with the Embodiment Institute and some advice for current students. While on campus, they were a history major with a concentration in African American history and a theater minor. They were part of a student organization for queer women of color and worked in the Jeannette Marks Cultural Center.
“My time at Mount Holyoke was honestly complicated,” Hemphill said. They grew up in a working-class family in Texas, and there was a culture shock coming to Massachusetts. Beyond the landscape, “there’s a lot of class stuff that was really present for me. I had not actually been exposed to wealth in a meaningful way, and then the racial dynamics of that were really challenging.” Overall, they said, “I had some great professors that really nurtured me and supported me, and I still do have some lasting friendships, but I can’t say that it wasn’t without challenge.”
Returning to campus for the book talk and the QTPOC Somatic Healing workshop has been a positive experience. “It’s been honestly healing for me, surprisingly so, to feel welcome here and to feel that at this point in time, the things that I am offering into the world feel like an offering to this place,” Hemphill said. “I think it’s offering me a lot of healing, and I’m grateful. As I come to the spaces like the Marks House, [I’m] trying to send some sweetness back to my younger self, who was here and was really unsure and doubtful and felt kind of isolated.”
Hemphill also talked more about their work at the Embodiment Institute. “At the base of my work is this belief that if we don’t interrupt our habits that have become really ingrained or embodied in us, we’ll end up just creating the world as it is,” they said. “My work is about us being curious, being an inquiry about what it is that we’ve learned to do well, and what that serves and to practice together ... the Embodiment Institute is really about the practice space for becoming more congruent [and] more aligned.”
When asked, Hemphill shared some advice for current students. “Be a little less certain, be a lot more curious. Be willing to create a path that has not been gone down [because that] is the work that changes the world and the way that things are,” Hemphill said. “It’s like we have to create, we have to find those surprising connections and what we feel called to do and trust in the trial and error. You will fail, you will achieve, and you will do all the in-between, but the process will grow you up … don’t be afraid of the change and the challenge.”
Leah Dutcher ’28 contributed fact-checking.