Firing the Pusher in Me

 When I think about all the years I have pushed my body, and the price I’ve paid time and time again, I’m not surprised that I find myself here again.

Another lesson in self-care.

Recently, I’ve been learning how closely connected that the nervous system is to the brain. I understand that what happens in my mind can affect my nervous system.

In other words, when I make poor decisions, it affects my nervous system. Overtime, the nervous system becomes very sensitive, which is where I’m at right now.

I thought I had become very mindful of these things.

I thought I knew how to listen to my body.

For years, I pushed through.

I kept going.

I took care of what needed to be taken care of.

I put my own needs somewhere down the list.

And my body kept the score.

Now I am being asked to listen differently.

Not when my body screams.

Before it has to.

I’m not willing to pay that price anymore.

This is not a lesson about how much I can endure.

Its is a lesson about how much I no longer need to endure.

And maybe, after all these years, self-care is finally becoming less about taking care of myself after the damage is done—

and more about loving myself enough to stop creating the damage in the first place.

What My Body Remembers

 To this day, I still have no conscious memory of what happened to me as a toddler.

I don’t have a story I can tell.

I don’t have pictures in my mind.

I don’t have details.

And yet, I know that little girl.

She was the good little girl.

The same little girl who showed up in that doctor’s office.

The little girl who learned to be still.

To cooperate.

To tolerate.

To not make trouble.

Something about those treatments seemed to reach into a place that had been buried for nearly seventy years.

I believe trauma from my past was being stirred.

And my nervous system began to respond.

It became increasingly dysregulated, and what followed has been the most painful experience of my life.

I won’t describe the pain here.

I don’t need to.

What matters is where I feel it.

It is in the very place where I believe the abuse happened.

And that makes it almost impossible to escape.

I can’t leave my body.

I can’t walk away from that place.

Everywhere I go, I take it with me.

For so long, I thought my body was betraying me.

Now I am beginning to wonder if my body is remembering something my mind cannot.

Maybe it isn’t trying to hurt me.

Maybe it is trying to tell me:

Something happened here.

And perhaps the little girl who had no voice then is finally being given one now.

The Good Little Girl

 I started having issues with my bladder about a year ago.

At first, I wasn’t even sure if the problem was my bladder or my pelvic area. We tried different medications and even steroid injections, but the discomfort continued to worsen.

It was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unbearable.

That changed when I agreed to have bladder instillations.

A catheter was inserted into my bladder and medication was placed directly inside.

What I didn’t understand at the time was how deeply those visits would affect me.

They were traumatic.

Not simply because of the physical discomfort.

Something much deeper was being stirred.

I began to recognize feelings that seemed older than the procedure itself.

Fear.

Helplessness.

The feeling that I had to be still.

That I had to cooperate.

That I had to be a good little girl.

And suddenly, I began to wonder if my body was remembering something my conscious mind could not fully remember.

I had spent my childhood learning how to be good.

Good meant obeying.

Good meant not making trouble.

Good meant doing what I was told.

Good meant tolerating things that frightened me.

Good meant staying quiet.

And perhaps that little girl never really learned that she was allowed to say:

No.

She never learned that she could protect herself.

She never learned that her discomfort mattered.

So when I found myself in that doctor’s office, vulnerable and unable to control what was happening to my body, something inside me felt very small again.

The good little girl was back.

And maybe this is part of what I am being asked to understand now:

She doesn’t have to be good anymore.

She doesn’t have to endure everything.

She doesn’t have to obey fear.

She doesn’t have to stay quiet.

She can speak.

She can say no.

And most importantly—

she has me now.

A Season to Surrender

 Today is the first day of September.

There was a tiny bit of coolness in the air—

just enough to remind me

that a new season is coming.

And perhaps this is my new season too.

A season of letting go.

Letting go of the past.

Letting go of the need to understand everything

that happened to me.

I know there are things I may never figure out.

And maybe I don’t need to.

I don’t need every answer

to heal.

What I need to do is stay close

to the little girl inside me.

To reassure her:

You are safe now.

You don’t have to live in the past anymore.

And I will always be here.

Maybe surrender isn’t forgetting what happened.

Maybe it’s simply deciding

that what happened then

doesn’t have to determine what happens now.

The past had its season.

Now a new one is beginning.

And I’m ready to let go

of what I can no longer change,

and gently walk into

what comes next.