Embodiment & Meaning-Making: July 2024 Reflection
July was my birthday month, and I can truly say my body feels a year older. The words that come to mind are weathering and restoring. A friend asked me a question recently and it struck me. She said, “I wonder if we become more embodied as we age?” This feels spot on with what this season feels like for me. And it's not the neat and graceful type of attunement that we like to imagine maturity brings. It's somewhat of a roar, a tremble, and tightening that I ignore less than I did before. Now I know what it means in my body when saying “No” feels hard but also right, that the invitation is to do it scared. I am learning to trust myself more and again, and I believe that is not only part of healing: it is part of liberation. It is part of being beloved community.
So, while this weathering and restoring logistically has required me to go slow sometimes when I wanna go fast, sit in silence longer than I would ever plan to, communicate my needs when that feels utterly vulnerable, and to embrace my deep and big emotions, I am going to say it's worth it. It's worth knowing myself more and stretching myself to resist being disembodied to survive this work and this life.
While my body and nervous system have been finding it’s roar, the work side of things has pleasantly been more introspective and individual. It’s been slower and thus kinder to me in this season, and I have come to be grateful for this space to be human in the midst of important and urgent work. What I love about evaluation is the seasons when I get to dig deep into my data analyst bag and go inward. Depending on the project or phase of the work, I get to sit with tons of data—which is people, information from people—stories, and perspectives, and help make sense of it all. I get to hide away and just absorb and visualize and dream up how to share all of these small fragments of people's experiences and stories in a summary format and challenge people, typically staff and decision-makers, to hear it and consider it, and let it shape how they do their work. This is one of my favorite spaces to be in: the meaning-making phase.
Now that we have designed the questions we want to ask, invited the people whom we want to better understand, asked the things we want to know, and people have been brave enough to respond and tell us what they think, we then have to face them and their thoughts and reflections and make meaning of it. It is like art; I don’t pick the colors, but I get to choose the types of paint brushes and tools we use to produce the painting that tells the story on the canvas. I get to take a break from coaching and facilitating and presenting, and simply listen and absorb and reflect and make meaning. This contrast of my body’s roar and this less glamorous, more tedious and time-consuming but important work of data analysis and meaning-making give my body space to be frazzled and yet still feeling deeply connected to humanity; that, in fact, my weathering is an appropriate response to a conflicted and complex world.
And so I hope that embodiment’s invitation continues to pierce through my fear, my perfectionism and my people-pleasing tendencies. May this body communicate and may I consider and make space for its wisdom.
