finding home in our bodies (and its implications)

“Each day must remain an exploratory expedition. We must remain tourists on our home terrain.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Everyday

what does it mean to remain a tourist in our home? when i wonder about what my home is, i land on my body, which houses the most tangible parts of me.

i want to highlight a difference here between being a tourist versus a strange in the homeland of our bodies — with my study of somatics, i have come to the understanding that most of us are disconnected from our body most of the time. and not by accident or some sort of individual shortcoming, but by design.

as someone who grew up christian, the dominant means of relating to my body was through shame. which was compounded by a capitalist patriarchy that benefits from me believing my physical form is never good enough.

so finding home in my body is a process, one i often forget about.

one thing i know about my body, a fact of it i often cannot escape, is my sensitive gut. my stomach is often upset, at least mildly, and despite years of trying to manage it, it still perplexes me.

upon reflecting in this moment on the hyper-sensitivity of my gut, taking into consideration recent understandings around the gut as the “second brain,” it makes more sense to me.
i’m such a sensitive person at a core, energetic level, that it makes sense that my gut often senses things my brain doesn’t in any given moment.

i’ve also become adept at hiding certain feelings from myself, such as anxiety, fear, insecurity. you’d think in moments when i’m incessantly reassuring myself of how not anxious, scared, or insecure, i’d be able to recognize the writing on the wall..

moments when i have the willingness and capacity to show up for whatever internal struggle is waging inside me, i eventually root down to the same place, over and over again: to the core experience of being scared.

i don’t know why, but it still shocks me. because on a day-to-day basis, i don’t consciously experience this fear. i guess that’s a survival adaptation or something..

but when i do tap into it, when i allow myself to feel it, it’s immense.
it’s a fear of death, of rejection, of never being good enough, of not accomplishing the things i want in life.

i mean, i think if i were to really sit with it, it’d all ultimately come down to fears of death and loss, whether literal or metaphorical (there are worst things in life than literal death, that’s for sure.)

and i’m learning how to love myself through it. not because i’m trying to be all gushy positive over here, but because it’s the only force i know strong enough to help me breathe through the weight of it all… such as environmental collapse – death on a grand scale.. death that has been taking over for decades now..

• i read a lovely Medium piece that speaks to omnicide and touches on why it can so hard to put our finger on the immense suffering all around us (and its impact on us)
• i also listened to an indigenous woman talk about the ways in which we experience the massive pain of environmental destruction, even if we’re in denial of it
• i’m reminded of a tik tok in which the speaker reminded everyone that no one is okay, especially the ones pretending they are right now
• and then a quote comes to mind: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”― J. Krishnamurti

i have newfound appreciation for people who are real about the times that we’re in, which is pre-collapse. we are in the midst of life as we know it winding down (crashing might be more appropriate), and a new world that we have no idea how to interact with, relate to, or survive in emerging.. it’s a mindfuck of a time, that’s for sure.

and none of us are prepared. correction: *most* of us aren’t..

it’s a very strange time, this sleepwalking towards apocalypse..

and yet, maybe that’s the most human thing to do..
OR more accurately, the powers that be are too good at distracting us, at keeping us so worn down we can’t see beyond the day-to-day grind of survival.. ya, i like that better, because it refrains from blaming the general populace for the corruption and destruction of merely a few..

…

i approached the page today with not much to say, not much to share — i feel out of it, foggy brained. so i’m grateful for how far i’ve managed to make it.

with that being said, i’m going to wrap it up here.

and i want to be clear that i don’t share all of this to be bleak or depressing or hopeless. i believe there’s so much room for the potential of what comes next. i understand the connection between destruction and rebirth, which we so desperately need..

i wish i had an offering for today, but for now, all i have is my love.. and my commitment to doing this with you, this scary life thing.

maybe together, we can be brave.

i’ll leave you with some words from Melissa Febos:
“I don’t mean to argue that writing personally is for everyone. What I’m saying is: don’t avoid yourself. The story that comes calling might be your own and it might not go away if you don’t open the door. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I only believe in fear. And you can be afraid and still write something.” – “In Praise of Navel-Gazing,” Body Work