The Body Was the First Border

When I first moved abroad, I thought the foreignness would be outside me.
New language. New men. New streets.
But no—
the reality is that my first long-distance relationship was between me and my own body.

On Sunday, I led a trauma-informed creative workshop at Soho House, rooted in “The Body Keeps the Score”. It was my first time guiding others through an experience I’m still learning to hold for myself.

And to be honest, I didn’t walk in nervous. I walked in detached. I was already thinking about what I had to do next.

Legal briefs. Art tours. New relationships.
A constant list of things that keep me performing from the neck up.

Since my exhibition, I’d drifted. The intentional morning meditations had stopped. My breath wasn’t mine anymore—it was a deadline.

And then, right before the workshop, my mom told me something that made me want to disappear.

Not literally—but emotionally. I didn’t want to come back to my body. Because I knew what lived there.

The fear.
The tests.
The same hospital rooms I grew up in, returning like clockwork.
The sarcoidosis that shaped my childhood.
The scar that still sits at my throat, quiet but never gone.

And then—during the workshop, it came up. Not through words. But through paint.

I looked down at the canvas—
and saw I had painted a throat.
My throat.

The same place I’ve carried a scar since I was a little girl.
The same place I’ve avoided.
And yet there it was—clear, unavoidable, speaking before I even opened my mouth.

That’s what this work does.
This somatic-work. This breath-work. This heart-work.
It brings the story up, even when the mind wants to keep it buried.

I wasn’t just guiding the workshop. I was participating. I got to the root. Not just of what I was leading. But of what I had survived.

And the wild thing?
The morning was overcast.
The sky heavy with the possibility of rain.
And yet somehow… the weather matched the moment.
Soft. Honest. Unrushed.

We were all strangers, but once that door closed, it felt like something sacred had entered with us.

Everyone left more here.

So no, this work isn’t easy. Being in your body means remembering. It means grieving what hasn’t happened yet. It means confronting the parts of you still frozen in time.

But I’d still rather be in it than outside of it. I’d rather breathe with the fear than perform over the silence.

If you want to try the meditation I guided that day, it’s on my website.
It’s not perfect.
But it’s honest.
It’s my voice, offering you a space to return to your own.

Because the body was the first border.
And coming back to it—over and over again—
is the most powerful foreign affair of all.