Finding Steadiness in Challenging Times: A Somatic Approach to Engaging with the World
In today’s political landscape, many of us are grappling with how much to engage with the news, how much to step back, and how to balance awareness with self-care. I hear this from clients and friends all the time—how do we honor our values of staying informed and empathetic while also tending to our own well-being?
One of the most important questions I’ve been asking myself lately is: What do I know about myself now?
With years of deepening my understanding of nervous system regulation, I’ve come to recognize that my ability to engage with challenging issues is directly tied to my ability to first anchor in steadiness, safety, and connection.
Before taking in the world, I need to first take in myself.
A Somatic Check-In: Finding Your Center
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or uncertain about how much to engage with the news, social media, or difficult conversations, try this simple check-in:
Pause & Orient
Look around your space. Name 5 things you see. Feel where you are in this moment.
Let your eyes rest on something neutral or pleasant. Let your breath settle.
Notice Your Body
Where do you feel sensation? Is there tightness, buzzing, constriction, or a sense of ease?
Do you feel grounded in your seat or feet?
Ask Yourself:
Do I feel steady, open, and curious?
Or do I feel tight, activated, and tense?
Do I have the capacity to take in more right now, or do I need to tend to myself first?
The 8 Cs of IFS: A Guide to Self-Connection Before Engaging
To determine if you’re in a good place to engage with the world, check in with these 8 qualities of Self-energy from Internal Family Systems (IFS). When we are connected to Self, we feel:
Calm – Is my nervous system settled, or am I agitated?
Clarity – Am I thinking clearly, or am I caught in reactivity or confusion?
Curiosity – Am I engaging from a place of openness, or am I locked into fear or frustration?
Compassion – Can I hold my feelings and others’ perspectives with kindness?
Confidence – Do I feel steady in myself, or do I feel shaken?
Courage – Can I engage with what’s happening without collapsing or shutting down?
Creativity – Can I imagine solutions, or do I feel stuck in hopelessness?
Connectedness – Do I feel like part of something bigger, or do I feel isolated?
If you feel disconnected from these qualities, it may be a sign to pause, ground, and return to yourself first before engaging.
Practices to Reconnect Before Consuming News or Engaging in Difficult Conversations
If you notice that you feel off-center, here are a few somatic practices to bring yourself back to steadiness:
Press Into Your Seat – Feel the contact of your body with the chair or ground. Press down lightly with your feet. Take a slow breath.
Place a Hand on Your Chest or Belly – Feel the warmth of your own presence. Let yourself know, “I’m here. I’m with myself.”
Shake Out the Tension – Stand up, bounce lightly on your heels, shake out your hands. Let any stuck energy move through.
Humming or Sighing – A long exhale, a low hum, or even a gentle sigh can shift your nervous system into more regulation.
Touch Something Grounding – Hold a warm cup of tea, run your hands under cool water, feel the texture of something steady in your space.
Time Your Engagement – Set a timer for how long you’ll read the news or scroll. Give yourself permission to step away when the time is up.
Close with a Ritual – After engaging with challenging content, bring yourself back with a slow breath, a sip of water, or a look at something beautiful.
Honoring Your Boundaries & Capacity
The truth is, we aren’t meant to hold everything, all at once, all the time. Our nervous systems aren’t built for it. And just because we have access to an endless stream of information doesn’t mean we need to take it all in.
Some days, we have more capacity to engage. Other days, we need to step back, recharge, and care for ourselves so that when we do engage, we can do so from a place of steadiness and clarity.
Give yourself permission to choose when and how you engage. To step back when you need to. To step forward when you feel ready. To stay connected to yourself in the process.
A Final Question to Hold: As you move through this season, ask yourself:
Am I engaging in a way that honors my steadiness, or am I losing myself in the noise?There is a way to stay present in the world while staying present to yourself. May we all find the balance.
Have you ever noticed yourself slipping into routines and patterns?
Whether it’s a way that you sort through your worry in your mind, finding yourself stuck in thought or attached to a certain way of doing things, there is often a pattern that we are practicing here.
Thoughts, body sensation, emotions, actions- they can play out in a very familiar loop. It’s easy to think: “Well, this is just who I am. It’s what I do.” You have been practicing this way of being for years and years.
And we are always practicing something.
There are small but powerful ways to shift the way we show up for ourselves by first putting attention to how we are practicing our daily routines, patterns and habits. Is the way that I’m doing this contributing to my life in a positive way? Is there a cost to this pattern that I’d love to shift? Is there another way I could be doing this?
If we see these patterns as practices, there is a way to try something different. And we can start with easy shifts by bringing in a new, simple practice. Name it a PRACTICE and you are supporting your deeper commitments to yourself, towards how you want to show up in your life.
Your morning shower can become a practice that helps you deepen into your favorite mood, preparing your coffee or putting the dishes into the washer can set you up for a more spacious, calmer approach to your day.
Notice the practices that you already have and celebrate that.
YES! I love my evening walks.
YES! I am great at connection in my morning chats with my kiddo.
YES! I really listen to my body in these moments.
YES! I take care of myself well in this way.
Highlighting a practice can shift a mundane task or moment. Shift from feeling rushed, tight, thinking of your lists for the day… to one that softens your pace, your mood and perspective to prepare for what’s ahead. Puts you in a supportive stance.
Mindful, slow, compassionate, spacious, ready.
Can you imagine that shift in your body?
What is possible with five minutes of intentional practice today calming the mind and allowing in more of the feelings that you really would love to feel.
Here are some simple ways to implement the power of practice:
Embrace the power of small, easy intentional practices. Don’t over complicate things. Pause to take in some deep breaths. Follow your attention into sensation. Let your eyes take in the nourishment of the life all around you, flourishing before you eyes. Feel your heart. Simple and sweet.
Think about what it is you are practicing now. With compassion, notice what you do now and how that works for you. Observe with love.
Gently lean towards the sunshine. Imagine making a slight, one degree shift towards what you’d like with a new routine or a different action. How could a new practice move you towards a transformation over time?
Journal your thoughts. Change can feel daunting, no matter how positive that change will be in the long haul. Jot down your thoughts: the good, the bad, the overwhelming, the empowering…let yourself feel it all as you shift away from the mind into your heart.
Remember baby steps over time and that you are doing a really good job just as you are today. Celebrate what you are already doing now that is great! See yourself! Love yourself!
What are practices that bring you joy?
By identifying the things that keep us in our default patterns and routines, and taking ourselves seriously in the process, we can discover the intentional practices we can do to get us to where we desire to be.
Dance! Make a playlist! Grab a partner or a plant. Shake it like you own it. Maybe even just a little skip to start. Hands down a SURE shift to your mood.
Somatic resilience is our ability to shift from states of hyper-vigilance and stress to a calmer, resourceful, and connected state. This shift helps us stay present and to see a brighter future. Resilience moves us toward strength, wholeness, possibility, and healing
Resilience also guides us through our most challenging moments in life.
There can be a subtle difference between resilience strategies and survival tactics. Resilience practices can prepare us to experience a fuller range of emotions and sensations. We practice feeling more alive, open and connected to what’s around us in contrast to some of our survival strategies like numbing out, distracting, distancing and staying unaware of what’s happening in our lives and bodies.
We practice resilience so that we can be in choice for when we are under stress. Rather than just our automatic reactions to discomfort, we can stay present a bit more each time.
Powerful resilience practices can include: helping others, connecting to our imagination and creativity, shared collective experience, and a connection to something greater than ourselves.
Here are some simple ways to practice your resilience
Take a mindful walk in nature or around the block. Notice beauty, allow yourself to be in wonder, awestruck even, of what you take in.
Sit in the sun, feeling the calm and slowness. Take in all of the senses: the warmth, the color of the sky, the visual you have for this moment, the smells, the sounds.
Create a moment to hug, reach our or connect with a loved one. Open to the uplift and warmth that connection can bring in its simplicity.
Find joy, contentment, delight in music or art. How does it move you inside and out? How can you feel the experience of this artist through their work?
More about resilience vs. survival strategies
Survival strategies, while often necessary and effective, can leave us feeling numb, tense, and detached. Although these tactics might feel familiar or “safe,” they often disconnect us, restrict our actions and interactions, and make us feel less complete.
We might have needed these strategies to buffer from overwhelm or discomfort that we’re feeling by numbing out or distracting ourselves from what’s really happening. Numbing out might be social media, Netflix all night, binging on an indulgence of choice, isolating ourselves, avoidance of something we know is important.
We all have our things that we do!
We can start to notice these strategies with compassion, softness and a check in: Hey, I’m doing this thing.
What am I feeling right now? Can I pause for just a moment here?
When we see that we are longing for change, it’s not helpful or easy to just remove an old strategy for how we’ve handled challenging moments. We can’t force change or override a program we have running.
We must acknowledge what this strategy has skillfully taken care of for us, perhaps for a long, long time. Self-compassion is so important here. We are all so human. Then slowly, maybe in 1 degree shifts, we can start to turn to intentional practices that help us foster our inner joy, well-being and connection to self and others.
What are your own practices that bring you joy?
How will you connect with yourself today?
-Resource: Resilience: A Somatic Definition -Staci K. Haines with generative somatics
Breathwork can be used to calm the nervous system, relax the body and bring you into the present moment. Breathwork can also be so energizing for your body and mind!
Box Breathing is a simple practice that can help build resilience, a sense of calm quickly and effectively. The visual makes it an easy-to-remember tool to have in your back pocket for when you need a big shift or to come into the present moment.
To date, my favourite explanation of somatic therapy is from generative somatics elder Staci Haines:
The word Somatics comes from the Greek root soma which means “the living body in its wholeness.” It’s the best word we’ve come up with in English to understand human beings as integrated mind/body/spirit, or a psycho-biology. This understanding is that people are not mind over matter (“if I think differently I will be different”), nor matter over mind or spirit (“a change in chemistry or medication will wholly change my experience”), rather we are all of these things combined – we are thinking and conceptual, we are emotional, we are biological, and we are spiritual. Somatics approaches people as this integrated whole, working with all of these aspects of who we are.
Perhaps what is most unique about Somatics is that it integrates the body (ourselves from the neck down) as an essential place of change, learning and transformation. You can think of it like muscles having memory and the tissues having intelligence. We have learned a more objectifying or dissociated view of the body as a pile of bones and tendons we think of as a science project.
Somatics looks at the body as a place of evolutionary intelligence and learning. Somatics sees the “self” or who we are as inseparable from the psycho-biology. Of course, the mind and body are never really separate (a mind cannot live without a body and vice versa) but we certainly try to operate as if they are. When we reconnect the vast intelligence of the body with the mind and spirit, powerful things happen.
Somatic Resilience
We are inherently resilient beings, with this strength embedded deep within our “soma,” a result of three billion years of evolutionary wisdom. In a somatic sense, resilience is our innate ability to shift from states of hyper-alertness and reactivity—always on the lookout for danger—to a more serene, resourceful, and connected state of being. This transition helps us stay present, envision brighter futures, and regain our sense of safety, connection, and dignity.
Resilience also serves as our beacon during times of oppression and trauma, guiding us through the most challenging moments and nurturing our happiness, connection, and well-being. We are naturally resilient and creative individuals, and our communities reflect these qualities. There are numerous practices that can help us foster resilience within ourselves, our loved ones, our organizations, and our communities. By embracing and cultivating resilience, we invite strength, wholeness, possibility, and healing into our lives.
There can be a subtle difference between resilience strategies and survival tactics. Resilience practices foster a sense of connection, openness, and safety. They prepare us to take positive steps toward a better future, allowing us to experience a fuller range of emotions and sensations, making us feel more alive instead of numb.
Survival strategies, while often necessary and effective, can leave us feeling numb, tense, and detached. Although these tactics might feel familiar or “safe,” they often disconnect us, restrict our actions and interactions, and make us feel less complete.
This distinction is relevant in our personal lives, communities, and social movements. While both collective resilience and survival strategies have supported us, it is our shared resilience that propels us toward hope, interdependence, collective action, and the vision of the future we aspire to create.
I just have recently discovered in my journey of body love, and self-love that there are three separate components to my health right now. My food, my exercise, and the metrics of my health (age, size, chemical makeup, hormones, skin, energy levels). By separating these three things, I could see that I have a different relationship with each of these parts of me and it helps me feel less overwhelmed by an overall concept of: I’d like to take better care of myself.
The metrics of my body are separate from but totally connected to my food and exercise. But I notice that if I can look at my body like a scientist and just see where I’m at, I can make a choice about where I’d like to be. I can see how my body is doing from a more objective level and see if there are ways of shifting those measures towards more beneficial states. An example is looking at my energy levels through just the lens of the metrics. I can collect data on what things might affect my energy: caffeine, sleep, exercise, the foods I eat, and stress levels. With research, we can see data on how our energy can be in our control on some levels and there are things to be curious about. What’s realistic for me? What are low-hanging fruits that I can try in terms of increasing my energy? This might help me think about my sleep habits or more exercise or less sugar just from that scientific angle. I feel curious, not attached or emotional about it. I wonder what might be possible for me and what’s not realistic, what I could think about more later.
Another metric that I’ve been curious about is joint pain. For example, when I exercise, my joints feel amazing. Specifically, when I bike, my knee pain is reduced to almost 0 from a pain level of 5 or 6 somedays. This is highly motivating for me to get on the bike and enjoy a ride because I enjoy the experience of pain-free knees so much. There’s no drama, it feels like an objective metric of how my body supports itself in healing, lubricating my joints, circulation, etc. I can support that process and meet my body in optimizing it’s own process.
Exercise has been something of a journey for me in my life. I grew up as an athlete and as an adult I have grappled, like so many of us, to find the time, focus, and dedication to my body feeling fit, healthy, and excited to move. This process of taking the metrics of my body and my relationship with food OUT of the equation helps me to look at exercise more cleanly. What do I like to do? What can my body do right now? What can I fit into my days and weeks so that I can enjoy my body and show up for how great it feels to take care of myself in this way?
The alternative for me was to remember how fit I used to be playing soccer four nights a week in my 20’s and lament over my lack of time, mobility or speed, and skill that I have today. What a losing game that line of thinking is! I can just feel my body shut down and quit as soon as I start thinking that way. As we age, we get to learn to come to terms with where we are at right now. There might be some grief, loss, or frustration involved. But what else is there but to adjust and see what we CAN do right now? There are so many amazing and fun alternatives to movement, being outdoors, playing and loving our bodies. If we can create some distance from any angst we feel along the way, we can still show up to the smallest amounts of exercise and movement that help us create habits and baselines that feel actually fun. Notice how good it feels to move and you’ll find yourself showing up more and more. Mini habits and taking the pressure off. A walk a day can feel life-altering!
Food. Oh, food! What a deeply fraught topic this is, for all of us! If you feel peace in this area of your life, I celebrate you! I have a relationship with food that is ever-evolving and I am happy to do the work to separate my relationship with food from exercise and the metrics of my body. While they are deeply intertwined, I like to see food for just food whenever I can. I practice looking at my food choices and habits from the perspective of mindfulness, noticing hunger, wondering what will be the best fuel for my body, and being as aware as possible. I am not going to go into any ins and outs here with food habits but I will say that it really, really helps me to allow my food choices not to overly influence my feelings or thoughts about exercise or my health metrics. I feel calmer and steadier and happier. When food is food, exercise is exercise and my size/body/health/pain is just what it is, I feel less overwhelmed and more optimistic. I have less black and white thinking. I know that am doing my best and I can still carry on with my habits in other areas that serve me best today! It doesn’t matter to my workout plan that I just ate a bowl of ice cream, I can still hop on the bike and do my thing.
This is something that helps me stay clear on my goals and know there are so many ways that I AM supporting my body and that I can celebrate all that I AM doing to have a healthy body today and every day.
Let’s practice being so kind to ourselves! Take it easy and do the next baby step towards what feels good for you.
Along with all of the fascinating lessons and changes that life continually brings, I wanted to share with you some of the deep peace I have felt in the gift of travel after so long.
The sights and smells and sounds… the richness of being in a totally new place. The colors!
I wish I could feel this wonder in my every day. I long to cultivate a practice to hear my own songbirds with the same new ears of delight and wonder that a tropical beach could bring.
I would love to imagine my feet in my shoes in the rain to be just as intriguing as the feeling of walking on soft white sand.
We have this one precious life and all of these experiences and choices to make. I wonder what will call my soul to come to explore and dive in and dance next?
I want to keep my heart open to the possibilities of wonder, of colors and textures and possibilities.
In this type of renewal, I can feel brand new like a beginner at this life, while deeply grounding in the knowledge that I am whole and me, I am me!
And from this place, the world around me richer, my heart is so much more open to everyone and everything around me. This feels like living whole-heartedly.
So much change. After living alone with just my son and I, my partner and his kiddos moved in. Such a wonderful soup of blending, merging, snuggles, and compromise. We have discovered so much sweetness alongside so many adjustments!
The overwhelm of change has fleshed out in mysterious and fascinating ways.
I think that with any change, no matter the quality or desire and willingness to evolve, there is also loss. I am a person who has adapted well to having many long nights on my own, puttering, self-caring in ways that unfold naturally. Lots of space have I had over these years of widowhood and solo-mama hood. Lots of natural healing time, alongside the loneliness that can bring. Yet, it’s how I’ve been in most of my motherhood.
What I have realized since this big merge, is that I am in desperate need of sacred space, rituals, and routines that connect me to me. In a two-bedroom home with three boys, two adults, and a dog, I have found myself delighted to be locked in the bathroom with my morning coffee and my journal a few times. Ha! I am a creative soul. I’ll get my quiet where I can.
I began to read Mark Nepo’s teachings this year and his commitment to cultivating that deep relationship with your soul self has really stuck with me. How important it is to befriend yourself, what that looks like only you can know. But you must create the intention and willingness to go there to discover it. Whether it’s going to nature or just sitting to be in silence. I feel there is nothing as important as knowing yourself so that your life can unfold with the intentions that you deeply long for in life: peace, happiness, resilience, open-heartedness, compassion, whatever those things are for you. Whatever helps you feel truly YOU, your spark within, that deep inner candle that flickers and sometimes holds steady, so strong. That deep knowing.
When we are connected to that, we can be more at peace in our human lives. It’s beautiful really because alongside that flame can live our deepest sorrows but also our deepest joy. I have felt this profoundly in my grief healing journey and creating the space to hold myself wherever I am at is crucial for me. I crave it and long for it.
So I knew I would need to find my space in this new dynamic of my life.
As the seasons changed and my massage hut in my backyard no longer felt viable weather-wise this year, there was my solution for a space for me to rest, read, meditate and hold my morning routine. I am committed to a morning ritual that is an evolving set of things that fuel my mental, physical and spiritual health. I have been delighted to work on tiny habits like just getting my journal out and seeing what happens or just stepping on a yoga mat to stretch and see how my body feels like moving. No presh, I’m learning to just show up.
When I hold this morning space for myself, I am more at ease in my life, centered, grounded. I have more capacity to take on the day with joy and self-awareness.
It feels so beautiful to be here. A gift to myself each day.
I have some seriously vulnerable things to share with you!!! I just survived my worst nightmare and am living to tell you about it…. Healing through sharing…here goes.
I just went on a tropical beach vacation with my favorite people in the world…in my most voluptuous body of my life in a swimsuit.
That’s it!
I’m embarrassed to say that this to me was an actual nightmare.
My body was living this as if I were going to die. I was not ready for this.
It was dawning on me that this intense amount of body shame I have had for myself my whole life was a real, living thing. I knew that I was a product of our Western world’s diet body-shame culture. But this felt so over the top here.
Packing and preparing for this trip was completely anxiety-producing – almost debilitating. I was having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep. And I was about to go to paradise and be with my best friends to have the time of our life.
My head could find little logic in any of this.
I am actually a LOVER of people in every way, all shapes and sizes. I massage and touch people every day and adore bodies. I geek out on healing and am fascinated by nearly every single thing about our amazing human experience through this lens.
I appreciate my clients in all of their ways of being. Always. Never a judgment or harsh thought on any of the thousands of butts and legs and tummies and backs I’ve seen.
Bodies are beautiful, all shapes, sizes, and versions of any of us and I know that those bodies change. I really love watching people evolve and hold them with so much compassion and love.
So WHAT is happening here?
Why this stress, lady?!
I am going to my best friend’s wedding. On an island.
First of all, I’m so grateful and feeling majorly privileged to be able to go. It’s a pandemic, first of all. Super complicated, I haven’t been on a plane in how long?
Plus, I really never imagined this kind of trip for a girl like me. The Bahamas feels like… pretty fancy. It’s a dream! I should be so excited, elated, over the moon.
Yet here I was TRIPPING OUT on how much my body had changed since I’d seen these friends. I used to be this, I used to be that. I used to be an athlete, younger, ready to do some sprints, whatever comes with all those things! Now I have thicker thighs and cellulite in weird places and a lot of extra.
“What will they think?” felt like a real, painful conundrum. How would I feel with my body posted to pictures online? Any picture, swimsuit or not. “Gosh, what will people think of me?!?”
I’m just not digging my body right now, how would they?
Wow.
I can’t believe I care and I can’t believe the power of these messages.
I know that what others think is none of my business.
Yet apparently my Buddhist-natured practices of self-love had never been able to crack this nut of self-shame and loathing.
The body-positive movement had really not undone any of this fear, panic, self-judgment.
I love myself. I do.
I thought I did!
But when put to the tropical island test, I was panicking, dieting, freaking out.
I saw what was happening and I realized that this was not me living my best life here. This is not me at my core.
At 45 years old, what I want is to thrive in my body and be unconditionally in love with this amazing life that I’m living, this healthy body with all of its flaws, curves, aches, and age. I want to live this deep knowing that I am actually a being of love energy. I am whole, complete, and lovely just as I am! I am ME! Unconditionally awesome and beautiful ME!
Other people see me for my beauty, why is this difficult to see myself?
So, I realize that I am so done with this.
Done with the pain of dieting, fantasies, and not loving who I am, wherever I am, however I am. I am done with the self-shame.
I am ready to change and learn how to love myself.
I am decided.
Yet I didn’t even know where to start.
I literally didn’t even know how to start loving myself.
Me, Katy, who has watched a million teachers’ videos, podcasts, speakers, friends talk and guide on self-love, body appreciation…all the lessons and truth and wisdom that I “know”.
Yet here I was at the starting line with myself, a total beginner.
What did I do? I chose a starting point.
I thought of all the small things that were in my control that I could do in the next month before the trip that helped me to feel beautiful, see my beauty, appreciate my body, my shape, and find my glow.
I budgeted some self-love energy and bought new earrings, some beautiful dresses. I got a facial and waxed my wiley brows (a once every 4 year event:). I browsed plus-sized swimsuits to appreciate the beauty of all sizes of bodies and ordered and tried on 30 swimsuits that were bangin’ on a curvy body. Gorgeous prints and styles that I knew I’d love to rock, not just my standard black suit. I got a tan against the advice of said esthetician.
I practiced visualizing myself on the beach among my friends, living adventures that were full of pure joy, self-appreciation, and presence. It was incredibly difficult to do at first with the compassion I was longing for. But I practiced over and over, loving me in my clothes, loving myself, my hair, my body, my movements, my strength. I focused on the gratitude I have for my amazing health and rad strong body.
I have an incredible partner right now who adores me, loves my body as it is, loves me for me. I know this. I practiced hearing this and seeing through those eyes.
I practiced distancing myself from my thoughts about myself and just letting myself BE. Be present. Just BE, girl. Chillllll.
I worked with my therapist on this in a deep somatic way, what does it feel like to have that love for yourself no matter what, where does that love live in your body? What does it feel like when another loves you unconditionally and can you receive that love and appreciation? When do I feel beautiful and what does that really feel like?
I worked with a coach who helps me to change my thoughts around things like really understanding that our beliefs shape our reality. Time to undo these thoughts that keep me feeling terrible, that keep me small and ashamed in my body. To really expand on those thoughts that help me feel powerful, engaged, present, alive, happy, grateful…. How do I WANT to think and feel about myself and my life? Practice that!
So… I went on the friggin’ trip! I was overjoyed to be staying in a beach house with not only friends who were family to me but included two of my most gorgeous friends who happen to both be incredibly fit yoginis. I delighted in this gift from the universe, to do this self-love work under these conditions. Ha!
We arrived. I stripped down, put on my suit, and rocked the self-love like a zen badass for a week! Playing, dancing, paddle boarding, jumping off of rock walls in my swimsuit and my curves and all of me all week. I was able to completely let go of my fears, my judgments of self, and just BE. I would hear whispers of the old voices, the shame or shoulds, regrets, and fears about my body and health. It felt like such old news compared to paradise. Like, give me a BREAK, small thinking.
I was able to adjust and just be. I could immerse myself in these moments of the present moment. So much love, so much fun and delight.
All of the work I had done finally took hold, the letting go had finally happened. My starting block self-love steps set me on a path of so much appreciation for my body that I won’t go back. I just refuse to hate this body anymore. I refuse to get that distracted about what’s important to me. I know what really matters. It’s time to love me. It’s time to be 45 right now and just be right where I’m at, who I am right now. Me, beautiful me!
My loving friends who are like family to me embraced me as I am (of course!!) and I survived (of course!). This trip wasn’t about me or my body after all. It was about my dear friends’ wedding, the love, the friends, our community, these incredible people and connections. Total magic. This was a soul-filling journey of self-love and adventure. It was about connection to my son, our family, our friends and community who are all of my son’s reminders of his dad, my late husband… an immersion into love. None of which had anything to do with my shape or size.
Don’t we just live in a total mind-fuck of a culture where you can be dieting your whole life?! I see it clearly and I am done. I’m ON TO YOU, B.S. body-shaming culture. It’s total baloney.
There are so many other peaceful, amazing, expansive ways to approach health, change, and loving ourselves to wellness that I am choosing a different path. I will continue to delight in this journey and share and expand this message of love.
I am sharing all of this now because it is SO COMMON, it is so deep and we are nurtured to hate ourselves. We are conditioned to see our deficits and try to force ourselves to be different, resist the beauty that we have in our differences and imperfections.
It’s time for me to share this and bare all because I feel like I’m done hiding and feeling any shame around this.
I am sharing this because on the outside, most people would NEVER guess that I have all of this inside of me, they come to me to help them love their bodies! I come across as incredibly high-functioning and well adjusted:) haha. I am but also…. I have, like all of us, this HUMAN HUMAN side. My wounded side, the shadows, the soft parts, the parts that we get to shine a light on. I am ready and wanted to share my heart and soul because vulnerability is so frigging healing.
I am on a continuous journey to find my healthiest self, mind, body, and spirit. We meet ourselves, all the parts of us right where they are.
I am committed to loving myself just as I am in each moment. I look forward to more movement, healthy eating, laughter, play, and so much love.
Starting with me and my love for myself always.
Let’s do this, people! Let’s change the way that we think about our bodies together and love on all of our differences. I am new to this, which feels shocking to me, totally exciting, and also scares the shit out of me. I am new to sharing so vulnerably that it feels also paralyzing. I’m scared to offend anyone, to turn anyone off. But I love you, and I’m just going to say F* it and hit send!
“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the tasks we’ve assumed, the problems we have to solve. They’ll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.”
I was given the gift of a retreat to Harmony Hills Retreat Center on Hood Canal. I cannot even fathom how I have gone so long without this kind of a break in my life with how fast our life feels at time. Now to be still, to reflect, be cooked for, be around beautiful strangers who shared from their hearts… magic! I highly recommend trying a retreat of any kind for your body, mind and heart to recover whenever you need. It can be an overnight to an airbnb by yourself as one of my clients is doing. It can be simple. Maybe it’s just a whole day of quiet set aside for you. This kind of condensed healing time allows one to honor and return to the preciousness of what’s important. Letting the world fall away for a while, you can see from another lens, a look back at your life that gives it new light.
“Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between.
Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart.
Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick. The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open.
In daily terms, we call this checking in with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper?
Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding?
When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misperceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart.”
