Thoughts tonight on learning the language of the body as a person with chronic pain and autoimmune issues arising from childhood adversity: The body doesn't have thoughts, it has sensations. The thing is, emotions are these complex things that often really start with sensations in the body to which we ascribe meaning, and many of … Continue reading Pain as language, and other conversations →

This morning I had an appointment, and I had to sit in my car for about 30 minutes beforehand. There was this tree outside the office of the kind I think the Victorians would call picturesque. It would fit right in with the florid writing of a gothic horror set on the "blasted moors." And … Continue reading Wholeness →

Trauma is not one thing; it is a mass of definitions overlaid on the experiences- some acute, some chronic, many both- of real people, whether as individuals, groups, communities, or cultures. In thinking through that list, there is an important subtext: we are all individuals who are part of multiple groups, communities, and cultures, and … Continue reading Part I: Trauma as Nexus →

Lilies draw in oxygen down their long stems into the depths of the water through a network of plants that share space, moving oxygen from young new plants through to older, tattered lilies. This cycle of breath from one to the next, feeding all along the way, is perhaps one way to think of how … Continue reading Giving Freely →

Often we look at what is going on around us and we get overwhelmed at these huge systems that need so much fixing. We tend to take a stance in our language as though they are broken machines on a table in front of us needing to be fixed, or else these engulfing mechanisms in … Continue reading On Being a Cog →