Your Body Is Not Public Property
From the Sunday Self-Care Chronicles | 2/15/26
This week’s issue explores the tension many women are feeling right now — and why coming back to your own body is a radical, grounded starting point.
This week’s issue touches on:
✨ Why collective headlines can feel deeply personal
✨ The layered impact of breast cancer on body ownership
✨ How reclaiming safety, sensuality, and agency begins from the inside out
Read the full email below - and if something speaks to you please feel free to comment, share, or reach out!
Hi friend.
I’ve been feeling something lately that’s been hard to name.
A kind of internal yet visceral friction.
Every time the news comes on — another story about women’s bodies being debated, controlled, dismissed, exposed, legislated, violated — I feel it in my chest.
And the self-preservation part of my brain wants to tell me, “this isn't about you.”
But the truth?
It is about me.
It's about all of us.
It’s about every time my body — or a woman’s body sitting across from me — was treated like it required someone else’s approval.
It’s about the surgeon who asks how your husband feels about your reconstruction choice before agreeing to it.
It’s about being told the discomfort of an implant flipping “isn’t a big deal.”
It’s about cervical procedures with no real pain management beyond Tylenol.
It’s about pelvic floor tools requiring paperwork and justification while men can access erectile medication without blinking.
It’s about living in a culture where autonomy is conditional — and where women’s pain is negotiable.
And when you’ve had breast cancer?
It hits deeper.
Because you already know what it feels like to lose ownership, even temporarily.
You already know what it’s like to have your body medicalized and managed by committee.
To have it scanned.
Marked.
Cut.
Measured.
Discussed in conference rooms.
Decided upon in treatment plans.
Handled with gloves and good intentions.
You know what it’s like to feel both grateful and disconnected at the same time.
Alive.
But not entirely at home in your own skin.
And in moments like this — culturally, collectively — it can stir something deeper.
A question like: Is my body even mine?
Let me say this clearly.
Your body is still yours.
Even if it has scars.
Even if it has implants.
Even if it has changed shape.
Even if it doesn’t respond the way it used to.
Even if menopause showed up early.
Even if desire feels complicated.
And when I talk about reclaiming your body, I don’t mean it in some Instagram-quote kind of way.
I mean real, embodied ownership.
Ownership of your surgical choices.
Ownership of what feels tolerable and what doesn’t.
Ownership of your pleasure.
Ownership of your discomfort.
Ownership of what feels right in your skin.
Reclaiming your body doesn’t require a megaphone.
But it does require intention.
It might look like asking a harder question in an exam room.
It might look like saying, “No, that is a big deal.”
It might look like learning how your lymphatic system works so fear doesn’t get the final word.
It might look like touching your scars on purpose instead of avoiding them.
It might look like choosing pleasure in many forms— not because you owe it to someone else — but because you deserve it.
Mere survival was never meant to be the finish line.
Reclaiming safety and sensuality — in whatever form feels safe to you — is not frivolous.
It’s ownership.
It’s autonomy.
It’s nervous system repair.
It’s coming back home.
And here’s the part that matters most:
Systems don’t change because women stay disconnected from their bodies.
They change when we stop outsourcing our authority.
When you rebuild trust with your body, you are practicing sovereignty on a very real level.
And if you’ve been feeling that friction lately — that subtle sense of being braced — you are not imagining it.
Your body remembers.
Your body reacts.
Your body wants safety and sovereignty.
This is why I teach what I teach.
The Survivorship Starting Point exists because healing isn’t just about avoiding recurrence.
It’s about rebuilding your relationship with your body as a whole person.
And the sex and intimacy workshop I’m opening soon exists because pleasure and connection are not luxuries.
They are part of being alive.
If you want a grounded place to start reconnecting with your body in a whole-person way, The Survivorship Starting Point is your free guide to getting started.
And if you’re feeling ready — or even just curious — about reclaiming sensuality and intimacy after breast cancer, you can join the waitlist for the workshop.
I’ll be sharing details very soon.
You don’t have to solve the system.
But you can stop abandoning yourself inside of it.
You can learn your body.
You can ask better questions.
You can claim your pleasure.
You can insist that your discomfort matters.
That is not small.
That is how sovereignty starts.
Your body is still yours.
Start there.
P.S. If this message feels important, you’re welcome to share it. These conversations matter.