Layla Ali

About

The person who usually finds me is the competent one in their family, the one everybody rings when something goes wrong. They are unfailingly reliable, extremely good in a crisis, and privately unable to identify a single thing they want for themselves. That profile is common and it has a recognizable origin. Childhood wounds often produce adults who are excellent at reading other people and hopeless at registering their own needs. Attending to yourself was not a viable strategy at the time. We work on restoring that capacity, which is slower and more uncomfortable than it sounds, and most people find wanting things frightening at first. I was in group settings for a long time first, and the reliable ones were always the last to speak. That has stayed with me. If you are the person everybody rings, get in touch. Wanting things is a capacity that can be rebuilt, slowly.