A Path To Healing And Liberation

I recently finished reading Reclaiming Body Trust by Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant.

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"A holistic and powerful framework for accepting and liberating our bodies, and ourselves.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable or not "at home" in your body? In this book, the founders of Body Trust, licensed therapist Hilary Kinavey and registered dietician Dana Sturtevant, invite readers to break free from the status quo and reject a diet culture that has taken advantage and profited from trauma, stigma, and disembodiment, and fully reclaim and embrace their bodies.

Informed by the personal body stories of the hundreds of people they have worked with, Reclaiming Body Trust delineates an intersectional, social justice-orientated path to healing in three phases: The Rupture, The Reckoning, and The Reclamation. Throughout, readers will be anchored by the authors' innovative and revolutionary Body Trust framework to discover a pathway out of a rigid, mechanistic way of thinking about the body and into a more authentic, sustainable way to occupy and nurture our bodies."

There is so much to unpack and sit with, in this treasure trove of still-radical ideas about our bodies in a world that fixates on particular (white, cis, abled) versions of beauty and health. Kinavey and Sturtevant offer not only insightful narrative but also provocative questions that encourage the reader toward gentle but firm reflection around the stories impressed upon us, the conditions that shaped us, and the reverberations of those stories and conditions into our feelings about our bodies and our actions that result from our (damaged) relationships with our bodies. 

A simple read-through, even with fervent note-taking, is only the start. We must “investigate the story of how you became so suspicious of yourself” and come to a place of trust in our bodies as we relearn that we “came here whole and your presence here is welcome simply because you breathe.” 

The work continues, and it’s never been more vital as we push back against our oppressive systems and push for more community, more freedom, more wholeness, and more humanity.

Check out Reclaiming Body Trust, and take on the journey of reclaiming who you are.

Happy Reading :)