About Jenna
Hello, Soul Shakers. Jenna here.
My story, like yours, is many layered. And perhaps like you, concision... is not my power suit.
Here goes...
I remember being a precocious young girl. Hyper sensitive and self conscious, with some of my earliest memories being ones where I'd see myself as if I was outside of my body. Gazing down. Feeling detached. I had a very hard time feeling at home in my skin, my body, and the world within which I was born in to. Simply, as I began to realize my prescribed "sex" and the shape of my body in comparison to others, as was psychically and overtly taught to do in U.S. culture, I resented being born exactly as I was. While I did not wish to be a boy, I resented being born as "female." Being female, I felt I was denied certain freedoms that I witnessed my brother and other boys having. Some of these perceptions were my own, and some of them I gathered from group consciousness and lineageal memory {what's this?...ask me here}. I grew to resent men. I blamed them for the everyday feelings of psychic oppression I felt. Men who cared for me felt the need to protect me... from other men, from scary things, heavy things, dirty things, etc. Trying to teach a young girl to trust some men and not others and to feel free in her body while simultaneously doubting its capabilities, to feel safe whilst also being aware of their body as culturally sexualized body bait...is... a mind fuck, am I right?
I also resented women. I blamed them for not encouraging the self expression I ached to express {due to their own fears of what "expression" had meant to them}. I blamed them for being too soft or for being too hard and reserved. I blamed them for falling prey to the practice of cruel behavior and speech. Basically, I blamed them for upholding rules that limited self expression. Later, I realized my resentment was actually focused against myself, for my own inability to stand for myself, for adopting the beliefs that I was unworthy, un-lovable. Beliefs that were masked, even to myself, because of how I was outwardly able to present myself as capable, strong, confident and stand budding justice seeker... standing for other's freedom and needs quite easily.
I resented my "white" skin. Being born with an innate hunger to stand up for injustices, I felt shame for my being the physical manifestation of the oppression and abuse "whiteness" represented in the world.
And, on top of this, I resented my body for being "other." I was born with a protruding breast bone rather than one that was flat or inverted. This smallest difference was often a pointed source of scrutiny and jokes from family and peers. I carried humongous shame and hatred for my body. And felt alone in this suffering.
All of this resentment manifested in self attack against my own body and my own life.
For all of my teen life, my lack of acceptance around being a woman was so powerful, that I 100% know that I willed myself not to have a period {I never had a natural occurring period until I was 19 that no medical testing could explain}. I felt so unsafe in my body. I intuited early that my emotions and stress were inseparable with my body’s functioning (as well as its "dis-function"). For most of my teens and early twenties, I symptomatically developed an eating disorder. I felt such a lack of control and peace in my overly busy, goal oriented, escapist young life, that the whiplash effect was industrial strength nighttime binge eating, most often followed by restriction the next day. And for better and for worse, no one knew of my secret behavior, because I naturally had strong digestion, a frame that always looked slender, and a demeanor that appeared outwardly content and happy, and propensity for expert secret keeping.
However, when I stopped being able to control my weight once birth control pills entered my body {which doctors introduced me to, to kick start my missing period} I became so terrified. My complicated love/hate relationship with food grew more complicated as I struggled to control my body and my eating.
The next decade of my life was one of exploration, experimentation, creation and healing.
At this present NOW, I am in utter AWE and reverence of the power that is within me. And that always has been Me. My life thus far has been an epic and a spiritual journey. Coming to know myself and find rooting in my purpose on this earth is the gift that has come from chaos. I am the clearing for others to express and speak their truth, to feel in-love and free in their bodies. To create the space for the healing conversations that need to be had that deal with the source itself...the sexual wounding around what it has meant to be a man, woman or other in this world.
Learning how to embody. Coming to know the emotional nature of my system, honoring it, and listening to it as my barometer. Loving myself completely. Understanding that that same fear I once had (and often still do carry), that when allowed to travel and move throughout my body and my voice as moving energy, IS actually my creative energy...as well as ecstasy. This has been my healing.
I am an actor in Los Angeles of stage and screen, Eating Psychology & Embodiment Coach, Conversation Creator (& host of Meeting at the Table), and birther of the Eco and Socially Conscious Lifestyle brand LOOKS GOOD ON YOU INC. My life is about connecting, conversing, and growing. Or better yet... blooming.
In Love & Freedom,
Jenna