Bitch I’ve been trying to tell you
my body’s voice to me

As a child empath, I was the family healer and peacemaker. In this role, you’re simultaneously loved and hated for it. It’s the ultimate catch-22. The thing about being an empath is that you experience every ding dang thing that those close to you are experiencing, both psychologically and physically. It may be blunted a bit, and not as intense as how the originally afflicted person is feeling it, but trust me when I tell you – my body is AWARE and mirroring.

An easy peasy example of this? Last fall my husband was complaining about a knee pain that had been plaguing him for months. His progress reports repeated for a few days. In the midst of this, I noticed that my right knee started to ache when I walked downstairs. This continued for 3 days till I had the presence to ask: “Is this knee pain mine?”. With that, my husband flashed before my internal eye, and magically and instantly the pain disappeared. Viola. (please try this at home!)

Now, how does this square with the unfolding trauma of my marriage and separation? Well, this is where the rubber meets the proverbial road. This is where generational trauma and adult onset trauma meet, meld and become symptoms.

As I mentioned in the past, I did not have an even-steven, smooth, safe, and drama-free early development phase. Filling out the ACE test, was key to figuring out that some of my physical symptoms tracked with childhood trauma. On a scale of 5, I score a 4, which pretty much guaranteed that I’d have some form of lagging physical illness that correlated to said trauma.

But here’s the kicker. The ACE score only reflects what we consciously know about our histories. And what I’ve learned the hard way is that I’ve been molded, in ways large and small, by silence. It’s not what we see and hear that shapes us, it's everything implicit – everything silent that determines our life course. It shapes our physical bodies and to whom we choose to have relationships and so much more.

This shaping includes all the secrets, lies, closeted sexualities, and addictions we think are hidden, the infidelities, the children out of wedlock and never acknowledged, the secret families, it’s the shame of domestic violence, sexual assaults never mentioned nor investigated, it’s the forced births – the babies – held in our bodies – and never acknowledged because the disassociation between body and mind was so complete. And ALL OF THIS is what we call family, held together by the viscous glue of fear, shame, and unconsciousness.

As we mature, we then choose partners based on this familiarity. The familiarity of what’s conscious and unconscious unite to create a powder keg. As a next-level empath, it meant that by 40 years old I had a raging, five-alarm fire in my body, with no clear means of putting it out.

It meant that I was guaranteed to pick a mate that modeled ALL of the secrets, lies, and addictions that afflict my father. It meant that my family's commitment to silence, commitment to their shame, and unconsciousness showed up, as circumstantial evidence, in my body. And it’s that unconsciousness that’s particularly dynamic. Because when someone, in this case, me, attempts to set out to save their own lives, by tipping over every table of shame and lies, we’re met with heaps of gaslighting, rejection, judgment, distorted intimacy, projection, psychological abuse, control, and so much more!

Ain’t family fun?!

And now here’s the kicker…the last remaining “symptoms” I’d been managing for 10 solid years: hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency and tanked sex hormones suddenly and with little fanfare, came to a conclusion. In the days just after my husband's broad, long-standing infidelities came to light, I got super effing manic. I was practically vibrating and speaking in tongues. At first, I thought I was having a very strange stress reaction. Then it occurred to me that these manic symptoms were evidence of overmedication. And, just like that, I stopped taking my thyroid and adrenal medication. My body, with a few more weeks into this unfolding, is doing fantastically. And as you can imagine, I am OVER THE MOON to be in complete and total health and well-being. And more importantly, I am so damn proud of myself for facilitating my body's second sudden remission.

I am now sparkling and whole, no trace of chronic illness left. The cost of a complete and total understanding of how my body and I work, in this reality system, was a very high price to pay. But in the words of the inimitable Maya Angelou, I “Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.” And here's the thing about bodies. THEY ARE NEVER WRONG. They are the very avatar that points to the truth within all the lies that you are steeped. Should you find yourself dealing with any similar traumas and dramas, please check out these resources.

Find out your ACE score:
https://americanspcc.org/take-the-aces-quiz/

Are you the family or friend of someone struggling with sex and or porn addiction?
https://sanon.org/

Are you yourself struggling with sex and or porn addiction?
https://saa-recovery.org/