When the Body Says No

Listening to the Wisdom of the Wounds

There are seasons when the body whispers.
And there are seasons when it roars.

I have lived through both.

For the last thirteen months, my body has been raising her voice, louder and louder, until I could no longer pretend I didn’t hear her. Frozen shoulder syndrome. COVID-19 (x2). Anaplasmosis. A torn labrum in the other shoulder. And, finally, a diagnosis that arrived like both a betrayal and a benediction: endometriosis and adenomyosis. After more than two decades of suffering in silence with pain I thought I had to normalize, carry, transcend.

I’m not here to write another sanitized “everything-happens-for-a-reason” essay about healing. I’m not here to glorify struggle or wrap my story in the tidy packaging of inspiration. This isn’t that. What this is, is an unflinching look at what it means to live in a body that has been shouting “NO” while the world insists we keep saying “yes.”

For 23.5 years, I was a master bodyworker. My hands were my livelihood, my art form, my way of being in service to this world. But somewhere deep in the tissues of my own body, another truth was blooming. My body had been trying to get my attention for years—not just through the physical pain of my work or through chronic, repetitive illness/malaise, but through the quiet ache of misalignment, the weariness of over-giving, the grief of being out of rhythm with my own needs, even though I was absolutely trying to do it all, particularly since an early cancer diagnosis followed 2 years later by Lyme disease— which I can see now that I was TRYING to master self care like an item on my to do list.

So I kept trying. Because that’s what we’re taught to do. Especially as women. Especially as caregivers. Especially under late stage capitalism under the systems of patriarchy.

We push through. We perform. We override the sacred no of the body in service of the unsacred yes of productivity. We measure our worth in output. We mistake busyness for value. We ignore our symptoms until they become a scream.

But the body doesn’t lie.

And mine had been speaking in increasingly urgent ways: Please, not this anymore. Not like this. And though it took far too long, I am listening now.

This year of breaking down has also been a year of breaking open.

What I’ve come to understand is that the body saying no is not a betrayal—it’s a reclamation. A redirection. A radical invitation into truth.

In this slowness, this stillness, this forced undoing of the pace I thought I had to maintain, I have found something sacred:
The quiet yes of my own soul.
The yes that doesn’t shout, doesn’t perform, doesn’t hustle.
The yes that is rooted in resonance, not obligation.

And here’s what I know in my bones now: this body of mine has never betrayed me. She has only ever asked for my attention, my care, my presence. She has only ever tried to bring me home.

The Isolation of Illness + The Myth of Being Too Much

Living in a chronically ill body is lonely in ways that are difficult to describe.

There is the physical isolation, yes—the missed events, the canceled plans, the narrowing of bandwidth. But there is also the emotional isolation, the fear of being “too much,” of wearing out the compassion of others, of becoming a burden.

I have felt this in the my marrow of my bones.

But I am also so deeply held. And I need to name that.

My sweet husband has never made me feel like I’m too much. Not once. He makes me laugh—deep, belly-shaking laughter that loosens the fear lodged in my chest. His love is medicine. His steadiness has been one of the greatest gifts of my healing (and my life).

Laughter, I’ve come to realize, is its own kind of sacred regulation. A balm. A bridge. A softening.

And even when my world has shrunk and friends don’t come around, even when my body has demanded more rest than I thought I could possibly allow myself, something else has expanded exponentially.

The Sacred Pause as Portal

What if the body’s NO is not a shutdown, but a sacred pause?
What if it’s a threshold? A doorway?

This time “off” has not been time wasted.
It has been a return.

To my inner knowing.
To my deeper practices.
To a rhythm that honors who I really am.

I have grieved the time I’ve lost to chronic illness and to grief—especially grief. Ten years swallowed by mourning. Ten years I sometimes feel I have nothing to show for. And yet—how could that be true?

Grief remade me.
It refined me.
It grew in me a depth of courage & compassion that now saturates every session, every offering, every word I write.

I am no longer interested in proving my worth through productivity or income.
I am no longer willing to contort myself into a broken system’s metric of value.
I am no longer willing to ignore the wisdom of my own flesh.

I do not teach embodiment because it is trendy. I teach it because I’ve lived it, in blood and bone and breath. Because I know what it’s like to be severed from your body. Because I’ve learned how to come home to her again and again and again.

This is not about nervous system “hacks” or commodified self-care. This is not about edification. This is reclamation. This is re-education. This is radical body literacy.

Where the Yes Lives Now

I no longer need to wait until my body breaks to listen. I now listen for the sacred & full body yes.

The yes that lives in slow mornings.
The yes in soft movement, in saying no, in choosing rest, nourishment, tenderness.
The yes that lives in the way my body softens around truth.
The yes that says: This is aligned. This is yours.

That is sovereignty.

And it is the opposite of what capitalism sells us.

Capitalism says: override. produce. perform. prove.

The body says: listen. soften. feel. trust.

And when we begin to trust our bodies, we begin to reclaim our lives.

You Are Not a Machine. You Are a Miracle.

If you are walking through chronic illness, if your body has been saying no in ways you can no longer ignore, I want to say this plainly: you are not broken. You are not a burden. You are not too much.

You are being called back to yourself.

You are being invited to slow down, to make contact, to ask: What does my body know that I haven’t been willing to hear?

You are worthy, exactly as you are.

Not because of what you produce.
Not because of what you give.
But because you exist.

And if your body is saying no, (please) listen.
She may be guiding you somewhere truer. Somewhere deeper.
Somewhere freer.
Somewhere that was always yours.

An Invitation Toward Home

If your body has been whispering—or shouting—its “no”…
If you’ve been navigating life from the neck up,
trying to hold it all together with a fraying thread of willpower…
If your nervous system feels like a battlefield
or a wilderness you were never given the map to…

You are not too much.
You are not broken.
You are wise.
And your body knows the way.

This is the heart of Embodiment Reclamation—
not regulating, but returning.
Returning to sensation.
To self-trust.
To the quiet, primal knowing that you belong to yourself.

If something in you softens as you read this—
if your breath deepens, or your skin hums with yes—
this is your invitation.

I walk with women who are ready to come home to their bodies.
To unfreeze. To unravel. To rise.

And because I believe in accessible, equitable, and soul-honoring care,
I offer a self-determining sliding fee scale—
a model rooted in dignity and agency,
making this work possible for more women
while also nourishing me to continue holding it well.

You decide what’s possible.
I trust your discernment.

When you’re ready, I’m here.
And your body is, too.
Still speaking. Still sacred.
Still yours.