So it’s national women’s day and I’ve been thinking a lot about us women lately.
Specifically, about the strength and that little bit of magic tied up in our femininity.
How maybe women are the best teachers for the rest of world on how to really FEEL.
How to hold space for what is.
How to feel your way along, as you go.
How to keep showing up, even when it is unimaginable.
*I mean, if labor isn’t a perfect picture of this, I don’t know what is. It seems both inexorable and intentional that for us women, so much of our trauma is tied up in our womanhood. That both the wound and the healing spring from that place inside ourselves. Inside our bodies. *
From the women who stayed at the cross long after everyone else had gone, to every woman who’s ever given birth, or ever shown a man the secrets of her body, to every woman who’s heart has been shattered but her Body keeps showing up, keeps carrying her through to a place of healing.
Women are incredible. I’m so thrilled to be one.
Lately when I get stuck in my writing, I write a letter to my Body instead. It is cracking me open in places I didn’t even know I was brittle. I have no idea how many letters I’ll share with you here, but I can’t seem to stop writing them.
So I’m paying attention to that in this series, as I practice beginning again.
Sharing, I mean, beyond the the flat squares of Instagram.
Creaking open the laptop and setting aside that part of me that desperately wants you to like me, and instead just… writing what’s inside.
Writing what’s real for me and what I know because anything else feels too hard right now. Too put- on. Or maybe too tone deaf.
Anyway.
I think there’s something there, for us to explore. My inbox and DM’s have never seen so much action as when I share a vulnerable or personal thought about my relationship with my body and then suddenly I’m laughing + crying + reading YOUR body stories, holding space for them just like you have with mine.
I didn’t expect that.
I would’ve shared mine anyway.
Hearing yours feels like receiving a gift that I didn’t even know I wanted. Maybe even needed.
I think I get them because you feel it too, in that tender, sacred space beneath your skin, the space that begs to be fully inhabited… that place that you have to go to alone, and your body is the only one who can see you there.
I’m really fascinated with what happens in that space.
I’m going to be writing about it more here.
1: This is what lights me up. I know this now, deep down in my knower. I never had that knowledge before, and it feels like both the lightest thing I’ve ever carried, creatively, and also feels the most precious.
I can feel the lights coming back on, creatively. I also feel that agitation, that brewing, that NEED to share this. I also feel raw and exposed and terrified of screwing this up. Whatever “this’ is. This… the silvery thread that seems to connect all the work I’ve done up to this point. It all echoes back to this thing, that I don’t exactly know how to talk about yet, but also can’t shut up about…
What does it really mean to come home to myself?
At nearly 40, I can tell you that I am just barely beginning to find out.
Some of my letters here will be Dear Body letters and some will take a wider view on what it means to come home to ourselves. I hope you stick around, and even better, join the conversation as we explore mindfulness, connection, and embodiment.
2. I will not be sharing as an expert or teacher. That makes me twitchy and gives me hives, plus it makes my writing SUPER weird and awkward.
I’ll just be sharing as a fellow traveler on the path. Learning what it means to come home to my body. To my desires. To what I even believe and what I even care about. To my actual, right now life.
To my creative self and her ability to mine the humor and the heart along the way.
Anyway. I just thought you should know.
You’ve been with me for a while now, most of you. That means something, in this day and age, I think!
Hey!
P.S. If you’d like to follow along for a more “daily” type of situation, then I’d love to connect with you over on Instagram. It’s the most accessible creative outlet for me at the moment, stories provide the most fun, and also it’s where I share most often about this embodiment journey.
Hey.
Happy National Women’s Day!
Aren’t we all so glad for the women in our lives?!
Leave a Reply