Black Writer Therapy Podcast

Episode Description

In this powerful, soul-deep episode of Black Writer Therapy, host and unlicensed doula-therapist Ella Shawn (a.k.a. Vicki) welcomes Vonetta Rain—Emmy award–winning graphic designer, shamanic practitioner, and author of The Shaman’s Apprentice—to the proverbial couch.

Together, they explore what it means to say a revolutionary yes to your sacred work, walk away from a glittering career, and devote your life to healing, ceremony, and community care. Vonetta shares how she went from designing Super Bowl and HBO title sequences to leading over 800 private and group retreats around the world, supporting people through trauma, loss, illness, and lineage repair.

This conversation moves through reincarnation, soul family, divine masculine and feminine roles, ancestral cemeteries in Asheville, and the deep craft of writing a cathartic memoir that follows your consciousness from age three to now. It’s tender, ancient, funny, and so Black Southern it hums.

In This Episode, We Talk About

• Saying Yes to Dharma

  • How Vonetta left an Emmy-winning graphic design career to follow her “sacred God-purposeful work.”

  • Why simply saying yes—without knowing the outcome—is a revolutionary act.

• 800 Retreats & the Practice of Service

  • Building a word-of-mouth global practice with over 800 ceremonies and retreats.

  • Supporting people through PTSD, depression, grief, illness, parenting, and ancestral patterns.

• Soul Family & Reincarnation

  • Vonetta’s early introduction to reincarnation through her grandmother’s past-life memories.

  • What “soul family” is, how it feels, and why she prayed to find hers.

  • The difference between the family you’re born into and the soul family you keep finding across lifetimes.

• Ease vs. Peace

  • Ella’s distinction between peace (fleeting) and ease (embodied).

  • How Vonetta chooses to walk with grace and ease instead of chasing success.

• Ancestral Land, the South & Shared History

  • Being a happy Black Southern woman whose ancestors were enslaved on the same land she loves.

  • Vonetta’s grandfather in Asheville, NC: caretaker of one of the oldest slave cemeteries in the U.S., community gardener, and quiet community builder.

  • What it means to honor both the horror and the possibility in Southern soil.

• From Industry Chase to Inner Descent

  • Why the “chasing” happened in the industry, not in the spiritual work.

  • How leaving advertising became a descent into self rather than a pursuit of self.

• Intentions as Healing

  • Ella’s word-nerd dive into the medical definition of “intention” as the healing process of a wound.

  • Reframing intentions not just as goals, but as energetic containers for healing.

• Writing The Shaman’s Apprentice

  • The plant medicine ceremony that took Vonetta to the “center of the earth in a crystal elevator” and started the book.

  • Being told to write it as fiction first, then given permission to tell the story as memoir.

  • Writing from the consciousness of each age—three, five, twelve, college, and beyond—so readers can feel her evolution.

  • How the act of writing became not just healing, but a final release of shame, blame, and trauma.

• Healing vs. Healed

  • Vonetta’s shift from “I’m always healing” to “I have healed so much.”

  • Where she still feels she’s healing now (finances, stewardship, and business systems).

• Black Southern Womanhood & Long-Term Love

  • Ella on 30 years of marriage and choosing her high school sweetheart.

  • Divine masculine as protector/provider; divine feminine as creator/community-keeper.

  • Black women claiming joy, land, and lineage in the South.

About Our Guest – Vonetta Rain

Vonetta Rain is an Emmy award–winning graphic designer turned shamanic practitioner, ceremonial guide, and author of The Shaman’s Apprentice. After a successful career creating high-profile campaigns and an award-winning title sequence for HBO’s Carnival(e), she answered a deeper spiritual call that led her to apprenticeship with a Peruvian shaman.

Over the past two decades, Vonetta has facilitated over 800 private and group retreats around the world, supporting people through trauma, ancestral patterning, illness, grief, and spiritual awakening. Her memoir, The Shaman’s Apprentice, traces her journey from a “normal” American childhood to a life devoted to healing, ceremony, and soul-family community—told through the evolving voice of her consciousness from age three onward.

Books & Works Mentioned

• The Shaman’s Apprentice – by Vonetta Rain

• Bacchanal – by Veronica G. Henry

• Wild Seed – by Octavia Butler

• The concept of intentions as “the healing process of a wound” (medical definition)

Mid-Roll Feature

This episode includes a mid-roll spotlight on Southern Momentum Publishing House (SOMO), Ella’s hybrid publishing home for Black and Brown women writers seeking somatic, decolonial, and sacred writing spaces.
Learn more: www.somopubhouse.org

Listen & Support

• Listen to Black Writer Therapy every Thursday on the Alive Podcast Network app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• Download the Tap-In app from Alive Podcast Network and choose Black Writer Therapy as your favorite show—50% of your subscription supports Ella and helps keep these conversations going.