When I was being shaped and baked in the oven of Berkeley in the sixties – being straight – as in socially conservative or aligning with the establishment was a liability, a slur. My brother Lee used to scorn “The Straighties” (pronounced Straight-teeez) along with “The White-teeez”. Though not the Hippies, or other eezes. So in my little heart of hearts, I definitely didn’t want to be figuratively straight. Ergo, it’s not surprising that I literally had terrible posture too. I relished in my hands-in-my jeans-pockets, hunched over, long-legged stride. Kinda like a cool Doonesbury character. Although, as I got older, when I wanted to be tall and straight like a runway or magazine model, I found that my shoulders (after a short lived roll back) would inevitably collapse into their natural slumpy state.

My last husband even commented on it, that I was developing “The Turtle” (his characterization of a hump at the base of my neck). I tried and tried to make The Turtle go away. Once when I was doing some somatic work for my trauma, and grief, I was coached by a certifiably fit woman. During some memories, I wept and cried out from the pain…crumpling onto the floor, beaten and weak. “Stand up!” she encouraged. “You can STAND it!” And, I did stand back up and reach my arms (still sobbing) up over my head, narrowing and lengthening myself so I fit into the eye of the hurricane of feelings swirling around me. I surprised myself. I could stand straight and tall and grounded. In some subsequent sessions (calmer ones on a couch), I told her wanted better posture. So, she tried to show me how to adapt to a new standing position: “Pull your shoulder-blade muscles down, and engage your core…” Huh? Looking at her post-professional dance body, I could see those muscles on her but I couldn’t find them on me, in me, anywhere in my proximity! I found when I did try to hold myself up, like a marionette trying to make itself dance, both futile and exhausting.

Also, it wasn’t just about the lack of muscles and the lifetime of body-memory. I have literally been carrying the weight of my family on my back. Through the privacy of YouTube searching, and nabbing ideas from a class here and there, I finally developed a workout that has slowly been strengthening my core and helping me find those elusive back muscles. I can actually feel the middle of me getting strong enough to hold up the top of me.

As of today (a few days after Lee died) …after a few days of lying in bed, watching dumb and comforting TV and crying hard in between, I arose this morning feeling lighter. Literally. Lighter. I feel my torso lengthening, stretching under the upward pull of the anti-gravity…the fuel rockets of this latest grief has broken the heavy gravitational force my family exerted on me. Standing straight almost feels like the start of falling over backwards, so unused to the sensation as I am. I still vote liberal, nonetheless, I am a proud straight-tee too!