settling in
It’s been a minute! I wanted to make a note about the experience of coming home to my body after so many years of dissociation and disconnect. It’s striking to me that I now exist within the walls of my body, experiencing all of the feelings and sensations that I used to ignore. My body gives me so much insight into what I need, what I want, and where I need to be. It has become my most trusted guide, from what I want to eat to who I want to hang out with, to how I want to spend my time.
My body always knows — I just have to listen. For me, it comes in the form of a feeling deep in my core that provides me guidance any time I am able to listen. I used to wonder why I would get stomach aches with certain people, or in specific situations. Now this makes perfect sense; I was overwhelmed and needed time alone and my body was trying to tell me that. I can now sense more nuanced sensations and am able to avoid stressful situations more seamlessly, and also spend more time with people and doing the things that fuel me (rather than deplete me).
Listening to my body has also helped me to keep my people pleasing and codependent tendencies in check. My body will say “hey, you’re doing that thing again and it doesn’t feel good” and if I am able to hear that, it’s super helpful. I cannot always change the situation right away, but I do have awareness and can continue to challenge those old and unhelpful patterns.
My body has become my best friend, my home. This is such a shocking change from where I used to be, with my body as an untrusted enemy. This did not happen overnight, but with years of slowly listening to and beginning to trust my body. This began by feeding myself appropriately and trusting that my body knew what to do with the nutrients (surprise, it did!), and then learning to put emotions and words to the physical feelings in my body. I saw that my body actually totally knew what was up, and that I would learn a ton by listening to it. My body slowly became my home, the home I had been desperately needing.
It is now a sacred place that I want to protect and invest in, treating with the utmost respect and love. This may sound far fetched, but it’s totally possible and an incredible gift of this journey.
