the body keeps score, so treat it nicely
Originally published in ju·ju, March 2019. (ju·ju was a newsletter I published to accompany my self-care brand, red dirt, which I closed in 2021.)
“What makes you resilient to trauma is to own yourself fully.” — Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
As far back as I can remember, the change of seasons was a slightly prickly experience for me.
I met cooler days and shorter nights with a sense of mild dread as a kid — I was prone to nightmares, easily startled and in a constant state of repressed anxiety, all of which seemed to increase when it was time for the seasons to do their thing.
I learned to feel the changing seasons with a buzzing sense of expectancy in my bones, sometimes going days without sleeping in manic states of restlessness that only subsided when my body was deep into the next season and could relax with predictable sunrise and sunset patterns.
I think a lot about the relationship between anxiety, trauma and my body these days. Like most of us, my body has survived a lot, and I've been wondering when it remembers what I've willed myself to forget.
Our society is incredibly disembodied, all but requiring we ignore how we feel — physically and emotionally — for the sake of success. Abstain from foods we enjoy, work when our body wants sleep, frenetic movement when we crave stillness. Constant cycles of deprivation and sacrifice are #goals.
“It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.”
My journey toward healing depression, anxiety and trauma has been inextricably linked to unlearning body hate and dissecting rigid, sexist ideas about pleasure. It has become more about being "in my body," too, and beauty rituals help reclaim a softness I had long tried to push away.
My sensitivity — to the seasons, to other people, to my own feelings — used to feel like a fatal flaw. I worked to create a tougher barrier between myself and the world because I thought it would keep me safe. A fool's errand.
Fuck that barrier. It didn't serve me then, and it won't serve us now. We’re born soft and finding our way back to a place of tenderness is where the healing begins, in my opinion.
However you're meeting the new season, I hope this spring is magical and healing for you.
stay soft,
whitney