Embodied Newsletter

Hello lovely humans! This is my first Q/A post, and while I couldn’t answer every question you submitted, I did enjoy spending some time thoughtfully answering some. Stick through to the end for a small health update + one question I have for all of you! I’ll be frank—this is where I am living most days right now. Feeling awful every day has dried up my sense of delight in God. And…I refuse to be distraught about my lack of delight.

When we moved in late April, I ordered seeds. In thirteen years of marriage, we’ve never really had a yard to tend or enjoy. So I dreamed of color and cut flowers. I picked packs of seeds in wildflowers native to this land, and when the last snow of the season melted, I tilled and sowed and smiled. One of my dearest friends sent a card to celebrate buying our first house and in it she mentioned the second part of her housewarming present would come in the fall. Peony bulbs.

My fingers touch these keys trembling, having just traced two scars. One is for the placement of the medical device that was supposed to help me. The other is for its removal after we realized it was probably killing me. They sit just millimeters from each other on my chest, still red and raised, reminding me that the space between help and harm is thin and that hope is harder than most professional Christians and experts on the internet will tell you.

I wrote this last night, when the moon was full, and my body was too full of pain to finish. Today, pain is punctuating every moment, and yet I want to give voice to the vulnerability. I want to share from the shadows of my story. I want to let my words be a witness back to myself of who I am—and to you, of who you remain—because when weakness wrestles us to the ground for too long, the soul-amnesia just blocks out too much light.

Dear Embodied Friends, Iā€™m here to say thank you. Iā€™m also sharing a shorter version of this on IG, but I wanted to add a couple extra things for you, in this our smaller space. Iā€™m sending this to the whole Embodied list, but paid subscribers are welcome to comment. Embodied is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (If you are like: what happened??? Read some of my recent IG Posts.

CW: Medical Trauma. (My newest.) That was going to the be title of this post, because for weeks, I’ve not known how to tell you that the other shoe dropped. I’ve been living what might be one of your worst nightmares—a cataclysmic fall from the crest of finally feeling well.

CW: medical trauma and some allusions to sexual abuse. I’ll talk about both tenderly and with minimal details. I’m recovering more slowly from my port surgery than I expected (see the post linked below if that’s news to you!); so please read this with grace. I’m actively extending compassion to myself by not overfunctioning in how I write this. But I trust that somehow my little offering might open new doors to kindness in your life—or at least give you permission to pause.

Hello friends, I have a post on the way for you paid subscribers (on my recent national parks trip and healing from sexual abuse), but I am practicing what I preach and giving myself space to share it on a day I feel stronger. Sensitive content like that deserves all the space. Instead, I’m hooked up to an IV1 typing up a smaller, yet equally important, slice of my current story and one somatic practice to honor the sadness inside you.

(Here’s a very unedited glimpse into what I am up to on my epic national parks road trip. I decided last minute to share this post with everyone. I’ll be sharing more as I write my new book in my paid Embodied substack community, which you can subscribe to below. I’ll still be sharing things here for free too though! So grateful for each of you being here!) Last year I started foraging for mushrooms.

I’m writing this on Pentecost, which many Christian traditions call the Church’s birthday. The narrative of Pentecost in Acts 2 is like something out of a fantasy novel—the kind that’s just strange and beautiful enough to make you want to live inside it. The Spirit comes as wind and fire and the gathering of Jesus’ friends begins to speak old truths in new tongues. And, my, if that isn’t strange and hard to hear when you’ve been whirled and burned by people who claim to be speaking for the Spirit.