navigating the both/and

It’s the thick of January, the kind of cold that run to the bone, where fingertips freeze around car door handles and the air is a crisp shade of blue. It’s the kind of cold I think you only know if you’re an occupant of an arctic territory. I make jokes about Canadians being built different, that we aren’t called the great white north for nothing, and it’s true. Nothing about these frigid days bother me, and I feel an extra layer of gratitude for the warmth of my house. It’s winter, finally, and while it might feel long and daunting before too long the spring will return again.

I bundle myself up in blankets, watch another training for my somatics certification with Dr. Peter Levine and Dr Bessel Van Der kolk. Pioneers in the field, and yet I know their work stands on the backs of so many BIPOC and female scientists and practitioners.

The first time I heard Dr. Van Der kolk’s work I was a teenager driving down the now very familiar stretch of highway between my rural home and my urban city hospital. It was the first time I was introduced to the idea that there could be another way. That the body holds trauma, that we remember even when we don’t.

I’ver been reflecting on that memory, now as both a student under incredible minds studying this very topic that was introduced to me all those years ago, but also as I’m navigating the system from this embodied place. When I came up with this idea of a third way when it came to medicine and chronic illness, I was disillusioned into thinking I had the golden ticket and everything would become clear to me now. I think what its meant, instead, is that the experiences still suck, and I can hold myself through them. I feel the fear in my body, the anxiety, the constriction, and I know the tools to begin moving that energy so it doesn’t get stuck inside me.

I haven’t written a lot lately, which is due to a number of factors. I have a bunch of half written blog posts in my drafts folder, but every time I try to put pen to paper something gets lost in translation. I think about the genocide currently happening in our world, and the way we’ve become so ignorant to the fact that we all belong to each other. I have yet to find the words to make people care, and I realize if the words were there they’ve probably already been said, and we don’t care because it’s easier not to. I’m angry about that, but anger has become a signal lately to let me know I’m still human. If you’re outraged it means you’re still paying attention.

I think about the expansions that are taking place for me as we are now into the 2024 season. If you’ve been following me on instagram, you’ll know I’ve been up to a lot lately. My primary focus in my career is grief work. It’s this embodiment and somatic piece I touched on. It’s the ways we can support our nervous system through bodily experiences of grief, loss and pain. I have partnered with some amazing organizations I feel passionate about and aligned with, including the loss to love app where I’m hosting body grief support sessions for those navigating coming to terms with no longer trying to conceive as well as trauma informed yoga and breathwork. I’m also facilitating more transplant specific support groups with the team at Transplantlyfe. I’m writing content and talking about ritual and the role it plays in chronic illness and embodiment and nervous system regulation. And I’m deliciously in love with every part of this thing that I am lucky enough to call my job.

And in December, I spent a lot of time not talking to people. I curled up in my bed, and I had this experience of letting myself be really small, and I felt that contraction. I didn’t push myself to create content and I leaned into the supports around me. And I created this really beautiful ritual around a season of contraction.

I think what it comes back to, and what Peter Levine talked about today, is this both/and. It’s the titration between the positive and the unpleasant experiences, the expansion and the contraction. We don’t exist in a way where we’re meant to be in one state all the time. In fact for optimal nervous system resilience, we are to flow between states.

A lot is changing for me. A lot of expansion, a lot of contraction. globally, personally, relationally, career wise. And I keep reminding myself that I get to have options. That embodiment never means only pleasure or only pain. All things change, whether that’s good or bad, and when I’m embodied, fully awake to the entire spectrum of the human experience, I get to navigate it all.