#97: writing about the body

3 books on a difficult task

Good morning,

A few days ago, I found myself sitting in a daze at baggage claim at SFO after a very early morning flight home. As I sat on a bench with my toddler, grateful for coffee I’d grabbed after deplaning and sharing an egg sandwich with him, I couldn’t help but notice all the people… taking care of their bodies.

Yes, we were all waiting for our bags, but we were also using the bathroom, getting water, stretching. Kids were running around after being stuck in seats for long hours. Dogs that had been in carriers were stretching their legs, waiting to go potty.

It felt as though I could see everyone more clearly because my own body experiences flights differently now that I have to regulate both myself and a tiny human during travel, and the relief of a quick stretch or sit or snack has become tremendous.

When you notice we all have bodies, the distinctions between us—our jobs, our genders, our outfits, our ages, our vibes—disappear. It’s funny how we build entire identities around everything except this most basic fact.

And then there are those of us who spend most of our lives living in our heads, worshipping and exchanging the insights generated within our brains as wiser than anything that comes from the rest of our body. But that’s not true, is it?

One of the reasons I’ve been noticing bodies so much lately is because of feedback I recently received on a memoir I’m working on: that my body is missing from the story.

Without giving too much away, it’s a memoir that explores the idea of waiting and how much periods of waiting can change us. And yet, while I suppose it is very much about a body stuck in time, in my first draft, I wrote very little about my body.

As I’ve been going through the manuscript and challenging myself to insert my body—how did I feel in that scene? where was it located in my body?—I’m learning that the body is the specificity that makes a human experience universal. But wow, is it hard to write about. Actually placing my physical self back into my memories is… unlike any other experience I’ve ever had.

So today, I thought I’d share a few books that have helped immensely with this process.

For those who want to observe our bodies differently:

What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World - An invitation to rethink how we interact with the built world through a series of stories from the lived experiences of disability and the innovations that emerged from them.

Some of my highlights:

• “Disability reveals just how unfinished the world really is, in its mundane forms and in its most aspirational politics—a contemporary reality tested most acutely under conditions of global pandemic, requiring fundamental shifts between our bodies and the world, and mutual trust despite deep uncertainty. That unfinishedness is the engine of the stories I report in this book—disabled people with their design experiences at the creative heart of adaptation, people in the active work of building and rebuilding their worlds, with insight and high stakes implicated for everyone.”

• “What is any technology doing, any tool, any implement, if not offering assistance? It is the very nature of all of our stuff to give us help. Think now of all the ordinary objects that extend a body at any point in the course of a day: eyeglasses, knife and fork or chopsticks, perhaps a walking stick for hikes or a plastic arm that can throw a ball for a dog. Consider the infinite extensions and outsourcing of tasks that happen via mobile phone, whether augmented by “smarts” or not. Open your kitchen catch-all junk drawer: paper clips, toothpicks, elastic bands, pushpins. These are the commonplace prosthetics and assistive technologies that are at home in the world with all our many bodies. Tools for holding the world intact when it threatens to fall apart in a mess—tools for reaching, bracing, connecting, the low-tech and the high-tech kind, together.”

• “There’s a reason historians locate some key origins of human civilizations in the periods where deliberate tool use is evident. The stuff we use between our bodies and the natural or built world—these augmentations are how humans organize and get life done.”

For those who want to be better in touch with their own body’s emotional experiences:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk - Pretty much the foundational text on how trauma lives in the body and how we can process it through embodied practices.

Some of my highlights:

• “For a hundred years or more, every textbook of psychology and psychotherapy has advised that some method of talking about distressing feelings can resolve them. However, as we’ve seen, the experience of trauma itself gets in the way of being able to do that. No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.”

• “The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery.”

• “If you have a comfortable connection with your inner sensations—if you can trust them to give you accurate information—you will feel in charge of your body, your feelings, and your self.”

For those nurturing little bodies:

Brain-Body Parenting by Mona Delahooke - Probably the best parenting book out there right now, which helps explain how to nurture a child’s mind-body connection, rather than managing their behaviors.

Some of my highlights:

• “The only way infants communicate is through their bodies. Understanding the “bottom-up” (or “body-up”) experiences that precede the development of the child’s thinking and formation of concepts gave me a better way to understand children at all stages of development… it’s essential to help a child calm down—to regulate the body—before talking, reasoning, or offering incentives can succeed. More importantly, they based their model on the idea that the only way that humans successfully regulate their bodies is through attuned, loving, and safe relationships.”

• “Children with vulnerable platforms are prone to being vigilant, worried, and disagreeable as well as yelling, crying, having a tantrum, running away, striking out, or even shutting down. Humans are not always in intentional control of our behaviors—children aren’t necessarily consciously choosing these behaviors. Rather, many reactions and behaviors serve to protect the child from a deeply and subconsciously felt sense of unease or threat. Here’s a remarkable insight: We can understand a child’s level of sturdiness or vulnerability by tracking what’s called allostasis, the process by which we maintain stability in our bodies.”

• “Although we are not always aware of our body’s metabolic budget, everything we experience, including our feelings and actions, becomes deposits or withdrawals in our body budget. A hug, a good night’s sleep, playing with friends, and a healthy meal: All of these are deposits. Then there are withdrawals: things like forgetting to eat meals or drink enough fluids, being deprived of deep sleep, or being isolated or ignored…Our best parenting decisions aren’t focused simply on our child’s behaviors or thoughts but rather on our child’s body and the unique way each child continually processes, interprets, and experiences their world.”

• “What I have learned from these scientists and therapists formed this book’s core message: that regulation in a child’s physical body supports healthy relationships and loving interactions, in turn building the infrastructure that eventually enables the child to use reasoning, concepts, and thinking to flexibly manage life’s challenges. With this understanding of the two-way communication between the brain and body, I shifted my practice from focusing on eliminating children’s disruptive behaviors to understanding them as the body’s way of communicating its needs.”

Happy Friday,

Jihii