The interviewer interviews herself in this one

I love being interviewed. It’s also not a secret that given a microphone I’ll just talk for hours. I used to pretend I was being interviewed by Oprah, and I would document, in detail, my success story.

So now I’ve decided I’m done waiting for someone to ask the questions I want to give the answers to.

The interviewer interviews herself in this one

So Ali, what made you want to be a somatic coach?

I’ve always been interested in somatic work even without knowing what somatic work was. I didn’t have language for things like “the body keeps the score” or “what is the reaction in your body to when this happens?” But its always felt like the kind of work I was drawn to. I remember the first time I ever heard someone talk about somatics and the nervous system I was a teenager and driving to the hospital with my mom for another admission, and I was listening to a podcast where the guest was Bessel Van Der Kolk (who I’ve since studied under) and I felt like he was the first person to give language to how I felt. And looking back I can notice all the little steps guiding me in this direction, from taking my yoga teacher training to studying to be a death and transplant doula. I still don’t know if I’d say I wanted to be a somatic coach, or even that I strongly identify as one, but the lineage of somatics matters so much to me, and I love the embodied transformation that gets to happen here so any way I get to be part of that, I’m all about.

Tell me about the day you knew you needed a transplant?

When people ask me this question, I think they expect me to tell the story of the day I had my transplant evaluations, or the day Paris was born, or some date on a calendar that I can look back and point to and say “that’s the day” It wasn’t like that, though. I knew before I ever started any kind of official process to get the transplant. I knew in the way I often know things, which is I force and insist and sometimes feel like I bully my way towards outcomes, but I’ve always ended up being right. When it became official, I already knew it was coming so I didn’t have any strong emotions about that part, not in the way I hear a lot of people experiencing when it feels like it just came out of nowhere. I think a part of me always knew, since as long as I can remember. I think the other part of it was looking in the mirror and admitting I couldn’t live my life the way it was happening anymore, and I needed a different option. I feel like I chose it, and I just knew deep in myself that this was the next right thing.

Who were you before and what did you dream of then? What changed?

the “before” Ali feels like such a different person. Literally and figuratively. It would be a much smaller list to count the similarities between me and who I used to be versus the differences because almost everything is different. The joke is I actually have a personality now, instead of just a collection of survival responses. Especially towards the end (the years directly before my transplant, when we lost P) I didn’t really have capacity to be much of anything. I didn’t have the energy to dream, or to envision a different future for myself. When I was really young, I always knew I wanted to help people, but looking back on that now I think a lot of how I envisioned that was just the result of trauma. Two main things changed: the first being my actual capacity to be in a physical body, the extent my illness impacted my functionality and ability to be a human in the world. And the other being I have tools now I didn’t have years ago, and I’ve learned how to exist in a marginalized body, and I know more about who I am and what I care about and what makes me resilient and how to ask for what I need.

What things has your intuition been most right about?

A lot of things. My intuition is incredible, and every time I don’t trust her I end up regretting it (see my New York Taxi story - I ignored my intuition on that one). My intuition has been right on every single medical diagnosis I have, about Paris (right down to the details of how he would die). I remember last year I was staying with a friend in a cabin and my intuition told me we had to get out of the area, which we did, hours before they closed the roads due to an out of control wildfire where if we’d stayed we would have been locked in. I’m often right about when its time to leave - jobs, places, people - even if I don’t always listen, or I try to rush it, There are also a few things I feel very strongly about that are yet to be confirmed, so I’ll let you know if my intuition is right on those ones ;)

If your little girl self were giving you advice, what might she say?

She would probably be really impressed with me, and the life I’ve made for us. I think there are a lot of things about my life now about my (nearly) 28 year old self that would make my 8 year old self proud. I always think I turned into the person who would have protected me as a child, which is my greatest power. But I think if she were to tell me anything it would be keep singing, keep dancing, keep believing you’re going to be the coolest person ever because you are.