The Riot in Our Bodies

Why I Lean Into Somatic Expression

I served as a legislative lobbyist for Planned Parenthood in Georgia during the early 2000s.

Back then, Georgia had some of the most progressive reproductive protections in the South.

But, it was always fragile—always under siege from the so-called “religious right”—but we still believed in forward motion. We believed in justice. We believed in the Constitution.

We said: Women won’t stand for it. Our allies won’t stand for it.
We thought: If it gets that bad, there will be riots in the streets. Our allies will riot with us.

We were mistaken.

Adriana Smith was a 30-year-old mother and nurse. In February, she suffered a catastrophic medical emergency and died. She was nine weeks pregnant. Her mother, April, is now watching her daughter’s body be artificially sustained, not in the hope of recovery, but because Georgia law defines fetal cardiac activity as grounds to continue a pregnancy, even after your death.

Even. After. Your. Death. 

Her body has been held in this state for over 90 days.
Her family has no say. No voice. 

Let’s be clear: this is violence.

This is not a tragic misinterpretation—it’s desecration.

Adriana’s body is being used without consent, propped up as a symbol of a law written by legislators and interpreted by medical professionals.

Those who claim to be aligned with the sanctity of life.

But this isn’t the God I know.

The God I know doesn’t treat a woman’s body as disposable.

The Universe, I trust, doesn’t hold us through coercion.

It holds us with dignity. With reverence. With breath.

Adriana’s story is about legislative violence. Not because she was pregnant. Not because she died.

But because her body—her sacred, once-living body—is now being used to advance a belief system that denies her humanity while pretending to honor life.

This is what state control of the body looks like. 

I’ve carried this story in my own body, not as an idea, but as a sensation.

It started with nausea. Then heat. A buzzing in my chest. My jaw locking tight. I couldn’t sleep. My nervous system knew before I could put a name to it.

This isn’t theoretical for me.
I spent part of my life fighting these policies in rooms full of “fine southern” men and their accomplices who thought they knew better. I remember the tone. The smirk. The polite dismissal. And still, I never imagined this.

Somatic work isn’t a side practice. It’s how I survive what the world keeps asking me to swallow.

Because disconnection is not just a symptom of oppression—it’s one of its primary tools. If you can numb a woman’s relationship to her body, you can make her easier to control. If you sever sensation, you sever self-trust. If you replace intuition with fear, you can rewire her to doubt every message her body sends.

That’s what these laws are designed to do: not just to restrict, but to reprogram.

Somatic expression is how I unlearn it.

When I turn inward, it’s not to escape. It’s to come back, back to my breath, my feet, the tightness in my throat, the ache in my ribs, the break in my heart. I don’t try to fix it. I don’t force it to move. I just let myself notice.

I’ve spent years learning to feel what I was taught to ignore.

How to stay with what once made me bolt.

How to name rage without apology.

How to cry without shame.

How to Stop Asking If I’m Worthy of Care. The type of care that sees me as a whole, and holy being. 

Because I am.
And you are.
And Adriana is. And April is. 

Her body deserves reverence. She deserves peace. Her family deserves choice. What they’ve been given is a state-sanctioned erasure of humanity in the name of “life.”

But this isn’t the God I know.
And it’s certainly not justice.

So when I say I lean into somatic work, I don’t mean it lightly.
I mean it as a daily practice of remembering. 

I mean it as rebellion.
As grief.
As the slow stitching together of all the places that I have been split apart. Picked apart.

This week, I’m sharing a simple practice.
A chance to sit with sensation instead of running from it.

An opportunity to hold space for Adriana and her family.
A way to hear your own heart again—especially when the world is trying to silence it.

Because the riot is in our bodies.
And so is our clarity.
And so is our refusal.

For Adriana. For April.
For the women holding the line now, in every cell of their being.