Photo: Pattern of plant. Fluorescence, by oldTor via Flickr. Image description: A pink/purple shape on a black background, outlined in purple, roughly circular, with lobes. There are points of light rising out in the middle and in the lobes.
Content note: mention of the existence of sexual assault
Before anything, I was a dancer. I understood the world by the way my body moved through it.
Or, before anything, I was a girl. I understood the world by the way my body was perceived by others.
Both of these are true.
I went kicking and screaming into adolescence. I did not want my girlbody to change into womanbody. But the body is element, is season, is embedded in the cycles of time. My body changed, and I changed with it.
I came to love my womanbody with my dancer’s bodily intelligence and openness. I reveled in the pleasure of a silk dress on my thigh, of chocolate mousse on my tongue. The joy of late summer sun warming on my upturned face. The comfort of sliding into bed on a cold night to nestle into the soft, warm curve of my sweetheart’s body.
I also experienced pain in my body and the distress of how my body was perceived and treated by others. I found myself in uncomfortable physical and sexual situations that I wish I had found my way out of sooner than I did. But I would not call any of my experiences sexual assaults, and in not having been assaulted, I am a rare woman and femme in this society.
Because of this, I understand my body as more a source of pleasure than pain. And so when things are difficult, frightening, or uncertain, I try to return to my body. I try to make sense of the moment as an embodied being. What can I learn by standing still on the earth with my bare feet? What might I hear when my body is floating in the salt water of the ocean? What messages might I receive when I let myself be simply a body surrounded by elements of air and earth or water?
Once, an editor who read my manuscript-in-progress told me I used the word “body” far too many times in the poems. It made me realize that I shorthand a whole universe of experience, sensation, knowledge, wisdom, and being-ness with that small word.
Now, my body is entering into a new cycle, a cycle of aging, a new reckoning with societal understanding of my body. No longer a body for bearing children, it is no longer desirable by the culture at large. Having celebrated my 46th birthday two months ago, I am marking the ways my body is recording the passage of time. Wrinkles on my face, the soft skin on my hands, streaks of grey in my hair. I am starting to understand how middle-aged women experience invisibility in this culture, what the shift from being perceived as an object to not being perceived at all might feel like.
And this time, I don’t want to go kicking and screaming into the next phase of my body’s cycle. I want to embrace the change of my body with love and curiosity. I want to learn what more my body has to teach me. I want to wield strategically and subversively the power that comes from being invisible to men. Some days, I feel at peace with my body entering into this next phase of being. Some days, I don’t. On those days, I try to recognize my distress as internalized patriarchy and white supremacy.
~~~
We know these are evolutionary times. We are being asked to change so much. We must unlearn what the dominant culture has forced upon us about how we’re supposed to relate to each other, to ourselves and our bodies, to all the other beings on this planet, to the earth. And we must learn new ways or return to old ways of relationship.
I’m thinking about how our bodies relate to this evolution we are being called into. I believe any significant and lasting evolution cannot simply be mental, emotional, or even structural. It must take into account the body. As Tarot teacher Lindsey Mack notes, “The body is the space that houses your brain chemistry, your nervous system, your channel, your major systems.” So it makes sense that, as the field of somatic healing teaches us, that emotional and psychic healing must start and be rooted in the body. And, that embodied transformation can lead to societal transformation.
It also makes sense when we think about ourselves as a collective body, as Reverend angel Kyodo williams did in a recent On Being interview. She was reflecting on the uprisings for Black liberation in June in relationship to the collective body that is the U.S. She said that “any body that has had a great amount of toxicity as part of its system has to heave out that toxicity. … And we have had a long history in this country, baked into the structure of the design … to have so many people disembodied.” williams reflected that the COVID-19 created a moment for
an amazing, extraordinary, painful, and yet, collective experience of a sufficient quieting that allowed us to feel this collective body that we are as a nation. And there’s a whole bunch of individual bodies in there that said, “Enough. I can’t tolerate what is here, because I can feel it now. I can see it.” And the uprisings and the particular potency of George Floyd’s — not only his death, the means of his death and the expression of his death. And I mean that literally, the expression; the physical embodiment, the expression on the officer’s face, the expression of his death through the media. The expression of his death was too much for this body to continue to bear.
So we are in the process of heaving out the toxicity of our systems. It requires us to look clearly at the ways that heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism have deeply damaged our individual and collective bodies and how we relate to each other.
I believe the earth, too, is trying to heave out the toxicity that we have imposed upon it.
As I write this, the West is burning. My brother and his family in Northern California are under evacuation warnings. My parents in Seattle could not go outside for weeks because the air quality was so bad. And they are lucky, so far: too many people have lost their homes, people have been killed, people are getting sick and dying—from respiratory distress related to the fires and/or COVID-19.
The body that is this earth is burning, it is flooding, it is getting hotter and hotter, out of balance and reacting. It is wreaking havoc on animal bodies, plant bodies, human bodies.
~~~
What I know from my four-and-a-half decades of embodiment is that the human body is actually very wise. We have wisdom that lives within all of our bodies—perhaps ancestral, perhaps divine, perhaps both.
And I believe that this moment, this evolutionary season, calls on us to remember, uncover, and become aligned with the wisdom of our bodies. Wisdom that was there when we were born. Wisdom perhaps suppressed by our traumas and the messages we internalized from white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. And wisdom inherent in and cultivated by existing in a body not seen, or hyper-visible, or vilified by dominant culture: fat; disabled; Black, Indigenous, of color; trans; femme; and more.
I’m wondering if, as many of us recover this knowledge and find ways to more deeply connect with ourselves as embodied creatures, we might make astounding evolutionary leaps. New ways to become embodied, new ways to relate and understand our individual bodies and our collective body.
I learned recently that spiders see ultraviolet light. They, like many other creatures on this planet, can perceive a whole range of things that are invisible to humans and our limited bodily senses.
All around us, there are patterns of light and color, vibrations and energy forces that most humans cannot generally see or sense. But some people can see and sense some of these things. Sometimes these people are recognized and honored as shamans and medicine people, empaths and clairvoyants. More often, in this society, they’re pathologized, made to feel “crazy,” medicated, hospitalized, and/or abandoned.
What if everyone with such abilities were celebrated and listened to? And what if many more of us could sense these things? What if this is the evolutionary leap we are being called to make? What might it mean if our bodies evolved in such extra-sensory ways?
None of these musings are new, of course. Octavia Butler and many others have led the way in thinking about these kinds of possibilities. And in this moment of upheaval, of uncertainty, of the urgent and overwhelming need for change, I’m finding myself deeply curious about how we might find our way toward evolutionary leaps by grounding ourselves in our bodies.
What would it mean for more and more of us to live into the truth of ourselves as creatures of the earth—not only creatures of dirt and bone, blood and skin but also creatures of electricity and energy? What would it mean for more humans to be able to see and sense more clearly the strands of energy and our heart-vibrations that connect each of us to those around us—how we are literally connected to every being in our vicinity?
What if that kind of seeing was as common as how we perceive the weather, the flowers dying back in the fall, our loved ones’ faces? How would that change our relationship to “resources” and extraction? How would that shift human tendency to commit violence on each other and other beings?
Prompting:
If you can, go outside to a place where you can stand with your feet on the earth, or sit or lie on the ground (on a blanket is OK, I know it’s getting cold in the Northern Hemisphere!). If you are lucky enough to be reading this somewhere warm and near a body of water, you can do this floating in the water. You might want to have paper and pen, a computer, or recording equipment close by.
If you feel comfortable, close your eyes or soften your gaze. Take as many deep breaths as you need to center and ground yourself. Relax into the elements that surround you. Note how your skin feels in relationship to the elements. Now, see if you can sense how your muscles below your skin feel, how your bones feel, how your internal organs feel. Note any smells coming into your nose. Note any tastes in your mouth.
If you can, listen to the sound that is the farthest away. Stay with that sound for several minutes. Now extend your awareness—all of your senses and beyond—out to that far sound. Be there with that sound.
Now, if you can, listen to the sound that is closest to you. Is it inside of you? Bring all of your awareness to that sound and stay with it for several minutes.
Practice extending your awareness high above you, deep below you, and inside of you. Do this for as long as you want.
Stay open to anything that might come through to you—messages, visions, poems, songs. If you want, write them down or record them. And if you want to share them with me and the rest of the Starlight and Strategy community, please do so in the comments!
Engaging:
What else I’m reading/listening to/thinking about:
The election. I’m no fan of Joe Biden. But I’m taking the lead of Black and working-class organizers to help make sure he wins in a landslide. And I’m preparing to keep fighting all the way through January. Here’s some of the ways I’m doing that:
Joining The Frontline, a joint campaign by The Movement for Black Lives Electoral Project and the Working Family Party.
Sending letters to voters, via Vote Forward. Randomized trials show that unlikely voters who get a personalized letter are more likely to vote. (h/t to subscribers Jamie and Sarah—thanks for posting about it on IG!)
What are you doing in the leadup to the election? Share with us in the comments.
Continuing to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, and supporting Louisville organizers.
Getting educated about the hysterectomies performed on people in ICE detention.
Honoring the life and work of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, may she rest in power.
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Loved this so much, and needed this today. Thank you for your beautiful words. Can't wait to try the prompt tomorrow when I meet up with a friend at the park.