Last year, I started seeing a new physical therapist. The first bit of our session each week is scar work, a gentle prodding, softly breaking up tissue that’s been hard and unfeeling for nearly 20 years. She said the nerves might start to regrow, and I didn’t believe her.
The first few sessions, just minutes of scar work left me dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous — physically ill from a few centimeters of light touch. After my very first time, I stumbled out the door and gasped down a quart of strongly honeyed mint tea, craving electrolytes like I was at the end of the NYC Marathon finish line, not a midday intersection on the Upper West Side full of dog walkers and overpriced strollers.
But my PT was right. By the sixth seventh eighth time, the sensation shifted, softened, started to come back. It’s tiny, but there — a little seedling of change, the most delicate of stems — just enough that I imagine little nerve tendrils unfurling.
These days, my algorithm is full of psychobabble wrapped in DSM-V language — attachment styles like a personality test, a dating profile, a reality show introduction.
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I sift through it and wonder. Is it language we use to better understand ourselves and each other, or do we use it to shame ourselves into capitalism-driven “better” behavior?
Are our expectations of ourselves oppressive?
I wonder what happens when we swallow the shame, lock up the darkest parts of us, shove it all behind a wall of scar tissue. Politics, after all, are the symptoms of what we embody, and conflict (at its best) is an invitation towards intimacy. And when we’re not used to it, the first touch might leave us dizzy, lightheaded, nauseous.
And so I wonder: what kinds of little tendrils could grow with just a bit of attention, warmth, softness, a kind someone to guide it along? Even after decades, even in the hardest, most unfeeling, most untouchable parts of us?
the medicine cabinet
to mark our move to substack, I’m delighted to share a few of my most recent favorite substack missives — the ones I dropped everything for as soon as they come into my inbox, savored over a cup of tea, starred in my gmail and copy/pasted swaths of into my notes app for future reference.
- says, what does mundane liberation look like?
- says, let’s practice in public.
- says, what if we just write?
- says, leave a small hole in what you write.
🌱 news from the tulsi studio
📚 welcome back to the newsletter! we’ve been on hiatus this summer, and I’m excited to be back in your inboxes. we updated the paint while we were gone — things might look a little different here on substack, but we’re still the same newsletter you know and love.
🌞 thrilled to share that I recently completed certification as an equity-informed mediator. as a mediator, I help you build containers in which to explore conflict with curiosity, repair trust and connection, name positionality, and shift power dynamics.
🎙️ coming back: a return to the microphone! catch up on the archive and subscribe to intimate practice on spotify, apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
💊 this fall: the people’s health, a community of practice for rest and revolution, for burned out public health and health care workers. together, we’ll hold the moral injury of bearing witness to atrocities, through narrative medicine, intersectional analysis, and collective integration.
until next time.