Why am I Not Better Yet?

My labs say I’m fine.

My body says I’m not.

I recently went through a health scare that forced me to slow down in ways I never expected.

I ended up in the hospital with extremely high liver enzymes and gallstones. The liver was determined to be the primary issue. I was able to avoid having my gallbladder removed, and thankfully, the source of the liver damage was identified and removed.

Since then, my enzymes have slowly come down and, as of last week, are finally back within normal ranges.

On paper, that sounds like the end of the story.

Problem solved.

Back to normal.

But healing doesn’t always work that way.

I wasn’t able to work for three weeks. I started easing back into work last week, and even now, I get tired quickly and can’t perform at the level I was able to before all of this happened.

It still amazes me what our bodies can teach us.

Before this experience, I thought I understood healing. I’ve spent years helping people through physical pain, injuries, emotional wounds, and recovery of all kinds. I’ve said the words so many times:

These things take time. Be gentle with yourself. You can’t rush the process.

I believed them. I still do.

And yet, here I am,four weeks after my hospital stay, while my body is still recovering… feeling frustrated and impatient.

I can’t eat normally yet. I get exhausted doing less than what I feel I should be capable of.

And when that happens, I feel defeated.

I judge myself so harshly.

Why can’t I do this yet? Why am I not better? My lab numbers look good, so why am I still struggling?

There’s another layer to this that’s harder to admit.

Part of what led me here… was me trying to change my body.

About 6 months before all of this happened, I had been prescribed a GLP medication to help control my eating habits and lose weight. It’s something a lot of people are using right now, and for many, it’s helping.

But for me, it didn’t go the way I expected.

That medication is what caused my liver injury.

And now, as I sit in a body that is actively healing itself… I’m having to face the reality that I pushed it there in the first place.

I also find myself wondering if the people around me are judging me, too.

Last week, someone who knew what I had been through asked me to go on a bike ride. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go, I did. I just knew I couldn’t. I knew it would likely set me back if I pushed myself that far.

They made no comment, but simply being invited, and having to decline, left me wondering:

Do they think I’m being dramatic? Do they think I’m being lazy? Are the people around me expecting me to be all better, too?

…Am I too much or too little of what people expect of me?

I’m realizing that those fears that feel so loud are the same fears that have driven my self-protecting criticism and judgment. Decades of self-loathing, made manifest.

I’m learning, all over again, how to listen to myself. How to honor my body and my needs.

When the pain is invisible, it doesn’t make it any less real.

I did yoga last week as a way to gently reintroduce movement to my body. It was an “easy” 20-minute session.

It was hard. I had to take breaks. I was frustrated.

And when the session ended in shavasana, I found myself in tears.

I started thinking about my relationship with my body.

When have I ever truly appreciated it? Accepted it?

Even my earliest memories… I wanted to change it. I disrespected it with my thoughts and my actions. (Part of that may be the experience of being a girl, growing up in the 90s, when average bodies were called “fat.”)

I laid there in gratitude for all that my body has done for me. Thankless and unloved, it has carried me through a beautiful life.

And in this moment, it was doing something incredible. Healing.

Detoxing. Rebuilding. Repairing an entire organ.

And yet, there I was… angry, that I couldn’t perform the way I thought I should.

I know this experience isn’t just my body healing.

It’s me healing my relationship with my body.

I let the pressure I put on my own body break me. I let outside influence and my desire to be different, better, more pleasant to LOOK AT lead me somewhere I wouldn’t have gone if I had truly honored myself.

I’m still in the process.

Learning to love my body. Learning to be grateful for everything it allows me to do and experience. Learning to honor when it needs rest. When my emotions need space to move through.

I don’t think this is about patience.

I think it’s about letting go of the version of me I thought I should already be again.

This is just one of many growing places in life.

One of the pressures in which I am learning to find my peace.

This process has taught me that many times healing isn't about getting back to normal, it's about embracing the next phase in the evolution to my highest self.