hi sophie, brilliant piece, thank you. and resonates with meanderings i have been doing in relation to dissociative disorderings and not only what they suggest about consciousness but as you say here so well, the opportunity those traumatic ruptures allow for other beings to make place in your body. no longer able to hold onto a culturally prescribed sense of individuality we become aware of our porousness and the real privilege of letting others speak through whatever filter it is that our survival bodies have so wonderfully grown, life pushing through regardless, looking for connections. thanks again for being such a clarifying thinker and eloquent explorer! i have really been njoying your work! cheers, jo
This right here is the reason I subscribed to your substack! I have bee. Thinking about it for months. The "could be" you, the present you. So relatable. Thank you Sophie!
Thank you for this story. It has provided me with much to meditate upon as I consider my own story. I don't know all what it will ferment into yet, but it will be something necessary, and a more fertile story than I could have told left solely to my own devices.
Wow. I’m open from the inside out. This story has me thinking upside down and backward about everything. Your writing nurtured many new neural pathways for me and I resonate deeply. Thank you for being you. I am so grateful to be on Earth at the same time as you.
This piece rocked me from the inside out. Weeping, not even really sure why. On my 3rd reread I am seeing and hearing my own demon wellness, this ‘ultimate’ version of me that I will never be satisfied with. It’s interesting — I suffer(ed) from childhood anorexia, skipped and starved puberty and growth out of my body, which has left lasting impacts on my body. For years, I have strived to ‘get back’ to this wholeness, this illusion, to try and ‘get back’ these years of malnourishment because somehow the version of me who remained ‘healthy’ and ‘whole’ as a child would have been better than the version of me now.
And, but, also — she is an illusion. The ‘me’ that was perfectly nourished all throughout my childhood would not have ever led to the kind of found and created joy and satisfaction that I have forged with my cracks, my pain, my suffering, my questioning.
Acknowledging these perfect ghosts can set them free, and in setting them free may we set ourselves free. Free to be ensnared again, then untangled again, over and over and over because wholeness is not perfection.
Thank you, Sophie, for this essay. Deeply moving, like balm for my heart.
Sophie, deep thanks for this essay. I've felt personally connected to how you write from your bodily experience, and reading this invited a personal imaginative encounter with the me born with typical genitals instead of an intersex crater that provoked a medical response of conforming surgeries as a child and ongoing hormonal treatments. The me lacking a complex experience of shame-linked pain and sensitive understanding of male from just outside its boundary. The me who had no urge to question medical systems bent against nature. The me who spent days with GI Joe and superhero comics instead of in oak forests with Tolkien. Whose puberty had nothing to hide, but grew height, hair and muscles like the rest. Who had biological children. I both love and hate meeting him. J
hi sophie, brilliant piece, thank you. and resonates with meanderings i have been doing in relation to dissociative disorderings and not only what they suggest about consciousness but as you say here so well, the opportunity those traumatic ruptures allow for other beings to make place in your body. no longer able to hold onto a culturally prescribed sense of individuality we become aware of our porousness and the real privilege of letting others speak through whatever filter it is that our survival bodies have so wonderfully grown, life pushing through regardless, looking for connections. thanks again for being such a clarifying thinker and eloquent explorer! i have really been njoying your work! cheers, jo
oooooof.
I do not know how i missed this one, but i am so very glad it somehow tumbled to the top of an inbox search today.
yes, and yes, and holy fucking yes. Over and under and over again.
Thank you for you.
This right here is the reason I subscribed to your substack! I have bee. Thinking about it for months. The "could be" you, the present you. So relatable. Thank you Sophie!
Absolutely stunning and exactly the nourishment I needed today. Thank you, Sophie!!!! xo
Thank you for this story. It has provided me with much to meditate upon as I consider my own story. I don't know all what it will ferment into yet, but it will be something necessary, and a more fertile story than I could have told left solely to my own devices.
Wow. I’m open from the inside out. This story has me thinking upside down and backward about everything. Your writing nurtured many new neural pathways for me and I resonate deeply. Thank you for being you. I am so grateful to be on Earth at the same time as you.
🤎🤎🤎
This piece rocked me from the inside out. Weeping, not even really sure why. On my 3rd reread I am seeing and hearing my own demon wellness, this ‘ultimate’ version of me that I will never be satisfied with. It’s interesting — I suffer(ed) from childhood anorexia, skipped and starved puberty and growth out of my body, which has left lasting impacts on my body. For years, I have strived to ‘get back’ to this wholeness, this illusion, to try and ‘get back’ these years of malnourishment because somehow the version of me who remained ‘healthy’ and ‘whole’ as a child would have been better than the version of me now.
And, but, also — she is an illusion. The ‘me’ that was perfectly nourished all throughout my childhood would not have ever led to the kind of found and created joy and satisfaction that I have forged with my cracks, my pain, my suffering, my questioning.
Acknowledging these perfect ghosts can set them free, and in setting them free may we set ourselves free. Free to be ensnared again, then untangled again, over and over and over because wholeness is not perfection.
Thank you, Sophie, for this essay. Deeply moving, like balm for my heart.
Much love, xx, maggie
Sophie, deep thanks for this essay. I've felt personally connected to how you write from your bodily experience, and reading this invited a personal imaginative encounter with the me born with typical genitals instead of an intersex crater that provoked a medical response of conforming surgeries as a child and ongoing hormonal treatments. The me lacking a complex experience of shame-linked pain and sensitive understanding of male from just outside its boundary. The me who had no urge to question medical systems bent against nature. The me who spent days with GI Joe and superhero comics instead of in oak forests with Tolkien. Whose puberty had nothing to hide, but grew height, hair and muscles like the rest. Who had biological children. I both love and hate meeting him. J
You are such nourishment.
words are unfit to describe how this ghost story woke me to the haunting of my fictional ghost. the me that can never be. 💜