What changed when I stopped overriding my body.
For the woman who’s starting to hear her body again — Letter №11
I didn’t realize how often I was overriding my body
until I started paying attention.
She would say one thing.
And I would answer something else.
I’m tired.
We don’t have time for that right now.
I’m hungry.
Just finish this first.
I need to slow down.
We’ll slow down this weekend.
I need a moment alone.
Smile through this and deal with it later.
It was a conversation.
I just wasn’t listening to my side of it.
I had been doing it so long
I didn’t even hear her clearly anymore.
Just the background noise of requests
I had trained myself to ignore.
And then one day I noticed her.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Just a quiet moment where I realized:
There’s a woman in here
who has been trying to get my attention for years.
I didn’t try to fix anything.
I didn’t make a plan.
I didn’t change my routine.
I didn’t go looking for answers.
I just started listening.
And what surprised me most
was how small her requests actually were.
Not life-altering.
Not dramatic.
Simple things.
A glass of water.
Ten minutes sitting down.
Not going to something I didn’t want to go to.
Eating when I was hungry instead of when it was convenient.
Things I had been dismissing
as interruptions to the real work.
They weren’t interruptions.
They were the work.
Your body isn’t asking you for a new life.
It’s asking you for small things
you keep ignoring.
Dozens of them, every day.
I’m thirsty.
I’m cold.
I need quiet.
I need to rest.
I don’t want to go.
Not demands.
Not crises.
Just a body trying to live alongside you.
For years, the override worked.
It was rewarded.
It was praised.
It was the currency of being capable.
But at some point, it stops working the same way.
Not because you’ve failed.
Because your body has stopped agreeing to it.
So I started doing something different.
When I noticed a request,
I answered it more often than I used to.
Not perfectly.
Not every time.
But enough that something began to shift.
And the shift wasn’t dramatic.
It was relational.
I started to feel like I was on the same team
as my own body.
Even when I couldn’t meet the request,
I noticed it.
And somehow, that mattered.
The urgency softened.
The resistance softened.
It stopped feeling like something was wrong
and started feeling like something was being communicated.
The fatigue didn’t disappear.
The hot flashes didn’t magically resolve.
But they stopped feeling like interruptions
to my life.
They started feeling like part of it.
Like weather.
Something I was in—
not something happening to me.
There are still days I override her.
There are still moments when I push through
because that’s what the moment requires.
That’s real.
But I don’t miss the conversation anymore.
And that changes everything.
Because once you start hearing her,
you can’t un-hear her.
You start to notice
how often she’s been there.
How long she’s been speaking.
How much you’ve been carrying
without realizing there was another way to hold it.
This isn’t a fix.
There are things your body may need
that go far beyond listening.
Care.
Support.
Attention.
But listening is where the relationship begins.
And without that relationship,
nothing else really lands.
There’s a moment
where the woman and the body
stop working against each other.
Where the override softens.
Where something quieter starts to lead.
That’s what changed.
Not everything at once.
But enough.
And from there,
other things begin to shift.
Slowly.
Quietly.
In ways that don’t announce themselves right away.
You’re not behind.
You’re not too late.
You’re not done.
You’re just no longer ignoring something
that’s been asking for you for a long time.
I got you. ❤
— Andrea