You Are Not Broken

After 24 years of hands-on bodywork to help “fix” people, I have learnt that you are not broken. This knowledge did not come only from clinical practice, but from living in my own body.

I became a mother at 20, driven to prove myself by collecting qualifications, seeking just a little more external validation to feel enough. Running marathons and endurance cycling events, even on day one of my menstrual cycle, chasing medals, momentum and approval.

I navigated three peaceful births and motherhood alongside building a chiropractic career, eventually becoming president of a large teaching organisation. People often asked how I did it all. I never thought what I was doing was exceptional. My mum would quietly say I was hard on myself, but I did not yet know another way.

Through years of yoga, breathwork and menstrual cycle awareness taught by Red School, I began to listen inwardly. Your body speaks a language long before pain appears. Sensations, tension, emotions and shifts in energy are part of that vocabulary. Yet many women learn to listen only when the language becomes loud, through pain, diagnosis or exhaustion.

Interoception, the information sensed from within the body, is constantly sent as input to the brain. The brain responds with outputs designed to protect you. Those outputs may look like pain, fatigue, anxiety, hormonal disruption or emotional overwhelm. Symptoms are not failures, but protective responses shaped by your environment and experiences via your nervous system.

Monthly cycles and life transitions, from puberty through fertility, pregnancy, motherhood, perimenopause and menopause, dramatically change interoceptive input. When stress or unresolved trauma is present, the brain often responds louder. When you understand this loop, you realise you hold more power than you realise. Change the input, and the output can change.

Developing interoceptive awareness requires slowing down. For me, rest was an unfamiliar concept. Yet answering that call to rest was profoundly healing. A regulated nervous system listens differently.

The wisdom I want you to carry is this. Your body is not broken. It is wise. When you learn its language and honour your cycles, you can change how your brain responds, and how you experience your life and health.