Posted by in Uncategorized Someone recently asked me a question that they’ve been asking everyone right now. How do you be a sensitive and loving person in our time? Here’s what I answered. I’d love to know your answers, too. ❤️ I would start by saying I have been living inside of this question my whole life, even before…Read more »
Posted by in abortion, body positive, body positivity, coaching, compassion, daughters, death, dying, fat-phobia, forgiveness, healing, healthateverysize, mean, mean girls, mothering, mothers, parenting, parents, sexual trauma, somatic, somatic coaching, trauma healing I am not strong. People tell me all the time that I am strong. Mostly, when people say this, they are referring to me in relationship to the things I have survived. But I have never understood the way we praise strength, especially when, what I know about strength, is that it’s simply what’s left…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized I had an abortion one month after my thirteenth birthday. I’m not sure how else to write that sentence, but it’s not quite right to say I “had” an abortion. That implies I had choices. It’s more accurate to say it like this: my father, a doctor, raped me from when I was eight years…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized I have been thinking a lot about photographs. The photograph of the girl in Viet Nam, her clothes burned off by napalm, the sheer horror of the image accelerated the end of the war. The shootings at Kent State, the dead student protestors on the ground inspired outrage and action. I’m also thinking about the…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized My friend, Kate, is outraged on my behalf. I find myself tracking her energy for clues about why, until she just tells me, doesn’t make me guess like I’m used to. She’s mad that a family member, I’ll call her Elle, asked me, in her “watch me dissect your trauma with scientific interest” way, whether…Read more »
Posted by in coaching, compassion, forgiveness, parenting, parents, somatic, somatic coaching, trauma healing, Uncategorized I am watching for my daughter in the pack of ice skaters looping around the rink when a woman taps me on the shoulder. When I turn toward her, she nods and smiles at me, as if she is expecting an answer to a question she asked the last time we saw one another. Her…Read more »
Posted by in compassion, fat-phobia, forgiveness, healing, parents, sexual trauma, trauma healing, Uncategorized In the 20 years from when I finished college until March of 2012, when my father died, I didn’t write a word about him. In fact, I hardly wrote anything at all. He took up too much space, held so many words hostage in my brain, I didn’t have enough letters left to squeeze in…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized “My body, my fat body, is a billboard that lets everyone know I was sexually abused.” My client looks at me through their tears. “This is the wound that won’t heal,” they tell me, ‘this’ referring to their weight, and not the sexual abuse. The words hang in the air between us. I measure my…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized “Those Mountains That You Are Carrying, You Were Only Supposed to Climb” –Najwa Zebian– Whenever I say, “Everything is going to be okay,” my somatics teacher, Richard, looks at me with that Mona Lisa smile of his and says, “Everything is already okay,” and I want to lunge across the room and punch him in…Read more »
Posted by in Uncategorized I was a bully until I was about 9 years old. I made arbitrary rules for my friends that I never told them about until they inevitably broke those rules. Then I would take my love away, swift and business-like, as though I were scooping up coins from the counter and dropping them into my…Read more »
i am under-grounded 