Her Body
{a song}, slowliving, & the pace of a mother's body
You’ve probably heard about the Slow Living movement, maybe tried on some of the ideologies of slow living in your own life. If this is the first time you’re hearing about Slow Living, the movement sprouted out of the 1980’s Slow Food movement, which really started in Italy and then was popularized here in the US by such foodies as Alice Waters. (Her book The Art of Simple Food is a staple in my kitchen, by the way.)
Here’s a sweet video I found that amplifies how slow living can truly change our society and our individual lives at the core.
You don’t have the watch this video, though, to get what I’m saying.
We all know that life is moving fast. Way too fast. We’re trying to move more like machines, to be more efficient, but we aren’t machines. We are human, quite literally of the humus, of the earth, the soil. We live in animal bodies, and we need to move at the pace that our bodies can move. There’s nothing quite like giving birth and those early postpartum weeks, to remind you of this simple fact.
I remember the first time I drove a car in my last early postpartum season. I think Gyddion was 6 weeks, and I needed to drive Daniel (my oldest son) to 9th grade. It was just a few blocks down Menchaca. No big deal, I told myself. But it was a big deal.
The lights, the signs, so much red. And the pace. Oooof.
Cars pushing me from behind to go faster. “The speed limit is 45,” I say silently, as a Dodge truck zooms past, going at least 65.
My body was in shock. My whole being had been moving so slowly for the previous weeks. I’d not even left the house except to take a few steps around our backyard.
At the stop lights I would close my eyes and bow my head down to my chest, and take deep breaths. It was all I could do to not have a panic attack from the overstimulation.
Now two years out from my last baby, I have not “gone back” to my pre-postpartum pace. I have no desire—none—to return to a pace that is anti-thetical to my animal body.
During this last postpartum—and in the work I do every week as a postpartum doula with new mothers—I got on a whole deeper level how the deep currents of life and the Earth are begging us to slow down.
As a newly-birthed mother of four children, I could feel in my body that in order to move in an integrated, wholesome, life-giving way, I needed to move waaaaaaayyyy slower than my mind thinks (and our society programmed me to believe) that I need to move.
A few months ago I was once again driving down Menchaca and another truck was energetically pushing me from behind, and this song [below] leapt out of my mouth.
It erupted in a burst, with magma-like rage, and I started half-singing, half-screaming these words, “I WANNA MOVE AT THE PACE THAT MY BODY CAN MOVE…I WANNA MOVE AT THE PACE THAT MY BODY CAN MOVE…MOTHERFUCKERS!!”
When I returned home, and placed my bare feet on the Earth in my backyard, the melody returned, and a song flowed out of me. Not in rage this time, but rooted in a space in my body that the rage helped to open; a space that values slow, rooted, deep, connected living.
This song has become my mantra, and a reminder for me to slow down, to trust more in the pace that my body can move on any given day, and to not let my mind convince me that I can go much faster than I can.
May this song be medicine for you too.
“Her Body” (received by Kate West, 4/4/25)
(REPEAT 2x)
I wanna move at the pace that my body can move…ooh-ooh.
I wanna move at the pace that my body can move…ohhh-ohhh.
(REPEAT 2x)
Deep and slow,
Rooted and connected
To our Mother Earth,
who knows my body,
My body is Her Body too
My body is Her Body…
May we all remember that our bodies are intricately connected to the body of our Mother Earth.
May we remember to source ourselves there, to move at the life-giving pace of Her Body.
May we honor the cycles of slower, rest and renewal with the faster, productive, got-our-shit-together moments.
As a human in a female body—in a mother’s body that has given birth to four humans and been pregnant 6 times—I have to honor the wisdom of this vessel.
And it is telling me that if I want to create a different world than the one I see now, I have to slow the fuck down.
Thank you Kate. Slow and steady.. creates a new world 🐢
That last line is a banger 🔥