Growing up brown in a white community, I felt an intangible sense that something about me was unlovable, though I couldn’t articulate what that thing was. This is the story about how revisiting my favorite childhood song, Dreaming of You, and learning more about Selena’s history and legacy, transformed my Chicana identity from an unnamed source of shame to pride and celebration.

Emotions are full-body nervous system signals—not just thoughts. A somatic lens on the limbic “lizard brain,” urges and building choice without self-abandoning.

Feeling your emotions might seem like a personal practice — something you do privately or in therapy — but in times of rising authoritarianism, emotional awareness becomes something else entirely: a political and collective act.

Fascism relies on overwhelming the nervous system. This essay explores how emotional suppression serves authoritarianism—and why feeling our grief, rage, and fear in community is a powerful tool for collective resistance, agency, and embodied liberation. Read how fascism overwhelms our psyches and why somatic, communal feeling restores agency & power.

Learn about how somatic therapy is different than talk therapy, and how it might be able to help you feel clear, grounded, and confident.