I've been thinking a lot about abortion lately. I know a lot of friends who have had an abortion, I myself have had two. The first time I was living in a van and much healing was needed afterwards. I was much younger and did not know warm loving hands from friends and family would have helped in the healing process. I spent a lot of time afterwards 'looking' for myself again. The second time, my ability to trust my decision and to find the people and, my go-to, healing foods helped me so much in my process. And, as I write this, I think of all these instances where being better resourced brings our healing deeper within us, tangible and not so elusive. Whether it's healing from giving birth, abortion, huge or small life changes, I wish feeling resourced wasn't such an incredible privilege. Life is wonderfully unknown most of the time and those hands on our backs are worth their weight in gold.
Body work, whether it is hands on or simply learning to be present with our internal experience, plays such an incredible role in how we move through change. Being able to notice where we hold tension, grief or happiness, is a first step in any type of healing work. From here we can make decisions about how it is we hold this experience of, for example, grief. We can choose to shame ourselves, ignore it, hide away or, instead, show compassion towards this part of our self that is grieving. Our bodies open up to the grieving process and, instead of turning away from it, we have begun the process of pulling down the roadblocks towards healing.