Stay Connected
Trainings, writing, resources, and ideas about boundaries, trauma, embodiment, and relational work.
Jenny Bilskie-Smith,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
EMDRIA Certified Therapist · Certified Intuitive Conselor · Educator and Speaker
Hi, I’m Jenny Bilskie-Smith (she/her).
I’m a therapist, educator, speaker, and someone who genuinely loves a meaningful conversation—especially one that helps us understand what the body has been trying to communicate all along.
My work explores trauma, boundaries, embodiment, and relational healing. I’m particularly interested in where traditional boundary advice falls short—when saying no has felt unsafe or threatened connection, and people learned to abandon themselves in order to belong. My work explores how we can gently rebuild an embodied sense of agency, so that self-protection and connection no longer have to compete.
Thank you for spending this time with me. I’ve gathered some of the resources and ideas that have shaped my work below. If what I shared resonated with you, I’d love to stay connected through occasional writing, trainings, workshops, and resources.
Join me and stay connected.
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Things I Keep Coming Back To
Books, ideas, practices, and resources that have shaped how I think about bodies, boundaries, trauma, and agency.
Books That Made An Impact
The Wisdom of Your Body
Hillary McBride, Non-Fiction
This book helped me fall in love with my body–a place of wisdom, relationship, and belonging.
Bodyfulness
Christine Caldwell, Non-Fiction
This book gave language and structure to a way of being in the body that I was already beginning to find my way toward. It gave me specific ways to practice embodiment.
The Body Is a Doorway
Sophie Strand, Memoir
This book gives me a deep sense of connection—to body, place, land, and other people. It reminds me that embodiment isn’t only about turning inward; it’s also about experiencing ourselves as part of something larger.
The Joy Of Movement
Kelly McGonigal, PhD
My favorite part of the book is its exploration of the joy of movement—especially what happens when we move together. Movement can create not only individual agency, but “we-agency”: a felt sense of belonging, shared strength, and collective courage.
Ideas & Practices I Enjoy
Ecstatic Dance / Friday Dance Dose
Leita Schiemann
Dance is medicine. Get your dose.
This Embodied Life
Hillary McBride, PhD, LCSW
Subtack: A place to practice returning to your body, building courage and curiosity, and becoming more fully here, together.
How To End The War With Your Body
Sonya Rene Taylor
This podcast explores how to unlearn body shame, reconnect with our innate self-worth, and treat the body as a teammate rather than an enemy.
My Favorite Ways to Be A Body
A body is not something we have. It’s an experience that we are.”
-Theresa Silow
Swing
Find a playground. Get on a swing. Feel acceleration, gravity, your stomach drop, your legs pumping, the air against your skin.
Use your own hands
Put your hands somewhere on your body—arms, legs, face, scalp. Rub, press, squeeze, hold. Notice yourself simultaneously touching and being touched.
Move in a way your body chooses.
Ask your body how it wants to move. Does it want rhythm, music, or silence? Does it want to stay low to the ground or reach and sway? Does the movement feel primal, delicate, still—or something else?
The experiment:
What changes when being in your body becomes something you do rather than something you have?