[While I’m on creative sabbatical through the end of the year, I’m pulling some of the most popular posts from the archives and sharing them again. Today’s post was originally written in March of 2012.  I also have a special announcement so make sure to scroll all the way down for the exciting news!]

I had coffee Monday morning with pleasure catalyst and fabulous new friend Kerrie Blazek. As she told me about a weekend retreat that had put her deeply in touch with her body, one thought circled my brain, demanding to be heard:

The body is the foundation.

If we’re not in our bodies, we’re not in the moment. If we’re not in our bodies, we’re cut off from one of the biggest information centers and conduits of sensation and Love in the capital “L” sense of the word.

We are born knowing this, knowing that our bodies ground us in our lives. As infants we don’t need to think to know if we’re hot, cold, hungry, or needing to be held. Our bodies tell us. As a dancer, my body was my vehicle for expression. As I began working in physical theater I needed to know my body even more intimately as there was no choreographer to move me across the floor – every note that was hit, every word uttered, my body responded to from impulses deep within. My body was my tool and my craft.

Then I quit. I cut it off. Shut it down. Left it behind in favor of my mind. And I was miserable. It’s taken years to recover, finding my way back into myself slowly, searchingly.

The body is the foundation. If we are not present in our bodies, we are not fully alive.

It doesn’t matter what your body can do, what matters is that you live INSIDE of it. Embody your life. Embody your love. Feel life – taste it, touch it, experience it all through your body.

It can be terrifying. Our bodies hold memories we’d prefer to forget. They are scarred and wounded, vulnerable and strong. They are powerful beyond measure. As is our mind. But a mind disconnected from its body tells half-truths.

So many of us ache to escape what we see in the mirror. We judge it, berate it, cut ourselves off from it. We over-feed and under-adore. We struggle to make peace. Many religions and spiritual practices tell us to distance ourselves from our flesh, tell us that heaven is only reached when our body dies, tell us that to connect with the spirit realm we have to go up and out. I say the way to heaven is both in and through the physical. I say in order to be truly awake, we have to be able to live inside ourselves, deeply connected to our own inner wisdom. Our bodies are miracle babies, a union of Nature and the Divine. They speak powerfully. It’s time for us to listen.

What is your body telling you right now?

**********

And now for the news…I’m excited and proud to announce that I’m featured in the new book, Watch Her Thrive, out today! Inside you will find 83 stories of hope, courage and strength. Contributors include Jennifer Louden, Marci Shimoff, Tara Mohr and many other wonderful writers.

The book and the Watch Her Thrive Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving women who have survived rape or domestic violence, are the work of my friend Kimberly Riggins. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go directly to Women for Women International, a charity working with socially excluded women in countries where war and conflict have devastated lives and communities.

Grab your copy today (Nov 12 only!) and receive over $1000 worth of bonuses as well as helping give back to women in need. Check out the bonuses here (the next round of Shine is included!). Of course you can buy the book anytime after today too and feel good about doing good.

Click here to find out more and order your copy now!

P.S. In the book I’m sharing a very vulnerable story I’ve never written about publicly before. I’m taking lots of deep breaths and trusting that it will help someone, somewhere, feel less alone.

[While I’m on creative sabbatical through the end of the year, I’m pulling some of the most popular posts from the archives and sharing them again. This one feels very relevant right now. As I dive deeper into myself, releasing layers of resistance, I’m finding even more hidden below.]

I’ve been pondering resistance.

I happen to have a fair amount of it. I resist sleep (always have) until I’m over-tired. I resist being organized (even though I crave it). I resist setting up a creative space in my home because then I’d have to actually show up and paint (hello fear and judgment).

It hit me today, in a moment of blinding clarity, that I’ve started resisting some of the very things that grief taught me to soften into, and that I’d better return to those lessons before life hands me another kick in the pants. This was after I woke from a dream where I got a phone call that my daughter had been killed in a car accident at the age of 22. (She’s currently 5)

I talk often of life – and grief – being a spiral. We revisit situations, feeling their familiarity and the frustration of not having it all figured out (I thought I dealt with this already!). But we do it from a different vantage point on the spiral. We’ve changed. Life has changed. We’re ready to release, or learn, or heal on a deeper level.

Which brings me back to resistance.

What if, instead of judging ourselves (okay, myself) for feeling it, and trying to talk myself out of it (you KNOW you need more sleep Alana, what’s wrong with you?!) we fall head first into it. Why not feel the resistance fully, even if it means throwing a tantrum like a tired two-year old, and get to what’s underneath it?

I can figure it out, in my head, which does me little to no good. If I allow myself to feel the resistance in my body, to drink it like a camel at an oasis, to scream at the sky, my cluttered desk, my bed, “I don’t want to!”, I wonder what I would discover.

How about you? What are you resisting right now? Are you willing to find what lies underneath? I’d love to know.

Wishing you an enjoyable + enlightening tantrum.

[While I’m on creative sabbatical through the end of the year, I’m pulling some of the most popular posts from the archives and sharing them again. With October being a month to honor and bring awareness to pregnancy and infant loss, I’ve chosen some of the writing from the first year after Benjamin’s stillbirth. These posts bring tears to my eyes, because of course, three years later, I’ve forgotten what those early days were like. This is why I blogged through my grief – I wanted to capture the moments that vanish into the fog of memory. I wanted to always remember how devastating it was to lose my son.]

It’s interesting to watch grief takes its toll. I am so happy to have my husband home for three weeks after eleven weeks of work on the road. (He was home for a few days every week but it was a long haul and we are grateful for all of it). Every day it seems we have a moment where I watch us miss each other. We’ll have a conversation where even though we are on the same side, it feels like we’re fighting. The unhappiness is palpable.

Today’s moment happened to be in a Verizon Wireless store. I know where it’s coming from, I know why it’s happening and it still feels awful. I felt the wave rising and I knew I could either fight the lump in my throat or leave and let it go. Thankfully he understood. As I sobbed in the car I thought about the secrets we all keep as we are out in the world. How many people are quietly grieving as they go about their day? How many end up in a car, a restroom, or a dark corner letting the wave wash over them so they can function again? How many of them fight to get through and end up yelling at their child, walking away from their spouse, or mistreating a customer? How many of us hold grief at arm’s length only to have it wreak havoc on our lives?

One of the questions I ask myself these days (when I remember) is what would compassion do here? Then I take a deep breath and turn in that direction. It’s not always the easiest choice, but without a doubt, its the one that feels the best.

*****

Ada and I had a long conversation about death tonight. It started as we talked about our good friends – family really – who recently separated. Ada wanted to know why they were sad. Then she talked about their dog that died earlier this year, then our dog that died a year before that. She wanted to know what happened to them after they died, then what happened to her little brother, and why they all died. She wanted to know Did the veterinarian make my brother alive again?

It’s so hard to know how much to say and how to say it. I don’t want to scare her. I also know how harmful lies and adult expressions can be. Children take everything literally. When I was in my Masters program I took a workshop on how to help children understand death and their experience of grief and they made it very clear – don’t lie. Don’t tell them Grandpa is up in the sky because then if they get on an airplane, they might look for him. Be careful when talking about sickness or they’ll be terrified if they, or Mommy, or Daddy gets sick. Whatever you do, don’t tell them the person who died went to sleep or they’ll never want to close their eyes again.

So we talked about the fact that their bodies stopped working. We talked about their spirits going to a place where they are loved and safe. We talked about bodies either returning to the earth, or to the air. I was as honest, as age appropriate and as positive as I knew how to be, while still wondering if I was saying too much. She had lots of questions. Then she thought about it for a while and said I don’t like it when they are in two. I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Like Buster and my baby brother, when they are in two pieces.

Ah, you mean when their bodies and their spirits are apart?

Yes. I don’t like that. She smiled. But Squirt and TC (the cats) are alive. Ella (the other dog) is alive. I’m alive. You and Daddy are alive.

Yes we are sweetheart.

May we be so for a good long while. Especially you, my sweet, especially you.

[While I’m on creative sabbatical through the end of the year, I’m pulling some of the most popular posts from the archives and sharing them again. With October being a month to honor and bring awareness to pregnancy and infant loss, I’ve chosen some of the writing from the first year after Benjamin’s stillbirth. These posts bring tears to my eyes, because of course, three years later, I’ve forgotten what those early days were like. This is why I blogged through my grief – I wanted to capture the moments that vanish into the fog of memory. I wanted to always remember how devastating it was to lose my son.]

Time heals all wounds.

You’ll feel better in time.

Eventually the pain will lessen.

The first 3 months…the first 6 months…the first year is the hardest.

These are all true to a degree, though they offer thin comfort. They add to the illusion that every day is better than the last, that every month is easier than its predecessor, that once you’re through the worst of it, the worst of it is gone. Which might be true but likely is not. Grief is not linear. It could be any other shape – a circle, a spiral, a wave, a triangle even but it is not a straight line.

I seem to feel a shift every few months. There was a lightening at 3 months, then again at 6, and at 9 months, I was feeling able to move forward in my life in a different way. But 2 months ago, I was thrown back to the beginning, to the intensity of daily, sometimes hourly, waves washing over me, demanding that I sob or rage or both. The news of a close friend’s pregnancy – her third child – with the same timing as mine with Ben, brought to the surface feelings that needed to see the light.  It has not been easy on either of us – joy dampened by sadness, a friendship strained as we struggle to understand each other.

I have felt through this entire journey that while I have been mourning my son, other hidden pain has shown up to be healed. There were times I would sob and wonder why the pain seemed old. I would get angry and as I took myself away to hurl rocks at the earth, it was as though a part of my brain closed since childhood was opening. I can’t tell you what I was angry about and I don’t care. I know that it needed – and found – release.

When I heard the news of my friend’s pregnancy, I felt as though I’d been hurtled back into time, back to those first months. I found myself wondering why, even as I knew the answer – grief is not linear. The worst has passed, for now, but I am not sure what will pull me under again. As long as I stop fighting and let myself float, I trust that I will resurface, a little less sad, a little more whole.