The Nervous System

 I am learning that the many years of stress my body has endured may have profoundly affected my nervous system.

As I look back over my life, it isn’t difficult to understand why.

I think about my childhood and all the feelings I learned to silence because there was nowhere safe to take them.

I think about the years of watching my beloved daughter slowly disappear into addiction, carrying the helplessness and heartbreak that no parent ever wants to know.

I think about the people I have loved and lost.

My son moving away with my grandchildren.

My partner’s passing.

So many goodbyes.

So much letting go.

Then I think about myself.

For years, I kept asking more of my body.

Keep going.

Push harder.

Don’t stop.

There was always another responsibility, another crisis, another reason to ignore what my body was trying to tell me.

Perhaps my body wasn’t failing me.

Perhaps it was carrying more than any body should have to carry.

When I see my life through that lens, I find it easier to replace judgment with compassion.

My nervous system has spent decades trying to protect me.

It has stood watch through grief, trauma, loss, fear, and uncertainty.

No wonder it has struggled to find rest.

Today, I feel a new commitment growing within me.

I owe it to myself to be kind.

To be gentle.

To stop treating healing as another task to accomplish and begin treating it as an act of love.

Maybe this season isn’t asking me to push harder.

Maybe it is asking me to listen more closely.

To honor the body that has carried me through every chapter of my life.

And to give it something it has been longing for all along.

Rest.

Compassion.

Safety.

Healing.