Your Body is your Partner in Awakening

October Love Letter, Part One

Listen to the full letter here:

a photo that my partner took and I love so much because it helps me see myself like he does

I’m starting to get the sense that people don’t love the fact that I’m writing about God.

Or maybe the more generous (and accurate) read is that some people are disoriented by this seemingly abrupt and incongruent shift of mine that they need to step away for a little while… and probably not come back. Honestly, that makes sense to me.

I mean, if you were to sit down today and read my book from 2019 about leaving Christianity and then, upon finishing, search for me on Substack… (right now, at least), you would find an essay about Thomas Merton and a two-part story about my self-professed spiritual journey of 12 Step recovery.

So, you know, I get it. That’s confusing and kind of weird and totally understandable for people to not know what to do with. And it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the reality of “audience turnover” in online spaces. I’ve had some degree of public visibility since 2016 and these past seven years have held a lot of unfollows and unsubscribes. That’s just the nature of the thing if you’re doing it authentically. And it took a while, but I’ve finally learned how to steady my nervous system amidst the survival stories that can get loud in this bizarre and sensitive subscriber model of commerce that we creatives get to navigate these days.

You might be familiar with some of those stories if you do this kind of work, too. The consuming fear that too many rejections will result in losing everything. The temptation to take orders rather than speak honestly; to remain “consistent” in your “branding” instead of vulnerably having a healthy human experience of growth and change in front of, you know, everyone in the world.

So it’s entirely possible that some of the more recent departures have been because a shift to a new platform (you deserve to know that I originally typed “playform”) (because of course I did) can be clunky and disorganized (at least when I attempt them). But the thing is: I’ve been doing this stuff for long enough to know that it’s not just that. This feels different. I’m a deep believer that rejections and exiles are invitations, and I feel that sense surrounding this. Something about it feels spacious and clear, allowing me to come into deeper integrity about what I want to do (work) and how I want to talk about it (writing). And my commitment to do and say everything as honestly as I possibly can.

In that spirit of honesty: I’m also going through some enormous personal shifts that will likely bring about something akin to an “audience turnover”. Because these shifts are completely transforming my identity — which will ultimately affect who finds resonance with me.

I will inevitably be writing more about this in the months and years to come, but one of those shifts is something I’ve kept very quiet for the past year. And that is that I’ve become a parent.

I struggled for about five minutes to figure out how to write that sentence… is it “I’ve become” or “I’m becoming?” Because the situation is that my long-distance partner has two children, and I won’t be moving to be with them until I’m finished with massage therapy school next summer. So for now, it’s just ten day visits every few months and most days this new identity doesn’t feel real.

But it is real. It’s happened. “Parent” is how two human beings are getting to know me. And they’re, apparently (brilliantly), already using it to their advantage when it helps them argue a case against their father. Which makes my heart do and feel all sorts and kinds of things when he tells me about it and I really don’t know how to talk about what the hell is happening to me right now.

For over two decades, I asserted very loudly and very confidently and even very publicly that parenting would never be a thing for me. Because I genuinely believed it. So these past few months have been a wild ride and now my heart’s beating really fast so that’s all I can say about that for today. This isn’t a secret or anything, but it is very sacred to me. And therefore pretty private. But it’s also my reality and it’s changing me, so it’s inevitably going to change the way I show up in the world and how I write.

And anyway, the point I was really trying to make is that I understand why it would be weird for people to see the woman who wrote a book that made them feel safe enough to leave their religion start using the language of that religion again.

The problem is that I truly cannot help it. Because I’m here to tell the truth and that’s the only way I’ve found so far to do it. And it also often feels like the only thing I want write about in this season of life: how returning to a spiritual practice, to God (of my understanding), and even to some of the stories and language of my childhood religion has fundamentally, literally altered my DNA. And what it is I mean by that.

Because this has radically changed the state of my nervous system. Has resurrected (pun intended?) my creativity. Has transformed my relationships. Has steadied my breath and overhauled my values and ethics, my awareness, and my behavior. And, fascinatingly, has even begun to prepare me for this profound new journey of becoming a parent.

Folks, please believe me when I tell you that this has all been a surprise to me, too.

PEAK Angry Twitter JLF phase. and this is hardly the worst of them.

I dare someone to go back in time and tell formerly and famously Angry Twitter JLF that she needs a relationship with God in order to actually be well. And not just, like, “well” conceptually… I mean physically well.

I dare you to tell her that her nervous system needs the stories, needs the connection, needs the “assured shout of cosmic hope”.

That her body desperately needs her to believe and then live as if she is not alone here, not the only one looking out for her survival.

And definitely don’t tell her that her stubborn denial of these longings is exactly why she’s so damn activated all the time in the first place.

Luckily, you don’t have to go back and tell her — psilocybin started taking care of that for you about two and a half years ago. Thank goodness I listened and started getting out of my body’s way — letting her finally tell me the truth about the immense physical toll it was taking on her for me to remain stuck in my pain and the beliefs I haphazardly fashioned from it.

And throughout this experience of getting completely out of her way, I’ve realized some things about bodies and nervous systems and beliefs that have been way too complex for me to figure out how to talk about over mediums like twitter or instagram and I will never touch TikTok as long as I live so… here we are. (Bless you, Substack.)

Because now that we’re all becoming interested in long-form writing again (🎉) it finally feels like the right time to start telling the story of how my body hasn’t just been my partner or ally in this very unexpected journey of spiritual awakening. She’s been my guide, my leader, my chaperone the entire time.

Somehow, my body always knows where love lives and is always trying to get me back to it whenever I get scared and leave.

And guess what? Your body does, too.

In fact, your body waking you up, making you well, and setting you free is the entire point of having a body in the first place. It’s the whole reason we’re here and they are, too.

And it’s exactly why I am so committed to teaching people about the personhood of their bodies, their actual animate identities, who they really are and how they speak. Because they love us more than we could ever possibly imagine. And, despite what most people seem to believe about them, they’re actually really good at their job. Especially the “complicated” ones, the sick ones, the “wrong” ones, the “bad” ones. The complex and sensitive, disabled and difficult ones.

Our bodies are here to be our teachers, our guides, our partners in awakening, always showing us the path. Our doorways into abiding, always, in the presence of God. That’s actually what they exist for. And I’ve finally decided that I need to start figuring out how to tell you why I know that’s true.

can you even believe I’m going to get to write for the rest of my life in a perfect town that looks like THIS?

The other morning I was listening to a classic Ram Dass talk on “Death as a Vehicle for Awakening”, and he said something at the very beginning that caught my attention:

“I have to confess at the outset that while my vehicle is words, I don’t really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words rather than the words themselves. For I’m dealing with an area, a realm of human existence that is basically not conceptual. And I’m faced with a predicament of trying to convey a non-conceptual realm through concept. So I must ask you out the outset to take my words with a grain of salt. If you don’t like them, don’t worry about them. They will pass quickly.”

I was cooking breakfast and I stopped to type as much of that quote as I could into my phone… and then didn’t stop typing for the next thirty minutes (don’t worry, my breakfast was fine). It honestly shocked me how much I resonated with the way he explained the struggle to “convey a non-conceptual realm through concept”, aka trying to communicate intangible, experiential realities through the material vehicle of language, both written and verbal.

This is water I feel like I am swimming in all the time — in my facilitation and my writing. That struggle probably had something to do with why I decided to shift the focus of my embodiment work to mostly wordless hands-on work. Where the bodies talk so I don’t have to.

Ram' Dass’ confession is exactly how I often feel as I try to advocate for bodies in everything I do. It’s a surprisingly fun struggle that I love and am committed to, but I also carry some fear around being misunderstood. And even though my body and I are way less afraid now that we’ve survived a handful of very public misunderstandings, we do still have eyes to see and ears to hear just how little curiosity there is out there on the internet when something gets lost in translation.

So I’m going to ask you to try something with me. I’m going to ask you to pay really close attention to your breath as you read the rest of this letter and the next next letter, too. Notice if your breathing starts to get shallow, or if your heart starts beating louder and faster.

And if you feel those sensations, I want you to try closing your eyes, placing both of your feet on the ground, and taking some deep, intentional breaths in through your nose and then sighing them LOUDLY out through your mouth.

I’m completely serious, I want you to do this. It’s called a Parasympathetic Sigh and it’s like a ThunderShirt for your nervous system.

And then, whenever you notice your heart and your breath return to your normal, I want you to open your eyes and keep reading.

Which is basically just the somatic enactment of, “Take my words with a grain of salt. If you don’t like them, don’t worry about them. They will pass quickly”.

here, allow this soothing image of poetry and snacks to help you in regulating your nervous system

I mentioned psilocybin before so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that Ram Dass and I share the journey of psychedelic experiences and altered states of consciousness.

I’ve had… a few. My language for what happens? Psychedelics, mushrooms specifically, help you get out of your body’s way. Not just during the journeys themselves, but more importantly in the weeks and months afterwards as you integrate and process the journey. I’ll tell you plainly that psilocybin is why I quit twitter, how I repaired my relationship with my mother, and the reason I was finally able to leave not one but two harmful relationships. It has also completely changed the way I view and believe in and experience the reality of life and death, which is something it’s kind of known for.

Psychedelics haven’t been the only thing, or even the most important thing, but what does make them an important thing is that they helped me see all of the other things more clearly and compassionately — allowing me to begin changing my internal stories and habitual patterns. Which then gave me the permission and bravery needed to do the actual work. The work that actually works best when you’re sober.

Ironically, I’m way less afraid to tell you about the drugs than I am about the sobriety. Because that’s the part where I’m not totally confident that I’ll be understood.

So I’ll let Ram Dass have a turn again and state this little disclaimer for me:

“I’m just going to tell you how I see the world. And many of you will say, ‘that is absolute rot’. And that’s perfectly okay. You have total license to reject me. But anything less would be dishonest on my part. So I’m gonna go for broke. We’ll let the chips fall where they will. …I just gotta play. You’ve gotta know people like me exist.”

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So in my next letter, I’m gonna go for broke. Anything less would be dishonest on my part.

You’ve gotta know people like me exist.

JLF