I'm (sort of) changing my name

Same same but different

via The New York Public Library

Do you ever catch yourself in the middle of a spiel so well rehearsed it just rolls off your tongue without thought?

It’s like you’ll be in conversation and then your brain clicks into autopilot. Before you know it, you’re reciting an internal script. The words you’re saying might not even feel true but they’re spilling out your mouth anyway.

It’s a clever energy saving device. Running these big brains of ours is a high energy bill for the body and anything they can do to cut costs is welcome. But there are obvious downsides. Not least being that the lack of presence that’s saving brain space can dissociate you from what’s actually true, creating an embodied dissonance when your mental story overrides deeper knowing.

So I caught myself mid-spiel the other day.

I was in a Zoom call. A group of people that were mostly new to me and we were going round the digital circle introducing ourselves. When my turn came around I started my usual online introduction —

“Hi, I’m Elle. It’s said like Ellie but you can call me Elle too. It’s totally not a problem, I’m happy with either”

I’ve been saying a version of this for years now. Possibly since I took the ‘i’ out of my name in my 20’s but definitely since 2020 when the pandemic pushed majority of my work online. The spiel is worn smooth like a river rock and it rolls off my tongue thoughtlessly enough that I can ignore the little flicker of ‘wait! no!’ in my chest.

Not this time though.

This time the internal wince was too loud to ignore. I could feel my body shying away from the words as they left my mouth.

Because, actually, I do mind when people call me Elle.

It’s the nickname that my nearest and dearest will shorten my name down to. And I thought that might make it okay for everyone to call me that, but turns out my body says nope. I’d been contorting to deny the simple truth of the matter — it’s just not my name.

My body is always better at revealing my true emotions than the intellectual acrobatics of my mind.

And I realised that it was straight up ridiculous that I will joyfully celebrate my trans friends name changes but I don’t feel okay asking folks to pronounce my name differently than how it’s written. Like whacking an extra syllable on the end of my name is some impossible lift to burden people with.

So I guess we might consider this my reintroduction:

Hi I’m Elle 👋🏼

It’s pronounced like Ellie.
I like it spelled without the ‘i’ because I appreciate the palindromic symmetry.
That feels gently silly to admit but it’s the truth.

And with that tiny adjustment, I hope you too can attune to the tiny (and big) truths that your body is trying to show you. May our bodies lead us closer and closer to the truth of who we know ourselves to be.

My books are open for May and June

For lots of us, feeling present and embodied is not an easy thing. It can seem nearly impossible at times. Our lived experience, and the world in these chaotic times, can feel overwhelming, too much to be with. Numbed disconnection or anxious hyper-vigilance seems like a pretty solid protection against it all.

But we lose parts of ourselves when we numb out from our embodied experiences, when we push our feelings down deep, when we try to think our way through everything. We lose our connection to others when we turn away from the world.

The one-to-one somatic guidance work I offer is a slow drip return. A practice of knitting back together the schisms that have formed, both internal and external.

With breath, rest, and somatic trauma resolution as your guide, you’ll ease back into connection. Gently coming into deeper relationship with yourself and forming a more generative relationship with the living world.

This is probably a good fit if:

✹ You're tired of living life as a floating head. You’re exhausted by thinking your way through everything and you’re ready to find a more embodied approach

✹ Over doing and over-efforting are your baseline. You feel like you’re moving too fast and rest seems like an impossibility. You push through, over and over again – running on high until you collapse

✹ You’re stuck in chronic freeze, like a deer in the headlights. Overwhelm and anxiety are your closest companions, they keep you spinning in place and unable to move toward your desires

✹ You’re really good at shapeshifting. Whether it’s being the perfect rebel, the A+ student, or the ‘healed one’, you learn what’s expected of you and perform the role perfectly. Problem is that there’s never room for the messy truth of you to exist.

✹ There’s a niggling sense that some powerful, magical version of you is lurking just under the surface. You're curious about what might emerge if you create space to listen to yourself

If that’s you, and you’re ready for tender, long-term somatic support, then book in an initial session. Let’s work together.

Snippets and bits:

• It’s dumb but I recently bought a Nice Cube and I can’t stop smooshing it. I don’t know what it is about the dense squish of this stress ball fidget toy thingy but it does something really good to my ADHD brain. Bonus points for putting it in the fridge on a hot day so it’s cool and extra firm.

• I’ve been feasting on Sophie Strand’s memoir The Body is a Doorway lately. It’s the sumptuously written story of living with chronic illness and how it brought her into deep connection with the living world.

• Joeli and I got Dinner by Meera Sodha out of the library and now almost every page is emblazoned with a post-it note for a recipe we desperately want to eat. Check it out if you’re looking for delectable veggie/vegan food to fill the dreaded daily question of “ugggh, what shall we have for dinner?”

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This is Body Magic, a letter on embodiment, liberation, and magic.

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