The Book My Body Asked Me to Revisit—Again
Reflections on “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Besel van Der Kolk
My mom first recommended The Body Keeps the Score to me years ago. I didn’t know then just how often I’d come back to it…sometimes to learn, sometimes to grieve, and sometimes just to remember that I’m still healing. I revisit it a few times a year now. Not out of habit, but simply because I grow. And when I grow, it teaches me something new.
As someone who feels everything—and I do mean everything—this book has been a lifeline. I’m an extreme empath. I don’t just sense the emotions in a room, I carry them. Mine. Yours. Generational ones. Forgotten ones. I can feel heartbreak that isn’t mine like it lives in my own chest. And while that makes me an incredible caretaker, a connector, a creative…it’s also made my nervous system work overtime for most of my life.
The book gave me something I didn’t realize I needed: permission to put some of it down.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s words reminded me that trauma doesn’t just show up in dramatic memories, it shows up in the way I clench my jaw in when I’m upset. In the way I pick with my nails when I’m anxious. In the way I bite my lip when I’m listening to something I don’t want to hear, but need to. In the way I flinch when I’m interrupted. In the way I overextend myself trying to be good, useful and understood. It affirmed that my body had been telling the truth long before my words ever could.
In love, this has shown up in ways I’m still unpacking. I fell in love with someone who sees me the raw, hyper-feeling, all-heart version of me—and sometimes that terrifies me. Because deep love can feel like both freedom and exposure when your nervous system has been shaped by survival. But we’re learning how to hold each other. To regulate through honesty. To offer grace on the hard days. And to grow together, messily, intentionally, and full of care.
In my work: curating, organizing, building spaces for creatives and community members to be seen, it’s meant learning how to set boundaries. Saying “no” even when I feel the pull to fix, help, rescue. Trusting that rest is part of the work. That I can still hold space without carrying the entire room on my back.
The Body Keeps the Score isn’t always an easy read. It’s clinical at times. Dense. But it cracked open a door for me. A door toward embodiment. Toward reclaiming the parts of me that didn’t feel safe before. Toward understanding why some days I’m so exhausted I feel like I’ve run a marathon in my sleep. Why I sometimes cry and don’t know why. Why touch can feel overwhelming even when it’s loving.
It taught me that my body is not a burden. It’s a historian. A protector. A memory keeper. And also, a home I can come back to—again and again—with care.
So if you're like me, someone who feels deeply, loves hard, carries more than you let on, and you're on a journey to be more tender with yourself, this book might be a mirror for you too. Just be gentle when you open it. Not everything needs to be processed all at once. Healing is allowed to take its time.
I’m learning to trust mine.
Thanks for reading! I’m a bibliophile, artist, curator and deep feeler figuring it out in real time through books, art, memory, and the mess of healing. If you’re into honest reflections, creative process, and the kind of storytelling that makes you feel less alone, I’d love to have you here. Subscribe to walk with me through what I’m reading, creating, unlearning, and slowly growing into.