Ep.02 with Jenny McGrath - She Learned to Leave Her Body. And She Learned to Return

What happens when a thirteen-year-old girl receives a purity ring from her father and learns that her body belongs to everyone except herself?

Jenny McGrath opens doors into the places where purity culture, sexual trauma, and religious shame live in women's bodies. In this conversation, we move through modesty checks and closets of shame. Through sexual assault and the confusion of pleasure and pain. Through years as a missionary in Uganda, treating her body like a machine until Acholi dancing gave her body back. Through the psoas muscle as an archive of intergenerational fear.

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of childhood corporal punishment, sexual assault, and religious trauma. Listen when your body is ready.

Storykeeper: Jenny McGrath is a mental health counselor, Somatic Experiencing® practitioner, and researcher. Her work reveals how missionary work became a way for white women to feel their own pain through the pain of others.

Connect with Jenny:

https://www.indwellmovement.com/

https://www.instagram.com/indwell_movement/

Resources mentioned:

• adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism
• Liz Koch, The Psoas Book
• Angela Chen on consent
• Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

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Anna Teresa is an anthropologist, experience designer, somatic trauma-informed facilitator, and storykeeper based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works with women leaders navigating the midlife crunch - supporting them back into the intelligence of their bodies, their cycles, and their stories. YINtentions is where those stories are held.

About this work + offers: https://www.yinrhythms.com/