Season 4 Episode 10: Laura C. Robb and Corey Parish on Holistic Theologies and Unexpected Homes

In this episode, we sit down with Laura C. Robb and Corey Parish to explore the heart of their contributions to the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health, and Disability.

Laura shares her reflections on holistic care – what it means to treat health and theology as deeply interconnected – and invites us into the layered questions she holds when navigating systems of care as a disabled theologian. She also explores what it might mean to understand the Trinity through the lens of holistic theology.

Corey offers a tender account of receiving an autism diagnosis later in life and how that journey shaped his sense of home and belonging. He speaks to the power of unexpected places, and how his doctoral work seeks to hold space for autistic theologies that emerge from lived experience.

Together, their voices invite us into a theology that is grounded, embodied, and spacious.

Read the full articles here:
Laura’s article: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/44508
Corey’s article: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/44502

Watch on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/IpBYXApRSt0

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Transcript

Miriam did we both hit record? No you did! Oh okay all right well welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology podcast it's so lovely to be here today with you um and we have two guests joining us today Corey and Laura and so we just wanted to say a quick announcement for our listeners just our regular um call for content for the fall issue of the Canadian Journal of Theology Mental Health and Disability if you have anything kicking around that you think you might want to put out in the world like art, stories a paper maybe that you've been working on uh a chapter um anything uh or if there's something that you really want to sort of think about like an argument um that you want to kind of get out there or um have us think through with you please do uh submit it um if and if you have any ideas you can always email us we'd be happy to to share that with share a conversation with you we're especially interested in some pieces for our pedagogy and praxis section we really want to try to um beef that up a little bit so if there's anything that you have that you think might be a good fit please do get in touch with us or submit you can submit at the journal's website!

And today we're so delighted to feature two of our

contributors Corey and Laura before we have more one on one conversations we invite you both to introduce yourself so Laura can you introduce? Sure hi I'm Laura i am in Virginia um I'm an Masters of Arts student in seminary right now finishing up my program um and I live with a physical disability that I was born with and that informs a lot of the way I approach theology and life and just the way I do my writing and process my experiences and I hope to bring awareness to all that for other people as I share my experiences. Awesome thank I've I've read your book before so I'm I'm delighted to meet you! Oh thanks! And Corey can you introduce yourself? Absolutely so my name is Corey i uh live in Fergus Ontario just a little bit northwest of Toronto uh I'm currently a a pastor and work with uh in some of the group homes here in our community as well uh and I'm a student at McMaster Divinity College so that's uh that's sort of the mix of where I'm at and kind of what I'm doing day-to-day now. Awesome we're excited for a conversation over to Amy! Yeah thanks Corey does Fergus have a lot of group homes?

Um yeah within different agencies and and service agencies there's a there's a few three different ones that I work in locally um but there's also other yeah other agencies that have different homes and and and gathering areas so yeah and we're right which has a bunch more kind of closer to the city. Yeah I like in my mind like I just think of I mean since Ontario's been growing like everyone I feel like everyone's kind of like moving out from the epicenter of Toronto i can imagine that there's more need for for things like that in Fergus because in my mind it's like um it's still kind of small but I guess that's changed since I was a kid! Yeah its growing.

Yeah it's definitely bigger than when I moved here 10 years ago it's maybe not quite double the size but it's it's close it's Yeah that's cool! Absolutely yeah that's great well so good you can do that for the community um all right so for today we're going to get started with Laura sharing some about her uh piece that she wrote for the journal so Laura would you be able to just briefly summarize the article that you wrote for the journal? Sure um I the title of it is Returning to the Roots of our Humanity an Exploration of Wholeness Through the Lens of Holistic Health and I was just exploring a lot of my journey through finding wholeness as I wrestled with disability even though I was born with it it took me a while to get to the point of just wrestling through all the dynamics of life with a disability and so I started doing that and then on top of that I developed invisible limits with an thyroid disease and that also just complicated my experience and probably pushed me to wrestle with it even more so because I had these complicated layers and on top of that there's other things I developed as far as some post-traumatic stress symptoms so I was just living at this intersection and I wanted to understand like what does it mean to be whole in this intersection and as I interacted with with different people as far as medical um doctors or friends that I was meeting the first time um those questions were just kind of in my mind so this piece explores my journey to wrestle with my embodied experience as I worked with my counselor and a functional medicine doctor and just wanted to capture like what Jesus like how he is a model for us to follow into what I look at as holistic health and caring for the wholeness of who we are as humans. Thanks so much Laura

it's it's fairly often that um I experience and I've heard others share that these burdens come out of a personal need to struggle with something or

yeah or figure out what we think about about things and theologies. Yes i think I was just trying to find meaning into what I was experiencing find the language for it as well so that I can understand it in order to explain it to other people if I feel called to speak into that area. Absolutely

and then your article or you you came up you presented ideas on holistic health

holistic care and we wonder if you might think about these. Sure yeah um so in the article I talk about three key commitments that are a part of holistic health and I named them as holistic health teaches us to honour the wholeness of our humanity and this reminds us that we were created as whole beings and then the second part is holistic health teaches us to embrace the fullness of our experience and this points to what Jesus calls the abundant life um and for that I think of the verse where he talks about in this world you will have trouble but take heart I have overcome the world so there's this sense that everything is not going to be happy all the time or joyful in the sense of what culture might want us to think cuz there's going to be hard things times of suffering but in the midst of that suffering joy can be found um sorry that was like a side note i'll come back to that in a minute and then so the third aspect of holistic health is holistic health teaches us to care for our whole selves and through this process I see it as deepening our love of God and our neighbour because when we're taking care of ourselves we can like be more present to other people as well.

Yeah that's really helpful thanks so much Laura um I like how you you explained that in the article and um um how how you broke it down for everyone so thank you uh we we wanted to we were intrigued about uh part of it uh of what you were sharing when you were talking about um meeting new people especially when you meet medical professionals who often or who usually um meet us and and have there's a bit of a power imbalance there with them being them sort of quote unquote knowing everything and us not really knowing anything so we were just wondering if you could talk to us about what questions were on your mind or usually on your mind when you meet new people and especially when you meet um we well we we had in brackets so-called medical professionals so would you be able to talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah yeah um I can speak first to it when I'm meeting like new friends sometimes I wonder like if they're like what are they wondering about my disability because I usually am in a wheelchair and so there's like automatic assumptions that can be happening and I also wonder as far as if I'm going to spend time with them outside of say a church service or something like how is my comfort level for asking him if I need a drink of water or something even more involved as far as physically assisting me so I'm processing my own sense of trust for this new person that I've encountered and how they are receiving me as a whole person or just a part of a person just kind of like registering all of those non-verbal things that are going on and then as far as the medical professionals or people I meet in the health care system I think that one really got highlighted when I was going through my thyroid disease journey and when that was beginning it took about eight or so months to get doctors to come on board and believe what I was sharing and some of that was just encountering thyroid disease brings up subjective experiences that aren't always measured objectively by a doctor and so it could hard be hard to describe my internal experience so I had to like over time develop an argument per se and evidence for what I was experiencing and feeling and like as far as family history with thyroid disease and I encountered some doctors that were new to me that automatically wanted to attribute right for example my thyroid disease to my disability and I thought this is completely different and felt invalidating or dismissive so I did not return to that doctor I kept seeking out other ones that would provide space for listening and compassion and just hearing my story in a way that made me feel like this person wants to help care for me and help me to get back to a sense of health cause I was in a state of unhealth and so my questions were basically like am I going to be heard by this doctor are they just going to look at my disability are they going to interpret lab work differently or attribute it to something that is unrelated I don't know so all of those things really got stirred up and helped me to advocate a lot more within the health care system for myself so it was an interesting journey because I would live with my disability my whole life but in a lot of ways my thyroid disease taught me another level of finding my voice. Right and yeah I

I wonder what am I trying to say and there are stories about women especially not being believed by medical professionals um and now I've heard stories of parents with disabled children who were not

believed about what they are saying about their child so I know it's a common thing but but do you have advice from what you

learned and experienced for other disabled people who might be facing a similar similar barriers in their health? Yeah I can think of some points there I think for one I've just learned to go into medical appointments with notes that are helpful like what I feel is important for the appointment like what I want to be addressed or discussed um and sometimes that means like with my functional medicine doctor I have access to sending messages between appointments and that's been a really helpful space because sometimes I process things a little bit slower so I hear something in a meeting or an appointment and I think "Okay well I need to take some time um and just process that on my own" and then I typically have a follow-up question or thought. So having that access is helpful so finding out if your doctors have that type of resource as far as can I communicate with you between appointments um or just finding the top type of place that offers that and also outside of appointments just having friends with disabilities or similar experiences where you can have that sense of solidarity and place where you can process the more difficult experiences if you're not being heard or validated but you can go to your friend and those places of support and community and they can offer that to you so that you can be like "Okay this makes sense now and I'm not alone in this." And now I know how to move forward yeah it's so important. Yeah that's so cool or I was thinking when you were talking I because I am I'm one of those unlucky people who gets really like bad like chronic migraines so I like intermittently see a pain doctor and um like I was so um happy when cause if there are migraine people out there listening you know what this is like I'm sure it's like there's like a huge list of meds that you kind of start at the top and you try all of them to see what what works what does your brain need and so as we're moving through some of these meds well you know when I was under his care I still am I don't see him as much anymore thank God but um like I had some bad side effects to one of the medications and I remember like just calling and telling like the reception like hey I'm not feeling good is it okay if I just like go off and he called me back in like 10 minutes and I was like this is oh my God I've never had this before where a doctor was like so like available um so it's just it's so lovely that you also are able to get to send those messages in between um and just like thinking about how much that can help us with our like the relationships we have with medical professionals like we feel like they really care and they're like attentive to to our needs so I remember he called me on my cell phone i was downtown Toronto and I was like "Hello." And he's like "Amy are you okay?" He's like "It's okay go off I don't want you to feel sick." And I was like "This is so nice." So so yeah that's so nice when the system um has room for that kind of those kind of things to happen. Yeah that reminds me of my endocrinologist as well because I work with him as well and we've reached a place where sometimes it's more important for me to not be on the thyroid medicine because the side effects are getting too much for my body and just having doctors to honour the sensitivities or how my body or your body is responding to medication it makes a difference to say like "Okay I just need a break and let's just let me focus on something else at the moment because right now I value having less brain fog because sometimes medicine creates brain fog that's different than thyroid disease." Yeah I have a whole story about my medication that made my hand stop working its an anti depressant but it 

it affected my one working hand but but the doctors didn't believe that that there was a correlation so one day the pharmacist uh said actually this might be might be related so it took it took six month or a year for me to figure that out and come off the med so um I don't know why I shared that but meds can be tricky and and doctors may not always believe that antidepressant effects um physical movement too. So our final question is one you actually posed to the readers of your article so we thought we would we we felt like you had some wisdom to share that too so how does this holistic theology reflect the nature of the trinity? Yeah um I think first of all as the trinity we remember like God Jesus and Holy Spirit are in a relationship with each other and it's interdependent on each of the three parts of the trinity and in different scriptures God is called like the father of compassion and Jesus is named wonderful counselor for example and then the holy spirit comes to us as the advocate so there's different roles and different aspects to their nature but as like one interdependent being there's this holistic

um nature to the trinity and I think um even as we look at Jesus because he came to earth but he still reflects God so in that we see more of God's character as far as Jesus has instances where he's lamenting or he's weeping with friends or he's taking time away from the crowd to to choose solitude and prayer time with his father um he gets hungry he gets angry he gets um he expresses love to his friends and loved ones all of these things just reflect a holistic nature that exist with God as his character because Jesus is part of his character the Holy Spirit is part of his character and that can also just teach us as human beings who are his image bearers like how we need to take care of ourselves whether it's our physical health our mental health our emotional health our spiritual health because they're all interrelated and if we want to image God and follow Jesus in this way like all of these aspects are important.

Yeah thanks so much Laura that that that's so helpful Iwas thinking when you were talking like about how Jesus went away so much to like be alone and maybe he was an introvert you know I'm an introvert so I thought maybe he's an introvert so anyway that's a side thought all right well thank you so much we really appreciate your your sharing today about about your article and and um that we're so glad you were able to be a part of the issue of the journal. Thank you yeah so we're gonna um now take some time to talk to Corey about um your article Corey so would you mind just briefly describing uh your article for us what is it about?

Yeah absolutely uh and thank you Laura for sharing all your insights uh prior that was really fascinating that was really good um so my article is um it's an autoethnography um that I originally wrote uh during my doctor of ministry studies at Tyndale University in Toronto um and in it I'm I'm critically reflecting on my journey through a significant life transition uh that was coinciding with my diagnosis uh with autism spectrum disorder um so I'm exploring themes of identity, place, displacement and uh and ultimately kind of landing towards this theme of hospitality and the sense of home uh that that I was discovering uh often in very surprising places um and I I used autoethnography um as a as a research um methodology uh partly because of it it's it's what I find to be it's its strength and disability theology it allows storytelling uh alongside sort of this cultural commentary so we can sort of make sense of our own experiences but also offer this critical lens into the the social and cultural contexts um that we live in so so as I was as I was sort of exploring my struggles with with otherness and this this sometimes experience of of not fitting into the world I I was also able to give sort of a a critical lens um towards the contexts around me and sort of using the the some of the models of disability studies like the social model and cultural model I was able to sort of point to the the the collective need of of social transformation and ultimately you know including in the church um and I'll say like because so much of my experience uh had this embodied spatial quality to it um the the article was I was able to bring in um some exploration on the significance of place so sort of physical relational embodied space um and comment on on our need for um maybe rethinking place as as a as a context where we can be received and known to use um I didn't use this in the article but um philosopher Hannah Arendt talks about places for appearing and and being able to show up as we are not necessarily as others would prefer us to be so that theme of hospitality of of of home of of finding places to appear really became a core theme in in the auto ethnography that I wrote so that that's kind of an overview um my experiences of of life transitions and displacement my coming to terms with my diagnosis and then how this all works in with the the cultural situation that I lived in yeah that really reminds me of Mary McClintock Fulkerson's book uses to appear as well that was my introduction to that theme uh I think it's Places of Redemption is her book perhaps yeah brilliant book that was a really really good read yeah yeah yeah. Your article and the impetus as you said came came out of receiving an autism diagnosis so can you share with our listeners some of that experience?

Yeah yeah it was a bit of a slow process and a late a late diagnosis in my life I'm 38 now i was 35, 36 at the time I think um but yeah the diagnosis came as a as a tremendous gift um and and I think that that seems to resonate with a lot of adults with these sort of late diagnoses of neurodiversity first of all it was just a big like aha moment like oh this makes total sense like you know you're not just you're not just being difficult which sometimes I've heard in my life you're not just being different uh there's a reason why you experience uh the world in this way um and it and it came at a really um pivotal time um like like literally and this is just I'm sure God's weaving together of circumstance it was to the day that this this major life transition was beginning for me so so the diagnosis even gave me some language and frameworks for understanding myself um my loss of people and rhythm and place that I was experiencing um and and you know I can only speak for myself but but sometimes living with what we might call again like an invisible disability can be quite complex like people see me and think "Oh you're just you're just like the rest of us you're just fine." And they and then they can tend to misread when I do act or respond differently uh to you know normal situations and and a lot of my life you know I I sometimes just felt like a bit of a dud uh you know I would struggle to sit in a restaurant you know to engage conversations and foyers full of people you know and I'm a pastor you know it's uh but somehow having that that um formal diagnosis for me gave me some reassurance like it it's okay uh to not be okay always and the people that that I do share the diagnosis with um are often very sweet they're they they start to understand when I have to you know put in my earbuds or duck out of a room or cover my eyes if lights turn on or and and they I think they really know this is Corey not trying to be difficult but just trying to be here as best as possible yeah um so it it came as a as a gift and and I I might add just you know and I mean this with all sincerity um my diagnosis has afforded me something of kind of a street cred uh when I'm doing my research and writing uh not that we need to be autistic to say something about autism but it certainly helps when we have academics speaking and writing from within the context you know there's that slogan nothing about us without us there's something to that uh it's good that we have voices um from within a community uh speaking about um that community so all in all it was a tremendous gift for me. Yeah yeah that's that's a major thing that I know Amy and I agree on about um voices from within commjunities doing our own theology. Such a good way to put it love that. Yeah totally yeah and I like I like to what you were saying about having street cred too because Yeah i remember like maybe like maybe like 10 years ago or something I read that book Who Can Speak I can't remember the does anybody know the author's name?Its on my shelf 

Yeah if if we can figure out the author's name we'll we'll we'll link it below but I remember reading that and thinking like hm you know um it is important that we have our own theologies um and it's important that we're able to create spaces too where we can also not know the answers sometimes like sometimes like I feel like I'm just kind of flailing around like I don't know what the theology is yet but we're creating spaces where we're like slowly writing it and um and maybe sometimes they're shitty they're not perfect um but we're still trying um and hopefully that's like hopefully the journal's contributing to that kind of space did you find it? Oh sorry the book is co- authoreded by Roof and Weigman. Ah okay all right and it was like it's from the 90s is that right am I right? A bit older it's older not that the 90s were that long ago!!

Yeah sorry Corey what were you gonna say? I was just gonna make a comment and this kind of riffs off of uh something Laura said a bit earlier that I thought was brilliant it there's also something of almost maybe a slowness to our theology that is kind of beautiful like like when you talked Laura about that idea of needing to process and sometimes coming to a idea days later there's something about that just being able to so often I just need a little bit more time to process I just need a little bit more time to think about what was said or done before I anyway and there's something about maybe voices from within the community that um our theology might just develop a little and like you said Amy maybe a little messier at times or incomplete but it's there's something really beautiful about that so. We often talk about writing in crip 

 time I can get frustrated about but I also think it's quite beautiful too. Um hmm.

Yeah Corey so um we talked a little bit earlier about this idea of place so we wanted to ask you about um you're writing about home in your piece so where have you found home in places that you were least expecting? Yeah um so in in the autoethnography I I refer primarily to the local public schools um and the school system became a very surprising uh but wonderful part of my story for the better part of a year um I was invited to be an education assistant um which I have absolutely no background or training in um so very surprising but I was suddenly surrounded by people who like me needed a little say extra time a little slowness quiet place a listening ear and I suppose we could we could be sort of different together um that that was the uh that was kind of the first surprising place um but then again almost like again almost to the day when my role at the public school was ending I was also invited to join a social service team here in uh in Wellington County and for the better part of two years until very recently I spent just day after day with so many people who welcomed me into their homes um often you know broken or you know messy as as their situations were um or people who sat with me next to their you know forest campouts or or you know park benches where they were living and and and all of these people became became or welcomed me into um a sort of home experience and I I always think that's so ironic that that often the homeless were the people that became like a home for me um you know the people that were very "unfit" were the were were the people that made a space for me to fit um and I think that has a lot to do with just the vulnerability what or what we might call a weakness um but their remarkable just generosity hospitality you know offering me a granola bar a bottle of water out of what little they had um and and I I I imagine it's probably something similar to what um what someone like Henri Nouwen might have felt when he u did his sort of downward move into the the the L'Arche Daybreak program or what Thomas Reynolds talks about in in Vulnerable Communion when he talks about just this mutual vulnerability that creates a connection a sense of home among among us um and he says you know there's something oddly um uh there's there's something strong in weakness there's something useful in being of no use there's something communal about about this vulnerability and it's still something to this day where I find when I when I go into the group homes um week by week um there's just often this sense of being at home with these individuals um and and I don't have a big theory or explanation for that um it just happens when when I engage vulnerability and can be welcomed as a vulnerable person in return that I I tend to feel at home

there. City streets back forests kindergarten carpets those are the places it's been wonderful!

Thank you Corey for for sharing we also wanted to hear about your doctoral work you're doing now and how how that work is going for you? Right. No I know that's that um question that should not be ased how it's going so you can push back against us but in case you want to talk about it we happy to hear. Absolutely yeah yeah um yeah so I wrapped up my um my Doctor of Ministry at Tyndale University last uh May um and this is again where this autoethnography was sort of situated in that uh right now I'm doing a a PhD at McMaster Divinity in Hamilton working with a wonderful supervisor Dr Phil Zilla um and uh yeah and start so I'm I'm starting to dial into some of these intersections of of human geography critical spatiality and and disability theology so so sort of a further dive into what I talk about in the in autoethnography a bit how how our experience of of place and lived environments intersects with with disability ideology um and so as as far as how it's going like yeah it's it's going! It's happening it's happening whether yeah but you know it's funny because because one of the main sort of diagnostic criteria that the psychologist had zeroed in on years ago when I got diagnosed was was uh what what she called my fixation on words on defining questions before I could answer them all these kind of so it's it's it's funny that what sometimes drives people up about me you know can you define that word and and do you know what that word actually means and whatever before I can engage uh that's that's one of the it's one of the places where it pays off for me as an academia sure yeah it's sort of a a gift but then as a practical theologian um I'm I'm I'm so thankful that that that my work in the academy intersects so much with my work in the the sort of like cultural horizon that I live in um and so it's it is sort of beautifully meshing together um so that's where I'm at now uh if you ask me a year from now uh I'll I'll maybe have more to say about all that though. Awesome we look forward to to yeah hearing more about your work in the coming years. Absolutely. Yeah well thank you so much both of you for sharing we usually at this point in the podcast we just pause to see if you have any questions or ponderings for each other or if you want to um to make any comments uh or give some words of encouragement to each other so Laura I wonder if you have anything that you might want to ask Corey or or say to Corey? Yeah I read your our article earlier today just so I could be familiar with it and it struck me the theme of home and finding those places where you belong I think it's a common struggle sometimes for people with disabilities so I resonated with the way you wrote it and spoke about finding home in places that were not always the church places and that can just expand the way we also think about the church and how it's not just one particular building and so that is helpful to consider and just like how we leave church spaces and we go out in the world and do life or um yeah live our own embodied lives and finding home yeah is an important theme so thank you for sharing your story and experience and keep writing and working! Thank you so much yeah do you have any ponderings for for Laura? Yeah no I mean such a fascinating reminder and that that whole piece of holistic health and and and the interpersonal mixed with the embodied and and and um yeah I I'm I'm just fascinated when I hear those kind of very very vulnerable real stories that that um like yours that that that that we it it helps it helps me to to to continue sort of expanding my view of the disability say experience beyond just sort of a very isolated you know uh personal thing but it's this interpersonal it's this embodied it involves storytelling it involves listening it involves all this and and the the the trinitarian framework for that is just such such a wonderful way of of helping frame and engage um so no I I I thank you for uh challenging me and and and showing me something new about that it's like when someone brings up a story from their own life it's always sort of new it's always something new because it's it's your experience and uh uh no that was just a very wonderful reminder uh for me today so I appreciate you so much thank you thank you both so very much for sharing today for for participating in the story telling and the hearing of choice and thank you to our listeners for tuning in today we look forward to further conversations with you both..