The quiet wisdom held in tissues, habits, and instinct — and how to listen again
Most people don’t lose touch with their bodies in one dramatic moment. It happens in inches. You ignore a signal because you’re busy. You push through because people need you. You tell yourself you’ll deal with it later — after things calm down, after the next deadline, after the next hard season passes.
And then one day, the body doesn’t whisper anymore. Not because it’s suddenly broken, but because it has been paying attention this whole time.
Your body remembers what you forget. It remembers the foods that never sat right, even when you convinced yourself you were eating “clean.” It remembers the exhaustion you normalized. It remembers the stress you carried so long you stopped noticing it had moved in. And here’s the part that matters most: this isn’t your body betraying you. This is your body trying to protect you.
The Body Keeps the Story Even When You Don’t
We live in a world that teaches people to live from the neck up. Think harder. Push more. Override the signal. Keep going. But the body doesn’t run on slogans. It runs on safety.
Your nervous system tracks threat long before your mind calls something “a problem.” Your digestion reacts before you can explain why. Your muscles tighten in rooms where you’re smiling. Your breath shortens when you’re trying to be “fine.” This is memory, in motion — not just mental memory, but physiological memory. The body keeps an ongoing record of what has been safe, what has been too much, and what you’ve had to endure.
That’s why so many people say, “Nothing is wrong, but I don’t feel right.” Something was wrong. It just wasn’t acknowledged at the time.
How We Learned to Stop Listening
Most of us didn’t decide to distrust our bodies. We were trained. We were taught to override hunger, to push through fatigue, to treat discomfort like weakness, and to live as if rest were something you earn only after proving your worth.
So we adapted. And adaptation can look like success for a while. You still show up. You still function. You still get things done. But you’re doing it on a nervous system that never fully comes down, a body that never fully recovers, and a mind that keeps calling that “normal.”
If you want a clear picture of how this culture grooms people into self-override, go reread The Hidden Cost of “Pushing Through”. Because what we praise as discipline is often just a person ignoring their own warning signs.
Habits Are Memory Repeating Itself
The way you live now is not random. Your habits are often the leftover imprint of what your life demanded from you. Maybe you learned to eat fast because there was never time. Maybe you learned to stay “on” because being still didn’t feel safe. Maybe you learned to ignore pain because nobody listened when you spoke up.
That’s the body remembering — not with words, but with patterns. And patterns don’t change through shame. They change through awareness and safety.
Instinct Wasn’t Lost. It Was Drowned Out.
Children come into the world fluent in body wisdom. They stop eating when they’re full. They sleep when they’re tired. They react when something feels off. Then the world corrects them. Finish your plate. Don’t be dramatic. You’re fine. Just push through.
Over time, that inner language gets quieter — not because it disappears, but because it’s ignored. By adulthood, many people don’t trust themselves until a system confirms what they already feel. A test. A diagnosis. A label. Permission.
That’s a problem, because health sovereignty begins where permission ends.
Listening Again When Your Body Remembers What You Forget
Listening to your body doesn’t mean obsessing over every sensation. It means learning the difference between noise and signal. The body usually starts softly: fatigue, tension, digestive discomfort, restless sleep that never restores you. When those signals are dismissed, the body learns it has to get louder.
If this topic hits you in the gut, literally, this reminder fits hand-in-glove: Your Gut Wants You To Slow Down. Because the gut is often where the body starts speaking first.
Your body remembers what you forget. The question is whether you’ll listen while it’s still whispering.
MAHA Is About Remembering
Make America Healthy Again isn’t just a slogan. It’s a reclamation. It’s remembering that food is information, rest is repair, intuition is not silly, and the body isn’t an enemy to be controlled. It is a messenger. A protector. A truth-teller.
And the more grounded you become in your body, the harder it is to be manipulated by systems that thrive on disconnection. A grounded person makes different choices. A regulated person sees clearer. A person who trusts their body stops outsourcing their power.
Your body remembers what you forget. And if you’re willing to listen again, it will guide you back to yourself.
With love and truth,
—Donna 💚
Sources & Further Reading
The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related conditions (2022)
Review describing how trauma-related conditions can be understood through somatic sensory and brain-body models.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9720153/
Interoception in Fear Learning and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (2023)
Review on how internal body signals shape fear learning and stress responses.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.focus.20230007
A roadmap to understanding interoceptive awareness (2024)
Open-access review on interoception, stress, and emotional regulation.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11150711/
The role of interoception in reducing trauma-associated symptoms (2024)
Paper on altered interoception in chronic stress and recovery pathways.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20008066.2024.2306747
Somatic stretching and nervous system regulation (2024)
Accessible overview of somatic practices and interoception.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/somatic-stretching-8674674
