I used to curl up on the bathroom floor the day my period started. I wanted the cool hardness to counter my writhing body, and I’d lay there for hours, uninterested in books or television, until the pain calmed. The blood and the discomfort seemed unjust then, and now, for me, and especially for women […]
body
Calling Our Bodies Our Own (Coming Out of Hiding)
My breasts and bottom were fair game for open discussion; I learned this early in life…Always the message was clear – your body is ours to look at, to scrutinize, and to judge. After years of my body belonging to others, I just want it to be mine.
When Healing Doesn’t Come
Healing. It’s such a tender word, soft even on the tongue. It sounds like what it is—purposeful, lovely, complete. It’s something I’ve longed for every day for the last two decades. And yet no matter how much I’ve prayed or ached, I am still not fully healed. I developed trichotillomania—a hair-pulling condition—as a child. Twenty-odd […]
Benediction For Unity
Benediction for Unity It is hard to admit this because we are kind people but we wouldn’t know unity from contempt we wouldn’t know togetherness from war we wouldn’t be able to say that the church body is whole we are too mixed up with who is for us and who is against us we […]
Learning to Love the Unity of My Body and Mind
I got migraines regularly as a kid. The pain would start as a pinch above my left eyebrow, travel to the back of my neck, and soon send out sparks of light into my vision, nausea into my belly, and, if I didn’t retreat to a dark room soon enough, puke onto our white carpet. […]