The Body as Home

Melissa Shook, Self Portrait January 1973

When the Body Becomes a Place One Can Live

There is a moment in this work that is difficult to describe until it is lived.

It does not announce itself dramatically. There is no sudden catharsis, no narrative breakthrough, no decisive “before and after.” Instead, something quieter and more consequential begins to happen: the body becomes inhabitable.

For many women, the body has long functioned as a site of management rather than residence. Attention lives in the head, the schedule, the relational field. The nervous system remains organized around vigilance, anticipation, and output. Even rest, when it occurs, is provisional — a pause taken while monitoring what must come next.

What changes through this work is not merely regulation, but location. Awareness begins to drop out of constant surveillance and into the lower body — into the pelvis, the breath, the center of gravity. Not as an exercise. Not as a technique. But as a natural consequence of safety being restored at a nervous system level.

This is not a symbolic shift. It is physiological.

As attachment patterns soften and trauma responses lose their urgency, the autonomic nervous system no longer requires the body to remain mobilized or defended. The right hemisphere — the seat of affective integration, relational knowing, and embodied meaning — begins to operate without interference. Sensation becomes intelligible rather than overwhelming. Emotion becomes fluid rather than binding. The body is no longer something one must endure or manage; it becomes a place from which life is lived.

Many women describe this phase not in psychological terms, but in elemental ones. They speak of warmth, weight, softness, depth. Of feeling “settled” in a way that does not depend on circumstances. Of a quiet pleasure that has nothing to do with achievement or validation. Of ease — not the ease of disengagement, but the ease of coherence.

This is where creativity returns, though it may not yet take a recognizable form. Creativity here is not output; it is aliveness. It is the felt sense of life moving through the body without obstruction. It may express itself as desire, curiosity, sensuality, play, or simply the capacity to be touched by ordinary moments. A morning light. A cup held in the hands. The sound of one’s own footsteps.

Importantly, this aliveness does not destabilize. It does not demand action or consumption. Because it arises from containment rather than discharge, it is inherently self-regulating. Pleasure no longer threatens collapse. Expansion no longer risks fragmentation. The body knows how to hold what moves through it.

This is where freedom becomes real — not as independence from relationship or obligation, but as internal authority. Choice becomes accessible because the nervous system is no longer negotiating survival. Boundaries no longer require force because they are felt. Desire no longer feels dangerous because it is anchored in safety.

From this place, a woman does not need to perform composure. She inhabits it.

She does not strive for elegance. It emerges naturally from an organized system.

She does not chase expression. Expression unfolds as a consequence of coherence.

The work, at this stage, is not about becoming more — but about no longer having to leave oneself in order to function. Life simplifies. Attention widens. There is room for pleasure without justification, rest without guilt, connection without self-erasure.

This is not transcendence. It is embodiment.

And while it may look subtle from the outside, internally it is unmistakable. The body is no longer braced against life. It is participating in it — grounded, receptive, alive.

For many women, this is the first time that aliveness feels sustainable.

The first time that creativity feels safe.

The first time that being fully present does not require sacrifice.

Not because life has become easier — but because the body has become home.

The Asking by Jane Hirshfield

Everything asks us.

The cup asks to be filled,

the bird asks to fly,

the door asks to be opened.

What we ask is not simple.

What we ask is not small.

We ask to be taken seriously by what we love.