Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings

“Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.” Frederick Buechner

About a week before publishing my memoir, my body reminded me who was really in charge. A health flare-up hit me like a tidal wave, leaving me alone and vulnerable on the bathroom floor—again. I found myself asking the same question I’ve asked countless times before: Am I strong enough to handle all of this? And, like I mentioned in a previous post, if I never truly heal from the traumas that shaped me, am I physically strong enough to start over again? Because I am healing to handle all the good things to come.

I pushed through the negative self-talk that tried to convince me otherwise. The relentless doubts, the fear that I would fail, the deeply ingrained belief that I wasn’t capable of doing something for me. But despite all of that, I did it anyway. The advice to listen to your gut is more complicated for trauma survivors, especially those of us who have had to retrain our central nervous systems to stop perceiving danger at every corner. Anxiety doesn’t always mean something is wrong; sometimes, it just means we are stepping into something unfamiliar. So, though I felt anxious—bordering on panic—I hit publish.

Then came some bad news about family. And then more bad news about other extended family. And then, before I knew it, my body forced me to slow back down.

I am notorious for filling every waking moment with something. Taking on too many projects. Saying yes to too many people. Ignoring my metaphorical spoon count (if you haven’t looked up spoon theory—no, not like The Matrix—you should). Personally, I prefer to think of it in video game terms: hit points and mana. Imagine logging in every day, but your character never starts with full health. Some days you wake up with 80%, other days it’s 30%, and you never know what kind of quests the day will throw at you. When we push ourselves too hard—whether we are chronically ill, healing from trauma, or just running on empty—our bodies eventually make the decision for us.

For me, that decision came in the form of illness. Instead of celebrating the huge win of publishing my memoir, I was rewarded with a miserable cold. A not-so-gentle reminder that even after a near-adrenal crash, I was still pushing myself too hard. And that’s the thing about both chronic illness and living in survival mode for too long: when you don’t have the right diagnosis, the right tools, or even a safe environment, you never really know what’s going to help you feel better—you just know what makes you feel worse.

Rest is not something that comes easily to trauma survivors. It can feel like a threat. Like wasted time. Like a lack of productivity that equates to a lack of worth. But the truth is, rest is revolutionary. Choosing to slow down in a world that constantly demands more from us is an act of defiance. It’s choosing to rewrite the narrative that says we have to earn our right to exist.

I’m not looking for a silver bullet. I’m just looking for a little more quality of life. I want to be present and experience all the moments with my children while they are still young enough to want me around. I want to see my eventual/potential grandkids one day. I want to be present enough to enjoy whatever time I have left. And that starts with choosing rest—not as a punishment, not as a failure, but as an act of self-preservation. It means pushing through the fear that I will once again lose any semblance of a social life I was starting to build again because I am still healing and I need to remember that.

So if you’re feeling exhausted, if your body is screaming at you to slow down, if you feel like you’re failing because you need rest—you’re not. You are choosing to honor the body and mind that have carried you through everything you’ve survived. And that? That is stronger than anything else you could possibly do.