Versandra Kennebrew on Human Connection, Walking Two Miles to Work, and Serving Abroad at 60+

Versandra Kennebrew spent 26 years as a holistic health professional, and today she calls herself a human connection speaker. In this episode she explains what that actually means, how a series of dreams about her late grandmother pointed her toward massage therapy and energy healing, and why she is about to leave for 27 months in Senegal as a Peace Corps volunteer. You can find her at versandrakennebrew.com.

Top Points in This Episode

• What a “human connection speaker” does, and why it matters more as technology takes over how we talk to each other
• How dreams about her grandmother led Versandra into massage therapy, energy healing, and yoga
• Her morning routine: gratitude before she gets out of bed, deep breathing, movement, affirmation playlists, and journaling when it shows up
• Why she walked two miles to work and two miles home every day, and what that walk taught her about gratitude
• Becoming a yoga teacher at 55, and training for the aging body she wants at 80
• Five years as her father’s primary caregiver, and how that changed her plans and her five-year plan
• Why she is spending 27 months in West Africa as a maternal health specialist

From Retail to the Healing Arts

Versandra worked in retail from age 14 into her mid-thirties. The turn came when she moved back home to Detroit to care for her father, who had cancer at the time. She knew she could not go back to 60-hour weeks in a store, so she asked a better question: where could she put her passion and purpose together into work that asked less of her and gave more back? Her answer was the healing arts. Along the way she also worked as a community engagement specialist for a Detroit Whole Foods Market, connecting the store to the neighborhood and bringing Motown’s music culture into the grocery experience, a project that landed her in Fortune magazine.

Human Connection in an Age of Technology

Versandra’s work now is designing experiences where people reconnect, with each other and with themselves. Her point is simple. With AI and screens in the middle of everything, we forget that we are human beings first and we get clumsy at basic interaction. She also stresses self-care as part of connection, especially for people in helping professions. That is the idea behind her book I Love Me: The Ultimate Self-Care Guide for Healing Artists. Her line for it: you cannot give from an empty cup.

Her Morning Routine

Gratitude is the first thing on her mind when she wakes up, before she moves. She lies there breathing into the new day and acknowledging that it is new, an experience she has never had before, and that she gets to shape it. Then come intentions, sometimes with playlists she built for herself full of gratitude and “I am” affirmations. Movement follows, since as a yoga instructor she believes yoga belongs off the mat and in the rest of your life. Journaling gets added on the days she needs to write something down and sit with it.

The Two-Mile Walk

Her last job was about two miles from her house, so she decided to walk there. Two miles in the morning, two miles home, for more than two years. Some people thought she was crazy. Her read on it was different. Her legs work and her feet work, and using them is how she keeps them that way. She is over 60, and on those walks she passed people who struggled to get out of a car, which put her own ability in plain view. Fit, focused, grounded, and grateful, all from a walk she was going to have to make anyway.

Caregiving, Mortality, and Training for the Body You Want Later

Versandra was her father’s primary caregiver for five years before he passed. Those years were hard on him, and watching them put her own aging right in front of her. She lost her mom 20 years earlier. So she started asking how to keep the quality of life she has now, and what she could do so her own last chapter looks different. She went to yoga teacher training at 55 and made the practice daily rather than occasional. Ryan and Versandra get into the practical side of that too: leg strength, core, and grip strength, and why the real risk as people age is a fall they cannot get up from. Her addition is worth hearing. Flexible and mobile means you can roll through a fall instead of taking it hard.

Twenty-Seven Months in Senegal

Versandra started with national service as an AmeriCorps VISTA, working with a nonprofit serving youth. That is where she learned about Peace Corps and saw a way to spend real time on the continent of Africa instead of a two-week vacation. Her father’s dementia diagnosis put the plan on hold for five years. After he passed, she went back to her five-year plan and picked it up. She leaves in February to serve as a maternal health specialist, working with pregnant women and infants on healthy lifestyle practices. Her angle is the holistic piece that usually gets left out: touch, holding your baby, touch deprivation among young mothers, and the emotional weight many of them carry about how they got pregnant. She also points out that infant mortality in parts of South Georgia runs close to what it is in West Africa, which reframes it as a global health issue rather than someone else’s problem.

The One Thing 26 Years Taught Her

Ryan asked what stands out after decades of helping people. Her answer was that we are one. Plenty of things are built to make us feel separate, and individuality has its place, but underneath it everyone is after the same two things, joy and happiness. We just take different routes. Keep your attention on the common thing, she says, and the chaos that comes from treating each other as different loses its grip.

Connect with Versandra

• Website: versandrakennebrew.com (start here, it links to everything else)
• Books: versandrakennebrew.com/books, including I Love Me: The Ultimate Self-Care Guide for Healing Artists, Thank God for The Shelter, and Touch Me With Love
• Retreats: Optimal Living Retreats
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/versandrakennebrew
• Her relationship wellness community and practitioner training are linked from her main site