1- How The BodyWise Was Born

Who I Am

My name is Andrea Porcelli.

I'm a trauma-specialized therapist, a Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, a couples therapist, and a creative facilitator. Before dedicating myself to therapy, I worked for many years as an international producer in photography and advertising.

I'm Argentinian-Chilean, I grew up mostly in Europe, I emigrated young to the Netherlands, and I live in Amsterdam today. I'm the mother of a 22-year-old.

I've spent more than twenty years moving between creativity, psychology, art, and human relationships, both supporting other people and doing my own process. I'm interested in trauma, the body, human bonds, belonging, and the very different ways we have of moving through what happens to us.

I Didn't Plan to Start This Blog

I didn't plan to have cancer, either.

The two things arrived almost together, and somehow one pushed the other along. I was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer, and that changed my relationship with time, with priorities, with some things that used to feel enormous and suddenly stopped being so. I don't want to say the cancer came to teach me anything, or that it's a gift, or that "everything happens for a reason." I don't want to wrap it up in that kind of phrase that gets repeated so much out there. I'm scared, I have questions, there's real uncertainty.

But it would also be a lie to deny that something like this reorders things. And, without becoming more positive, right there in the middle of the uncertainty I'm feeling a peace I've rarely felt before. Not because I've found the silver lining in this. Simply because when life puts something in front of you that you can't negotiate or fully control, some things resettle on their own.

Where the Name Comes From

I want to look at that head-on, instead of looking away. That's where The BodyWise comes from. The name plays on the word "streetwise": that kind of knowledge you earn by having lived through something, not just by having studied it. It's a wisdom born of lived experience, gained from the scares you've had, the surprises, and the situations you sometimes end up walking into without having planned it.

I've spent years supporting other people and doing my own therapeutic work too, so I know well the difference between what you learn by accompanying someone and what reveals itself differently when something happens to you from the inside.

What I Want This to Be

This space isn't going to be a blog about cancer. Cancer is simply the concrete place I'm writing from right now. But I want it to grow far beyond this: relationships, friendship, the body, belonging, emigration, motherhood, loss, fear, trust, creativity, books that stir something in me, songs that keep me company, art, conversations, people.

I'm not here to give instructions on how to live. These are observations from wherever I'm standing right now. Something here might resonate with you. It might not. You might not agree with me, and I want there to be room for that too.

Live it. Watch it. Tell it.

That's, for now, everything I know about The BodyWise. I still don't know where it's headed, and I think that's also part of how it's being born. We'll discover the rest together, chapter by chapter.

About the Collaboration Button

One last thing, to be transparent from the start: on several of these posts you'll see a collaboration button. I'm self-employed, and this process is hitting my finances hard, right at a moment when I need to work less, not more. I'm not writing this to ask for anything, in fact it's hard for me to even say it, but I'd rather be clear than leave it unexplained. The button is there, available for whoever wants to and is able to use it. Nothing more than that.

🎵 I'll leave you with a song from the great Nina Simone: "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free."