Start with the Body

Awakening the stories that live within us

Hi Friends,

Earlier this week, a client looked up at me—quiet, a bit mystified—and said:

“People are always asking me, what’s your story? What’s your story? I never know what to say.”

Her words landed with a thud. I could feel the room still around us through the Zoom screen.

It’s such a familiar moment. That question—what’s your story?—can feel like a demand to distill your whole life into something neat and final. A narrative arc. A headline. A brand.

But the truth is, our stories don’t live in fixed form.
They aren’t static or singular.
They live in motion—shaped by memory, mood, biology, temperature, history, and breath.
They reflect our ever-changing inner world—our nervous system, our body state, our relationships, our longings.

Our stories are alive. Like us.

And yet we live in a culture that often treats story as something to produce or perform. As currency. As a prerequisite for identity, artistry, influence. There’s pressure to reveal the most vulnerable thing in the most polished way. But real storytelling—the kind that heals—isn’t something we present. It’s something we practice.

Where I Am

Lately, I’ve been in a season of stillness. A deep reset or cocoon.

Lately, I’ve been in a season of stillness. A deep reset.

After the intensity of this past year—my MSW program, fieldwork, caregiving, teaching, holding space—I’ve needed time to just be. Well—my body insisted, to be honest. I listened, and it told me to sit in the silence and wait. To remember how to breathe again before I write again.a

I’ve had to remind myself, day in and day out, how to wait for my story to emerge—rather than barking at the page and demanding the words to appear (a practice that works well for academic papers, but not so well for writing from the heart).

The words have been slow to come, and that’s okay.
They’re a little shy.

And when they do come, they’ve been arriving as shapes and fragments, lists and lines, flowers and small truths. I’ve been writing letters. I’ve been sketching. Letting something else—something quieter—speak first. Because writing is not just about output—it’s about presence.
And sometimes, being still is the beginning of the next story.

I’ve found myself returning to the page—but not always my own. Sometimes the most honest path toward hearing myself is through listening to others.

I’ve been reading my clients’ work with reverence, letting their bravery and breakthroughs wash over me. I’ve also been carefully compiling a summer reading list—a kind of literary altar for this next chapter. So many of my favorites have new books out—Suleika Jaouad, Melissa Febos, Alison Bechdel, Ocean Vuong. And I have some old loves I need to return to: Virginia Woolf, Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Azar Nafisi.

Their voices feel like lifelines. Lighthouses back to myself.

Reading—really reading—is reminding me what it feels like to belong to story again.
And when I can find myself in a story, I can find myself.

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A Reframe: Narrative Healing Is Not Linear

This is why I return again and again to the six stages of the Narrative Healing method:

Awaken. Listen. Express. Inspire. Connect. Grow.

These aren’t steps to complete—they are seasons, spirals, stages we cycle through again and again. They reflect the rhythms of the creative process, and the rhythms of the body.

We awaken when something shifts inside us. We listen when the story isn’t ready to be spoken. We express when we feel safe enough to be heard. We’re never in just one stage. We’re always circling through them.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been diving into the first stage: Awaken—the somatic, physical experience of storytelling. We began exploring the connection between writing and the vagus nerve—how writing can be a tool of regulation, of nervous system repair, of coming home to ourselves.

Now, we’re moving into the next layer in this stage.

Our Bodies Are Our Stories

This theme has been central to Narrative Healing from the beginning. Our bodies are not vessels that carry stories—they are the stories.

I was reminded of this while listening to my client. That question—what is your story?—can be so confounding. We aren’t one simple story we can reach out and grab or point to. Our stories are within us, breathing and moving. We don’t need to go searching for them as much as we need to pay attention.

It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Have you ever noticed the way your shoulders drop after you share something long-held? The flutter in your belly when you hold back something painful? Or how, when listening to someone else, your body leans in, eyebrows rise, stomach tightens—sometimes gently, sometimes all at once?

The body always responds. It holds what the mind can’t name. It remembers what the heart isn’t ready to say. It’s why we can tell how our loved one is feeling before they utter a word—by the story their face is holding.

In his groundbreaking book Narrative Medicine, Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona writes about how storytelling is essential to healing. He offers a view of medicine that doesn’t reduce people to symptoms or diagnoses, but instead sees the whole human story—fluid, relational, embodied.

And as yoga and meditation teacher Crystal McCreary reminds us in Narrative Healing:

“If in doubt of where to begin, start with your own body. Move in whatever capacity is available to you—or that lights you up, inspires you, or feels accessible. The story will come.”

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A Gentle Invitation

That’s where we’re heading next.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring this truth together:
Your body is your story.
It holds your memories, your silences, your longing, your resistance, your wisdom.

We’ll look at how to access those stories with care—how to listen before we speak, how to write from the truth that’s living in our cells, not just our thoughts.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing something new:
Awakening the Stories Within
—a soft, spacious invitation to return to your body, meet your story where it lives, and begin again. It will be a self-paced offering—something you can take with you, move through in your own time, and come back to whenever you need a reset. Designed to help you listen more deeply, write more freely, and reconnect with the truth already living inside you.

More soon. For now, just know: there’s nothing you need to chase. The story will come.

With love,
Lisa