I took a Women’s Studies course in college, where I experienced one of my first “awakening” moments. Yep, your math is right. I spent years, decades really, in the Awakening stage.

Ripples. That was the working title of the book I never actually wrote.
When life events, both global and personal, smell worse than a fish-market dumpster fire, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Paralyzed, even. When things are so bad, what’s the point of trying to make the world a better place? What can one person actually do?

Content Warning: This post is about sexual assault. It’s okay to skip this one if you need to.

2016 was a year that shook me relentlessly to wake up. The contentious political landscape assaulted my senses every day, and I couldn’t look away. Then one morning in October, an old video of presidential candidate Trump bragging about grabbing women surfaced. I experienced a seismic shift in my body. I knew exactly what it felt like to have a brazen stranger-danger man grab me in the most intimate place without permission.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to wrangle my memories about the most vivid events that sparked my awakening. Because I tend to write the stories that are the loudest when I sit at my desk, this retelling will not be in chronological order.

Part 1 – The Dream

My feelings about weight loss are simple and complex.

Simple: It’s your body. You make the decisions for your body. Your decision to lose weight (or not) is none of my business. The end.

Complex: Diet culture sucks and 95 percent of diets fail.

One of the go-to strategies I share with women who want to offer their bodies more acceptance is to create a sensory moment. Engaging the senses is a powerful way to connect with your body.
Notice I said “moment.” This is meant to be something you can do quickly to reconnect with your body, self-soothe, or offer yourself love, even if you aren’t feeling very loving.