Reading and thinking are obviously wonderful activities… But ones I do too often to ignore the fact that I do have a body, and this body has needs. Getting older, as a woman, is not easy. I think also by being a woman who is also not a mother/parent the validity of my body, and the space it takes up (especially when it does not perform to cultural and capitalistic standards) is suspect.

After seeing friends do similar schemes around their birthdays I have decided that this, my 36th year on the planet, will have a theme: be a body. Specifically I will relish in embodiment.

I kicked it all off with a weekend of movement: dancing, a long run in the rain, and “black metal yoga’ which was as sweaty and ridiculously wonderful as it sounds.

In a couple of days I’ll start my ballet class, a kind of dance I haven’t done in nearly a decade. I’m excited to revisit a form of art that made up a large part of my life, and to let my body relish in the familiar shapes. I’m apprehensive about my ability to divorce these forms from ideas about worth, approval, and just general childhood baggage. But I am up for the challenge as long as I can bend into an arabesque while doing so.