In August of 2019, after changing into hospital gear to get ready for my MRI, I looked at and placed my hands on every part of myself, lingering longer in places with pain. Finally I met my own gaze in the mirror and out loud I said to my physicality, my very self : “well done. You have worked so hard. You have been in so much pain, so vocal about where it hurts, thank you for speaking up. I’m listening. And the doctors are listening too. Thank you for working so hard to protect me after such awful and scary things happened to you”. There was an older man in the stall next to me struggling to put his hospital gear on and he chuckled at my profession of compassion. I smiled wondering what it was like for him to hear all that. I pulled the curtain back and there was a nurse standing motion-less with tears streaming down her face. She said that in 30 years of working in imaging at the hospital she has never heard anyone speak out loud kind things about themselves/their body. We wondered together how much more difficult it is to heal when we are also contributing to our own pain.

I was rear ended by a distracted driver on the highway in December 2018, and in February 2019 hit head on by a truck that lost control in the snow. Somehow I lived. I refuse to let my inner dialogue contribute to the injuries that happened to me. I refuse to shame, control, punish, or ignore my body for telling the truth about what happened in these very scary moments of my life that linger on into the present. My body is allowed to tell the truth for as long as she needs, and I will not stop her. We will be together the whole time, and with my words I will remind her that even though she thought she would die then, we are safe now.