I’ll Be Reading My Body
Most mornings I’m up at 3 or 4 AM. I used to stay out until then and now I’m up, scrolling. I always look for stories that pique my therapeutic interests. Recently Emily Ratajkowski’s interview in the Sunday Times and that fit the bill.
It seems that Ms. Ratajkowski has been in the midst of a therapeutic journey. Existential crises don’t just come at midlife.
Life is complicated. We’re paradoxical. As observers of the world we want all things to be simple and neat. We want good and bad. We want cause and effect. We want explanations that we can easily understand. Meanwhile in our lives we’re a complex mix of history, motives, and defenses in the middle of attempts to be happy. Ms. Ratajkowski seems to bring a lot of her human complexity to her upcoming memoir.
The woman, author, actress, and model talks about her experiences of sexual assault and rape. Ms. Ratajkowski walks her audience through how she thought about herself, her experiences, and her success within a system that is built on her dehumanization. Dehumanization is inextricably linked to trauma and traumatic events.
Power seems to be another theme of My Body. Power in relationships, careers, and systems is under discussed in most therapy. Power dynamics are quite real. Money and sex are two of the most significant sources of power dynamics in relationships. I grapple them in therapy. Ms. Ratajkowski grapples with them in her new book. I’ll be reading.
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski came out this month: October 2021.
Amazon.com: My Body: 9781250817860: Ratajkowski, Emily: Books
No one comes to a therapist to brag about how great their life is going. We all come to therapy at one point or another because everything we could think to try on our own to make our lives happier hasn’t worked well enough. I was no different. Mine is a recovery story.