I once had a conversation with someone – a friend of a friend – who was sharing about someone he knew who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.

He not only shared the news of this diagnosis with me, but also his judgments about why this person had breast cancer.

He talked about it as if she deserved it – because she wasn’t “conscious” enough, she wasn’t “doing her inner work”, and because she wasn’t a “good” person.

His lack of compassion stunned me. But unfortunately, it’s not at all uncommon.

If you are unfortunate enough to become ill, the world around us likes to think (even secretly so) that you’ve become sick because you have been bad, or flawed, or deserving of such a fate.

As I write this, I can feel anger starting to roil in my gut.

Because my own journey with debilitating illness – and this kind of BS – has taught me otherwise.

Instead of regarding illness or disease as a sign of our shortcomings as human beings, I health challenges as opportunities – unwelcome opportunities, but opportunities nonetheless.

Illness, physical dysfunction and disease is a way that our bodies speak to us.

Usually, our bodies have been talking to us for a long time prior to an actual illness or condition taking hold – through pain, fatigue, and a whole litany of uncomfortable symptoms that we might have ignored or pushed through for some time.

You might read this and think that the pushing through is where we have gone wrong, but I don’t see the pushing through as a personal failure either.

The habit of overriding our bodies comes from living in a demanding and toxic culture that expects us to disconnect from ourselves in order to “keep up” and “fit in”.

We stop listening to and honoring ourselves so we can belong – and this need to belong starts when our very survival depends on belonging.

Through this way of seeing things, it becomes clear that the real issue and epidemic here is disconnection – and an over-functioning, under-feeling, over-analyzing, under-nourishing culture that rewards and encourages the same.

We learn to…

Push through instead of pause.

Say yes when we want to say no.

Ignore and suppress our wants and needs.

Hand our power over to an outside authority.

Believe we have to work hard for love.

Even if we are dealing with an illness, physical condition, diagnosis or disease, we are not broken.

But we may be deeply disconnected from our bodies, our instincts, and our truth.

Disconnection is the real epidemic. Illness is a form of intelligent feedback from our bodies that  reconnection is needed.

Reconnection isn’t something you earn after you’ve healed.

It is the healing.

If you’re tired of feeling like your body is betraying you, I want to offer you something different.

Not a plan. Not a protocol. A conversation.

One that gets to the heart of what you’re experiencing. One where you don’t have to hold it all together. One where we start exploring what it means to come back to yourself.

✨ Click here to book a FREE call with me ✨

Not because you need to be fixed. But because you want to feel whole again. ❤️