While spending the past few weeks reflecting, I have decided to share five important lessons that I would tell the 30-year-old me which are the same promises I will make to the future Alexis…

“Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous.” -Resmaa Menaken

I wrote the following reflection eight years ago. I am sharing it today in honor of my paternal grandfather who passed from this life to the next on March 31, 2021.