Hello! To celebrate one year of My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World that is Sick, you can buy a book and get Creaturely for free, or buy Creaturely and get a book for free. Details are at the end of this post!
“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
- Wendell Berry
One year ago, give or take a couple of weeks, My Body and Other Crumbling Empires was published. One year ago, unbeknownst to the Internet, for about 18 weeks my body had been a cozy home for a little long-awaited embryo who would one day be named Micah.
One year ago, it had already been a full year since I turned in the final manuscript for the book, because publishing timelines were still in flux due to Covid. The idea of “crumbling empires” felt a little more immediate then as we marked the third anniversary of the first lockdowns—but there was also lots of talk of “emerging from the pandemic fog,” as if we were all shaking off a shared hallucination and not living with an ongoing trauma, a collective now-chronic disease.
One year ago pregnancy had put my autoimmune disease into remission, and for a few fortuitously-timed weeks I felt better than ever. One year ago Nate and I decided to forego genetic testing on the fetus as a practice in letting go of what we couldn’t control; and when it came to my own autoimmunity, I quietly chose to give up predicting the future as well.
One year ago we attended a birth class that would tell us everything and nothing about the birth we’d ultimately have. One year ago I’d never thought about how many major surgeries have become less and less invasive, but a C-section scar will always be the width of a newborn’s shoulders. One year ago sciatica was a word that happened to other people and this body had never labored in a stalled transition for hours at a time.
What I’m saying is, time is weird.
One year ago in interview after interview I relived the old story of building up my life as a micro-empire and then watching—no, feeling in my eroding joints—as that empire crumbled nearly overnight. I described the grief and disorientation of coming to recognize my body as a desecrated place.
Because, after all, this is what empires do: they fall. Ever so slowly and then all at once, they give out under the weight of their own delusions. They reap the harvest they themselves sowed in violence.
Often, empires have to crumble. They can’t choose to cede territory without becoming something else entirely, and they would rather implode spectacularly than acquiesce to change.
But sometimes once they lie in ruins, there is a new chance at life—because the only way to start is from the ground. Only then can everything emerge that is necessary for renewal: Grief. Revelation. Anger. And grueling, gorgeous healing.
This, healing, is the true story of My Body and Other Crumbling Empires. This is about unlearning empire, not just to be right or righteous, but because it is the path back to the truth of our sacred bodies and souls. It is how we return to our places in the constellations of interconnectedness that make up who we are.
Desecration makes demands of us. But it does not have the final word.
Two years ago I wrote a book and one year ago I released that book to the world and now that book lives a life of its own, intertwined with my life but also separate from it. The body who lived the book is not the body who wrote it, is not the one who launched it, is not the body I am now. We are all forever adapting to new seasons and environments, even as we also indelibly influence those environments in turn. And so now, there is more to the story.
Here is the thing about learning to heal so radically at the site of your own scorched earth: it’s the process of healing itself that begins to blossom into the barest-spring hint of something new. Healing doesn’t rebuild the old battlements. It nurtures whole new ecosystems of life.
My body has always been a sacred site, has always known the voice of the Holy One. Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum could not make her any more or less sacred. But my body and I have learned in the last year entirely new ways of trusting each other, whole new chapters of vocabulary, new registers of the Spirit’s voice, and some of it has been beautiful and much has been quotidian, painful, hard.
What we have not had to do is unravel all the wounds and lies of empire from around this neck, this skin, this womb, at least not for the first time. We are practiced in the art of resistance—and we know how to make something new.
Today, exactly today, my mama arms tote a wiggly 18-pound six-month-old with ease while my arthritic knees climb hills with difficulty. I run across the lotion that was supposed to prevent stretch marks and I laugh, a laugh that’s getting louder the more I determine to soak up the absolute joy of this life.
Today my body is wholly wrapped up most days in the care of my little cub, our bodies still so fundamentally intertwined. My body is shuddering in solidarity with Gazans even when my mind is forced elsewhere, a literal gut check tethering me to my humanity. My body holds more memories than ever—and more joy, wisdom, empathy, groundedness, interconnection with the Earth, more presence.
Today one of my body’s stories has been told, but many more remain to be written. I am still my body and my body is still me, and we are still chronically ill and chronically healing—slowly, painfully, insistently, beautifully. My body prays in languages of footfall and candle flame, night risings and lettered color, breath and song, milk and tears.
My body wraps tight around the body of my son and whispers to him of his own sacredness, of the wisdom of these mundane miracles of flesh and bone. My body beholds him and remembers that need and care mark us as precious, never shameful.
And when I ask my body what it means to have sent this book into the world, she whispers of the strength we’ve gained through vulnerability. And she sings of the many threads now connecting her to so many other bodies, knowingly or not, who have borne witness to her story and found companionship or courage from it in their own.
Sacred sites, all of us, and it takes my breath away.
May the tools you use to heal become well-worn and weighty in your hands. May you discover they are also the tools of art, community, spirituality, justice, and even of forging once-impossible paths to “success” on those few metrics from your old life that remain worth pursuing. Perhaps you picked these tools up clumsily one day, merely hoping to survive. May you look around some other time—(time is weird)—and realize they’ve become your companions in growing a garden of beauty, nourishment, and joy.
peace, love, bread, and wine,
Lyndsey
Celebration Sale!
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Paid subscribers receive two extra essays from me each month, including some of the more personal pieces (OK fine, and some of the more nerdy pieces). For the next few months I’ll also be experimenting and gathering your input on additional extras like conversation threads and link posts. Join the crew!
Just discovered your writing on Sarah Bessey's book thread and it resonates with me. Looking forward to reading your book as well.
Beautiful reflection!