I am a woman who loves boundlessly. Without walls, I want to believe . But I am a woman made like mother earth, and there are parts of my soil that have hardened. Around my heart. My hips, my lips, my throat.

Thankfully, the rain has arrived. Those millions of minuscule portals that transform into one channel of flow and change. I allowed it to seep through my skin, my hair, my cells. It washes from the top of my head and loosens everything. Creates space and cracks between. It nourishes the drought of my mind, frayed from being in one state for too long. It hydrates the fossils of my heart. Slowly making new out of the echo of the past. Versions of me and mine that are no longer- disintegrating.

The dirt turns darker as the water softens it. Making the way to growth seem more ominous, even though it is so much closer than before. The softness makes it seem harder, because vulnerability usually feels heavy at first.

And then I remember that I love the feel of mud. How it feels on my toes, dripping from my hands. So I take it all and I make Sandcastles from the earth within me. Build it of what once was. I craft it by the shore. I make it of the beautiful and ugly and suddenly I make it all into the former. I leave it all here. Sealed within the doors of a microscopic world that is no longer me. I walk away, forward, around, leaving fading foot prints on top of millions of sand crab breaths. The ancient queen of the ocean claims my past few steps, she too absorbs my past few decades. I look back, not even the bones of everywhere I have been and everyone I once was. She buries them both deep in her waves. Transforming pain and to play for dolphins and plankton and otters. Her creative pressure turning it into an exploding star. And now where there once was a light that knew only one way to burn, there is a whole universe within me open to mystery and miracles.

• Dori

I wrote this blog after prompting my own internal storytelling. I thought about how before things can be witnessed and released, they must soften and loosen. Before the river can flow, it must thaw after a deep winter. If you'd like to join me, I invite you to go on your own somatic writing journey.

First, find a soft gaze or, if it feels comfortable, close your eyes and tune into your body. Feel into breath and sensation without judgment, just noticing. Then begin to feel if there are spaces or feelings of restriction. Without judgment, can you observe them creatively. Do they have a texture, a color, does a place or a person come to mind? Then, I invite you to call in the word- flow. What does flow mean to you? Does it have a color, a texture, a smell, a sound, is it a place or state of being experienced before? Once you have this creative connection to flow, allow it to run like a river through you and soften the hardened spaces, as if rainwater breaking up drought stricken, hardened land. When you feel the loosening begin to happen, can you open your eyes and being to stream of consciousness write for as long as you need. See what happens!