I love the origin story of books. The way books come to us as readers can be as varied and numerous as the books themselves. I found one of my favorite books at a little free library. Others were assigned to me in classes, stuck out to be at a bookstore, or were recommended by a friend.
I found My Body, My Home: A Radical Guide to Resilience and Belonging by Victoria Emanuela and Caitlin Metz on Instagram. First, I found their Instagram profile, On Being in Your Body, this summer. A few months later, they announced the book was available for pre-order, and I ordered it right away. I looked forward to a book that blended everything I liked about their Instagram feed: mindfulness, meditation, embodiment, tender art, and open acceptance.
The book is a gentle reminder that your body is your home, and you carry the universe within you. Through neutral colors, soft drawings, and looping letters, it discusses belonging, home, and resilience. On one page, the authors provide practical tips on how to reconnect with your body, and on the next, you get caught up in poetry.
Seriously, there are so many wonderful lines in here that I could be marking it up if the pages weren’t so pretty already.
Your body is made up of nearly 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. The sun, moon, and earth are made up of these too. Every star you witness contains carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Your tender body is also made of these elements. You are made of stardust.
When you wish upon the glimmering night sky, it’s really yourself you are whispering to; the starts are just a mirror, reflecting how powerful you are.
You hold the whole universe inside you.
Sections: Home + Body, Belonging, Resources
The book is divided up into a few sections: Home + Body, Belonging, and Resources. The Home + Body section discusses all the things a body could be, the things home could be, the utter miracle our bodies are, and the ways we’ve disassociated from our bodies. In one part, they talk about the responses we have to stress: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
This section leads into the Belonging portion. We belong to those who came before us, all the ancestors whose blood runs in our veins. We belong to other beings, such as our family or chosen family. We belong to the Earth, which brought us all into existence. We belong to ourselves, too: to our inner parts, our inner child, our shadow self.
I’ve been exploring this idea of the inner child a lot, especially after going through a milk crate of old memorabilia at my parents’ house. I sorted through old drawings, melodramatic journal entries, and school photos of a younger Emily. She was so sensitive, but also so excited about things like writing and her friends and TV shows. She really loved her family and Jesus. Obviously, some of that sticks with me, but so many of her struggles I’ve forgotten, at least on the surface level. Some of those emotions are buried deep down, and they come up at times of stress and conflict. This book had gentle reminders to nurture your inner child and reassure them that everything is okay.
The last section of resources is full of practical tips like different ways we can self-keep, whether emotionally, socially, mentally, or physically. The authors list books, vitamins, and therapies to check out. There’s a manifesto at the end where you fill in blanks such as “My body is not a space of ____________. It is a space for _____________.”
Art Style
One of things I really appreciate about this book is how accessible and inclusive it is. Although many of the bodies drawn in the book are vaguely female, they’re also tattooed, hairy, fat, thin, freckled. They’re also meant to be deliberately abstract, most of them faceless, with no skin tone since the book is printed exclusively in black, white, beige, and splashes of red. Although I haven’t researched the process of how Victoria and Caitlin wrote the book, I’m fairly sure the art was mostly created by Caitlin. Her art style is unique, but also calls up something familiar in its innocence and simplicity.
Writing, Conversation & Meditation Prompts
This is a book full of questions, ones to meditate on, to write about, to ask others, to ask your children. Questions like, “What stories do you love about yourself, your body, and the world?” and “How are you nurturing your various relationships?” and “How can you send compassion to the dark corners of your consciousness?”
Victoria and Caitlin actually hosted a four week “somatic writing and mark-making 4 week virtual workshop” where we met on Zoom; Victoria led us all in a grounding meditation; and Caitlin led us in a writing/art prompt inspired by the book. The last one is on Thursday if you’re interested in joining. Although I’ve only attended one so far, I appreciated it so much, and I look forward to watching the others since they’re recorded. For a brief amount of time, the world stopped and we connected with one another, across miles and miles of distance. That connection, however awkward at times, is so necessary during times like this, when we are physically isolated from one another.
Recommended for….
I recommend this book for anyone who’s interested in a holistic approach to their mindfulness. Many teachers focus on quieting the mind and letting go of attachments to thoughts and emotions, and that’s important work. But when we bring the body into our work, it immediately becomes more tangible. It’s sometimes easier to connect with the body than it is to control your thoughts.
This book is a beautiful, artistic meditation on what it means to have a body and how we can reclaim it after being conditioned by a society to ignore it, punish it, or try to force it to be a certain way. If you read it, please let me know your thoughts and reflections in the comments.