***

And that’s the thing. The body knows.

This world teaches us to disregard the wisdom of our bodies. When it hurts, we push past the pain. That swirling sense of unease we call gut instinct? Woo woo mumbo jumbo. Our kids feel run down with a minor cold – we push them to school; no sick days unless you have a fever. It aches? Take a pill. Tired? Down some caffeine and push through.

We learn suspicion is the correct response to the signals gifted us by bones and guts and skin. At best, they are an inconvenience to be silenced. At worst, a lie determined to hold us back. We can’t read the signs because we’ve decided that our bodies speak a language not worthy of fluency.

But that’s the thing. The body still knows.

The body knows what the mind does not. The body knows what we are not ready to see. The body knows what we do not want to face.

The tightness in your throat? The one that makes you feel silenced when she comes home at the end of a long day?  The way your jaw clenches and your breath feels stuck in your chest? You are not being heard. Your voice has been stifled. You need wide open spaces that let your spirit sing. You need someone with a wild steady heart who is ready to listen. It will not happen here.

Listen to the tightness.

That tug deep in your gut? It cuts right through your not-quite-inhale when you first catch his eyes. He stands across the worn wood counter at the hipster coffee shop you’ve recently begun frequenting without knowing why. He likes obscure independent documentaries too, and he’ll bring you gone-to-seed dandelions in bed one lazy Sunday morning just so he can memorize what you wish for.

Listen to the tug.

The primal burn that declares danger?  The way his name makes a silent refusal rise from deep inside. His breath makes the hairs on your neck stand up in a way that alarms and pulses with menace even though there is no reason to believe he means harm. He will disrespect your boundaries. He will take what is not his. He has done it before. He will do it again.

Listen to the burn.

Because that’s the thing.  The body knows.

Some people have a sixth sense, and some are duds at it. I believe I must have it, because the moment I stepped into the house I felt a trembling along my skin, a traveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to it. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn’t.
~ Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Our bodies are sacred shrines of wisdom. The knowledge and truths of generations; spliced into our DNA and knitted into the fibers of our being. They are finely tuned instruments of insight and awareness and they speak our mother tongue, if only we are willing to listen.

But again and again, we ignore the insight. We discount the silent hush along our skin and the ache in our heartspace and the way our leg muscles twitch run-run-run despite our brain overriding with a sensible stay. In doing so we turn our backs on truth and expansion walk head on into danger, or complacency or the slow quiet death of living small.

But we don’t have to.

It is time to start honoring the ancient pattern of call and response gifted us by our animal bodies, by our heart pound and blood pulse and primal burn. It is time usher back your sacred knowing.

It is reclamation time.

So gather close the wisdom in your bones.
Honor the fire in your belly. 
Offer gratitude to the tug and the tightness and the way the chills rise across your skin when her finger trails down your arm. 
Give blessing to the heat of fever and the churning of rage and the ferocity of fear.
Bow before your holy body.
Listen to its voice.
Remember the language you were born knowing.

Remember how the body knows.

***

In the end, it almost took me out.  It caused a fire that eventually burned down all I held dear. Pushed me off the deep end of jealousy and insufficiency and lack. Brought forth demons who were not content until I was on my knees, hoarse and screaming and afraid. And I could feign surprise or shock or dismay. But I knew.  If I was honest with myself, I knew from the very start.

Because you see, the body knows.  It always knows.

The post The Body Knows: Honoring the Primal Wisdom of our Animal Skin appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

The seizures were threatening to kill him, her only son. There was no choice. When he was in the hospital – having his skull opened to remove the tumor and during the long recovery that followed- she wore her wonder woman panties every day. Until they were as frayed and thin and worn as her weary heart. Because they were proof of what she needed to remember. She was very, very strong.

~~~

The night – when he took from her what should only ever be freely given – she watched it happen from the ceiling. When she could not bear to be inside her body for a moment longer, she left it behind. Floated high above.

Later, she kissed him goodbye, her lips parched and hard against his, aware that they were watching. After the others had long since fallen asleep the silent, shuddering tears began. She crawled up the stairs, her legs refusing to hold her any longer. Her knees scratched on rough carpet as she crawled across the bedroom in the dark, searching desperately for her overnight bag.  She knew without looking that her pink lace panties – the first pair that had made her feel like a grownup – would be stained with blood. She closed her eyes, silent tears streaming down her face, and wished for a cape. Blue and red satin, she imagined, and powerful enough that she would not have to float next time – she could fly away and never return.

~~~

Afterwards, when it was done – when the choice was made and it was over and could never be taken back – she stood in the shower. Her frail shoulders curved around her grief stained soul. She held her body, one that so recently had held another,  and she felt as if the earth might just give way beneath her feet. She waited for the hot water to scald the memories from her skin. She pounded slick tiles with her bare hands, a primal keening rising from the deep well at the center of her grief.  She was broken open, cracked wide. It was not supposed to be this way. There is no superhero in the world strong enough to alter this one irrevocable thing that she had done. This time, she would have to rescue herself.

~~~

Lover, there will be days when there are no telephone booths to change in. Days when your own personal kryptonite has robbed you of your last bit of strength. Days when Wonder Woman panties and satin capes and scalding water don’t have near enough magic to transport you back to the core of your powers.

Indeed, there will be days when the most heroic act you can muster is changing the sheets on your bed. All of your energy focused on tucking and smoothing, as if meticulously formed hospital corners are the one thing that will save your life. It matters now at the close of the day, when everything in this world feels dirty and cloaked in shame, that your skin only be touched by something clean.

This is enough. This is more than enough. 

No, you cannot really fly. There will be no single bound building leaps. You will not win a race with a speeding bullet. There won’t be a man in tights and a cape swooping down to save you. It’s just you.  One person. Small and exquisitely mortal against the relentless pressing of the big, wide world.

But know this. Even without costume or talisman or amulet, you have power beyond comprehension.  You have brokered peace treaties. You have kept intact that which was bound for disaster. You have held the hand of the dying and brought life to the world. You have brought down empires and built them anew, the right way this time.

To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory.  In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born.

And you. I bow to your tender heart. Your fierce ownership of self. To the battles done in the name of health and wholeness and agency and truth. To the choices made that had to be made that nobody understands. To the judgement faced and the heavy grief cradled.  To the ways you have continued, even in the face of great loss and sacred things stolen and all that has threatened your hard won peace.

It is no small thing to survive this world.  And it is no small thing to stand tall and to claim this life and to thrive.

I bow to you, humble and awed.

Because you have been the saving grace of your own survival, again and again and again. 

And in the end, there is nothing more powerful than exactly that.

The post You are the saving grace of your own survival appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.