kasia laviers

Yesterday, the hills were wild. As I walked a blizzard began to howl across the landscape, and I fought it. I was locked in a physical struggle with my umbrella, wrestling with the wind, determined to keep dry, determined to stay in control. Then, through my headphones, the song I Surrender by St. Finnikin began to play. In that moment, I let go. I put the umbrella down. I let the wind have its way and I simply knelt on the earth, making myself small against the rushing force. The struggle...

The Courage of Aliveness For a long time, the nervous system confuses numbness with peace. When you have spent years—sometimes generations—carrying heavy ancestral weights and surviving in a functional freeze, simply being quiet feels like a victory. But there is a profound, razor-thin line between protective numbing and true, somatic healing. Numbing flattens the world; it dims the grief, but it also silences the joy. Healing is the terrifying, beautiful process of waking up. It is the...

This is a raw post, and it's one of the hardest to write. It's for anyone who struggles with connection, but it's also a love letter to the people in my life. I have an "intention" for this article. It's not about self-pity; it's about wanting, deeply, to be understood. I'm aware that my protective mechanisms can make me seem aloof, cold, unavailable, not interested, stuck-up, uncaring, even snobbish. This is not the case. This is not the real me . I want my friends to know that I don't see...