On grief and sensitive bodies

and of course, on god:: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON august 16th 2022

I haven’t written from the heart in 17 days.

I usually don’t write for two reasons.

#1 - I am avoiding something. Or two, I am researching something and in the practice of it before I can write it.

I have been doing a grief program with my best friend Iman. Iman, a little over a month ago, lovingly cornered me and said, “Let me teach you the grief recovery practice.”

I was scared, because I knew I would lose more than I already have this year but I was also excited because it meant I would find myself again.

It takes someone you respect to tell you to get your shit together, doesn’t it? For you to listen - I mean. Someone who will not allow you to be someone you are not has to be someone who does not allow themselves to be someone they are not - they have to have walked it themselves, so you know they’re not just saying it, they’re living it - this whole alignment thing.

Iman is the type of person people are uncomfortable around if you’re not in your truth. I am probably one of those people too. And sometimes, I really get it - how uncomfortable it makes people feel. I wanna hide from Iman. I have daydreamed about never talking to her ever again if I couldn’t muster up the resilience to arrive in my alignment and I was scared she would judge me if I didn’t make it.

And you know what Iman says to me, when I feel that way? And when I tell her, I was daydreaming of just never talking to you again. She says, “You can avoid me or retreat as much as you’d like. I’ll be here when you need or want me to be. Your pace, baby.” And she says, “If you didn’t change anything about you at all from this day forward, you are magnificent, you are beautiful, you are everything that is right,” too.

She also says, “I can feel you want to shift though? Are you ready to re-commit to you? If not, that’s okay. I will still love you with all my heart. You have saved me, and changed my life and you do the same for so many others.”

One time Iman said to me: but darling, such is life. Life asks us at every turn, are we willing to re-commit to us? To what matters to us?

Life goes… are you going to commit to you when you’re sad? are you going to commit to you when you are scared? are you going to commit to yourself when you are tired? when you are depressed? when you’re broke? when you’re sick? when you are feeling not good enough? are you going to commit to yourself even when you’re horny? and we get to say yes, even then. Yes, even then. Yes… even then.

The rewards of this are exquisite. And each time we say, no, I can’t or I won’t, well we lose ourselves. It’ll take a while longer to come back.

But we always can. We always can.

My body has been through so much these last months - MCAS (mass cell activation syndrome) from vaccine, bouts of severe depression in which I was writing ‘reasons to stay alive’ lists for real for real, parasite, relapse of EBV symptoms, relational grieving, a staph infection from an insect, a torn ligament in my knee, the diagnosis of autism/ neurodivergent burnout, a release of a big creative project and the fear and the stress response(s) that came with that.

I am not completely healed yet. I am not completely recovered. But for the first time in 15 years, I am sleeping without meds or supplements a few nights a week. This is a miracle.

I never want to reduce or simplify the causes of disease and illness, and it is my belief that everyone’s root cause is different and I know nothing better about you than you, and I am by no means generalizing here, but for me, when I am not returning to myself by intellectual consent, my body has always always always (never once missed a beat on this) done so in a somatic consent way.

Each time I have not been in alignment with myself - whether that was work, relationship, exercise, sex, anything really, my body has told me. Big or small misalignment…My body has told me every single time.

I love my body so much even though I have abused, belittled, shamed and blamed her so badly. Even though others have also abused, belittled, shamed and blamed her so badly. My body is the smartest body, I have come to realize. The sensitivity I have once loathed is really just the best perception tool. The symptoms that come in when I eat processed foods are really just rejecting dysfunction. The depression is really just alerting to a lack of being seen properly. The rashes that would cover my entire torso and chest were always telling me I had anxiety I was right about that I kept denying. The infections were always trying to tell me I didn’t want to live this way and something had to change. They were always giving me permission to.

I am so done hating my body. I am so done telling my body that it should do better. And instead now I look to what my body is telling me about my life.

I listen to my body, even if it is inconvenient and a lot of trouble. I listen to my body even when I am sad, scared, tired, depressed, broke, sick, not feeling good enough, and horny. I listen to my body because it is, after all, the most potent God I have access to.