The Start to Healing

2020. Postpartum. Age 34.

I had to learn to shut down my brain to survive. 

After giving birth, my body decided that it had had enough of me.  I had counted on my relative youth and otherwise healthy lifestyle to keep me going.  “I have to be spartan about every element of my life to stay healthy,” I had often explained to my coworkers.  “Otherwise, I’d have a heart attack.”  I said it like it was a joke.

“Stacey, why don’t you eat out?  You always have weird food in the staff fridge.”

“Stacey, why don’t you drink alcohol?”

“Stacey, you’re thin.  You’re not going to die if you miss a workout.”

“My lifestyle is the only thing keeping me going,” I replied.  My body was trying to communicate with me, even through the words I spoke, but I wasn’t listening.

My lifestyle was the only thing that kept me going, but it eventually wasn’t enough.

It started with endless clogged milk ducts during breastfeeding, until a lactation consultant said, “Something is amiss with your lymphatic system.”

My skin, which had traditionally been pale but nice, took on a dull cast.

Despite eating constantly, I was ravenous all the time.  (My body wasn’t synthesizing protein properly, so everything I ate was basically passing through me without doing any good).

I stopped driving because I didn’t trust myself to get anywhere safely.

My cognition was so depleted that I could no longer read to the end of a sentence, let alone write.  It was like someone took a blowtorch to my brain and melted it.  What had once defined me was rendered mush.

I began to lose my motor coordination, eventually not trusting myself to hold my newborn son unless seated for fear of falling with him in my arms. 

“Work hard now, it will pay off later,” had always been my mantra.  

But the hard work didn’t pay off.  I had pushed my body for years.  My body pushed back.  Harder and stronger than I ever could have imagined.  My body wasn’t interested in a future payoff; it was interested in taking revenge for my neglect of it. 

Listening to it became a literal matter of life or death.  My data-driven, Type A personality had betrayed me and couldn’t save me.  I knew this.  I knew that no amount of research or learning, the techniques I’d relied on to achieve success my whole life, could save me.  With limited options, I started working with a doctor whose methodology required a leap of faith.  

This doctor started muscle-testing me for what my body needed to get stronger.  

Every thing we eat, the air we breathe, the emotions we have- everything that enters our bodies in a literal physical sense, or an emotional or spiritual one- has the capacity to make us either weaker or stronger.  Muscle testing is a way to bypass your conscious mind and get to your subconscious mind, where your body knows what it needs to heal.

The doctor that tested me gave me bottles or herbs and said, “Your body wants this herb in this x dose x number of times per day.”  I started taking the herbs, dozens of them.  A detox pathway opened up over my eye, and toxins started dumping out.  I spent a few months wiping away the fluid that flowed out of me and squinting. I felt intense humiliation over my appearance because I looked like an ogre. 

More detox pathways opened up a few months later in my mouth.  (The health of your teeth is closely related to the health of your organs that correspond to that meridian in your body.)  As different organs began to dump toxins, lumps formed on my gums.   They felt like someone stuck a hot branding iron in my mouth, but it was part of my body learning to cleanse itself again.

My brain tried to talk me out of trusting my own lived experience.  “You’re paying this person?  This doctor is a fake!  You’re falling for this because you’re desperate!”

But somewhere, deep down, my own wisdom could not be washed away.  I went for a walk alone and asked myself, “Is this doctor a fake?  Am I falling for this because I’m desperate?”

My own voice began to speak, my body’s voice, the voice I had shut down for so many years.  It said, “This is real.  This is how you are healing.”

Our bodies are full of wisdom.  When I first started working with this doctor, I wanted to take extra doses of things because I figured that it was ok to suffer pretty badly short-term if it meant that I got to get well faster.  I still believed that I was supposed to be getting better faster and wanted to dictate the timeline of my wellness.  

But the doctor cautioned me against it and told me not to take any more than my body had requested.  I didn’t really want to follow what he said but I did because I knew, even if my less than stellar state of mind, that it was stupid to pay someone to help you heal and then disregard the advice you paid for.  It is only recently that I’ve realized that trying to boss my body around for so many years is probably what made me sick.

I used to be exhausted and full of dread every day going to work, but I ignored every sign my body was giving me instead of listening to it.  I subsequently sublimated unhealthy emotions, stopped absorbing my food properly, and was waking up multiple times a night sweating and replaying things that had happened during the day.

I don’t work through misery any more.  I won’t take a job that requires 10+ hours of a racing pulse each day, teeth grinding so hard at night that I woke up with pieces of enamel loose in my mouth, and hot tears let out and quickly suppressed in the four-minute “breaks” I had between classes. 

Instead, I acknowledge when my heart starts racing.  Instead of suppressing it, I ask my body what it needs.  

If we allow our bodies to speak, they will tell us what we need to do to heal. Your subconscious knows what’s best for you.  But it will only act as your white knight if you stop silencing it.

God taught me so many lessons through this experience, but one of them was this: Instead of looking for answers from other people, I now trust that answers that God gives me. I trust my own body, my own voice, above all others.

This ability to trust myself, to trust the God behind my body’s voice, has permanently changed how I approach life.

If you’re suffering physically, mentally, or spiritually, I encourage you to find some privacy and ask yourself, “Body, what do you need to heal?” For our bodies are so much smarter than our brains.

Thank you for sharing!

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