Here Again: A New Inquiry
“Women have survived through the millennia [by acting]. Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill, and we all do it all the time. We don’t want to be caught doing it, but nevertheless, it’s part of the adaptation of our species. We change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time.”
— Meryl Streep
Over the holidays, I read the biography Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep by Michael Shulman. It’s the first book I’ve read in my new apartment at Serenity, and it’s the first book I’ve actually finished reading in a while. It captured my imagination from the first page, and I couldn’t stop until I finished reading. I was inspired by the connections between Meryl Streep becoming a woman and becoming an actress in the era of second-wave feminism, the turn away from Method acting and the cruelty and trauma it can induce, as well as her alternative approach to acting inspired by anthropologist, Margaret Mead, and a collage of different things she felt into in the moment based on what was alive and valid to each character: observation, analysis, study, empathy, imagination and intuition.
In reading these words, my new inquiry was born—an inquiry that was confirmed as I continued to listen to my own intuition, observe, analyze and feel into my own imagination and empathy. It felt not like a culmination, but an expanse of my inquiries these past several years. It took fierce hope, compassion & heart, nourishment and courage to get to this wilder place unleashed within me where I am free to imagine and play in empathic connection.
As I’ve been beginning to live into my inquiry for 2023 this January, I wanted to offer you all an empathic and imaginative gift to embody your own inquiries this year. I’ve collected some of my favorite somatic practices for connecting your mind, body and heart, so you can dance, define and dream into what you want to have happen this year!
The 23-page downloadable PDF has been adapted from a very small section of my FIERCE YOU workbook in the Dialogical Persona Healing Arts Club. If you find it helpful, consider signing up for the full package over on my Subkit!
I would love to support you in any way that I can while you explore your word(s) this year and become your whole, passionate self!
