The Well's True Body Project Aims to Foster Connection, Community and Healing Among Cincinnati Teenage Girls

A group photo of the True Body Project’s participants Photo: Courtesy of The Well

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Sept. 20 print edition.

In 2005, the iPhone had not yet been invented. Facebook was still only available to holders of college email addresses. Instagram wouldn’t be launched for another five years. For all that the extreme toxicity of social media hadn’t yet permeated youth culture, there were plenty of other avenues available for people, especially teenage girls, to feel disconnected from themselves and their communities.

It’s the reason that Stacy Sims, founder and director of The Well, an organization that offers arts integrations and events that foster “healing-centered practices,” founded the True Body Project — and part of the reason she brought it back this summer after 18 years.

“2005 [was] pre-social media, pre-pandemic, all the ‘pre’-s, and I understood by listening to young people that the disconnection between mind and body seemed more exaggerated,” said Sims. “Feminism and some of these other constructs didn’t seem to have worked to create any kind of cohesion, and I felt like you couldn’t really change your mind if you didn’t bring your body along for the ride. So I had this idea for a rite-of-passage curriculum.”

Sims first floated the concept of the True Body Project by the folks at ArtWorks in 2005 as a riff on their existing summer youth artist apprentice model. As lead teaching artist for the project, she would use the tried-and-true ArtWorks framework of youth employment. The youth apprentices would go through this curriculum together, with the final result being the creation of a book as a tangible record of their learnings. More intrinsically, the six weeks in community using movement and meditation would leave the apprentices with a practice they could carry with them far beyond that summer. It was a hit, gracing the cover of CityBeat in 2005 and resulting in a short documentary.

The success of the True Body Project’s inaugural outing was followed by a second iteration in 2006. The concept then shifted, moving to a focus on camps, afterschool programs, even a cross-cultural application through a decade-long presence in Cambodia. But the original True Body model was resurrected this year for much the same reason as before: disconnection was at a fever pitch.

“I was reading all these articles about the teen mental health crisis, especially for girls,” said Sims. “So because of the crisis, because of our knowledge, and because we have this great facility [The Well], [I reached out to] ArtWorks and said, ‘Hey, can we do this again in the same format?’ And they said yes.”

A lot has changed in 18 years. The span of time between the first True Body and the 2023 True Body is equal to the number of years someone has when they reach adulthood. That is to say, the True Body project has matured, grown in its span, its goals, its intent. The youth True Body serves have changed in certain fundamental ways from the original group of girls in 2005.

“One of the things that was really intriguing is that gender has become a much more fluid and full and important discussion as it relates to body, females, all of these issues,” said Sims. “The invitation was to female-identifying and gender-expansive youth.”

Beyond gender was the consideration of today’s teens’ mental health. According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this year, which analyzed data collected over a 10-year period from 2011 to 2021, one in three female students in 2021 have seriously considered suicide. Fifty-seven percent of female high school students reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.”

True Body, therefore, and its curriculum of holistic connection, body awareness, mindfulness, and kindness, was uniquely positioned not just as a respite, but, a potential antidote.

“It was really beautiful from the first day,” said Kyle Wolff, a writer and photographer who served as the lead teaching artist for True Body. “It was such a different perspective these apprentices were giving us, because they’re so vulnerable and so connected and supportive of one another from day one and really open to each other.”

Twelve youth apprentices, ranging in age from 14 to 20, participated. They gathered at The Well in Camp Washington Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to commune with one another and create art. Sims and Wolff brought in a variety of creatives, with an emphasis on visual art, (but also including dance, creative writing, sound healing and more) to teach the apprentices, with everything being presented around a deeper and better understanding of one’s own body. A group exercise on the first day led to the inception of Planet Love and the creation of its mythology.

“We figured out from doing some of the exercises together, we decided our energy felt like a planet,” said MJ Cook, 20, who served as senior apprentice. “That was the driving theme for our work. Throughout the project, we had different ideas for things we wanted to be a part of our book, like our alien personas on Planet Love, our houses on Planet Love. A lot of time it was whatever people felt like making that applied to the theme.”

Originally a place where the three pillars of love, acceptance and understanding flowed in abundance thanks to the LOVE Potion, Planet Love became a shadow of its former self as its inhabitants forgot about the core pillars and lost sight of the beauty the planet once held. The apprentices became “remixers”, who, using the lessons they were taught over the summer, could not only restore Planet Love to its original greatness and purpose, but would also flesh out the multifaceted nature of themselves as residents of the planet.

The resultant book, Dispatches from Planet Love, is a collection of the art, photographs and lessons the apprentices learned throughout their True Body experience. It is a singular volume, reflecting the individuality of all the apprentices and their perception of themselves, one another, and their world.

“I had never had another space through a job or school where I had the opportunity to lay all of myself out and hope that people would be accepting of that,” said Cook. “I think because we were all coming into that space knowing that was what we hoped to do, everybody was really accepting and kind when people would open up about different things.”

In addition to the book, there will be a mural, which will be dedicated in an event at The Well on Oct. 5. The mural features the front and backside of a postcard, Greetings from Planet Love. The greeting on the mural is also an invitation for everyone to take part in the transformative experience of finding oneself on Planet Love. The apprentices can attest to that power.

“[My goals] were having more of a connection between mind and body, getting to connect with a group of people I didn’t know coming into the project, opening myself up to other people, listening closely to other people, and also to make art I was excited about,” said Cook. “I would say I accomplished all of those things.”

The Well’s True Body Project celebration and mural dedication takes place Oct. 5 at The Well, 2868 Colerain Ave., Camp Washington. Info: thewell.world.

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