About Ellen
- About Me -
I believe that we all hold within us an untamed beauty and a comforting stillness.
You know that feeling you get when hiking in the woods or watching the waves? That inspiring and safe spaciousness?
That! I write and create to support that place.
It's there. Always.
Ready to hold us.
Now that I've found moments of internal refuge, it's all I want to talk about. See, I spent most of my life as so many of us do (in more drastic or subtle ways): utterly disconnected and at war with my body. Unable to appreciate myself. Unable to listen to what was bubbling up inside of me.
At the age of twenty, I was 5'9" and 109 pounds. My on again, off again, love affair with anorexia was five years old when one day I looked at my naked body in the mirror, counted the ribs as was customary, and realized that the system of control I had reached out to for assurance and guidance had become uncontrollable. Under the anxiety, I heard a dear quiet voice begging to be fed.
My voice of longing and desire was very quiet at first, but she was stubborn & powerful.
So I found a treatment program. Before treatment, eating was an art of dodging my hunger, like sneaking around a rabid dog by throwing it a bare chicken bone. After treatment, the goal of each meal had shifted from eat as little as possible to eat enough. I had learned how to survive.
After 10 years surviving, I found myself feeling undervalued and frustrated at work, in a marriage that didn’t acknowledge or support my needs, and dependent on outside validation and approval.
You see, in recovery I had feared that if I truly looked at and felt my heavier body my shadow side would reclaim her throne and resume control of my life. So in an act of self preservation, I had severed that connection.
I did not look and I did not feel. The problem with this way of living is that desire and truth live in the body. Living as disconnected parts meant that I wasn't able to access, let alone speak, my needs.
On the road to healing, I had forgotten that dear, quiet voice who had yearned not just to survive, but to live.
I knew that I had to work on connecting to my body in order to be truly whole, but the process was overwhelming. Having been ignored for so long, the critical voices I feared had grown louder.
My core appeared to me like a deep dark cave and I felt as if I was stepping in with nothing but a blinking flashlight. But instead of disconnecting, I decided to stay, listen, and breathe.
And then one day when my mind went on it's normal loop (how'd you get so fat, if you were stronger you'd control this, why do you care about this anyway, stop being superficial), I heard a new voice that spoke up against all those nasty body shaming refrains:
"Listen," it said, "I get that you are trying to keep me safe. I know you are trying to tell me something and I am willing to listen, but you can’t talk to me like this. It’s hurtful and I deserve to be treated with respect."
My body spoke back.
What I’ve learned since then is that I am strong enough to go beyond taking care of my basic needs. I am powerful enough to create the space for my own dreams. I have a place of true refuge in my body and I can decipher the messages that live there in ways that support my own growth.
I created wild-still because I want to share what I have learned on my uncanny adventure and to help you love and honor yourself.