My Body Is Paying the Price

From teenage eating disorders to postpartum breakdowns... how my body kept telling the truth when I couldn't.

For years, I thought my body was the problem. I blamed it for everything. The bloating, the weight gain, the acne, the exhaustion that no sleep ever fixed.
I thought it was weak. Unreliable. Always betraying me.

But now I’m starting to think maybe it wasn’t betraying me.
Maybe it was just carrying everything I couldn’t.

The girl who didn’t speak

I didn’t speak till very late as a child. And when I did, I stuttered.
My parents took me to doctors, therapists, specialists. They wanted to fix it.
But no one said, “You’re safe now.”
No one just hugged me and said, “It’s okay to be you.”

And the irony is — I now work in communications. I speak in boardrooms. I run social media for a global brand.
But I still feel like an imposter.
That scared, silent little girl is still somewhere inside, flinching.

My teenage rebellion

As a teenager, I stopped eating.
Like properly stopped.

I would drink black coffee and go the whole day without food. I’d only eat when I was about to faint.
My period disappeared. My lymph nodes swelled up.
I had ultrasounds, tests. They thought something was seriously wrong.
But really, that was just my quiet rebellion.
I didn’t know how to scream, so my body did it for me.

That was the first time I learned how my body speaks when I can’t.
And it’s never stopped.

On the outside: fine. On the inside: screaming.

From the outside, I always looked like I had it together.
I smiled. I performed. I said yes. I people-pleased.
But inside, I was permanently bracing. Like something bad was always about to happen.

My body has always carried that weight.
And I don’t just mean emotional weight — I mean physical, too.

My weight has yo-yoed for as long as I can remember.
Every time I tried to control it, I could. But the moment I stopped micromanaging food, my body would return to a heavier place.
And I’ve started to wonder, maybe it feels safer that way. Maybe it’s protecting me. From visibility.

I’ve lived most of my life in a low-grade fight-or-flight state.
Even when I look calm, I’m bracing.
I numb it with sitcoms. With scrolling. With “vegging out.”

But it’s always there. Right under the surface.

And then I became a mother

Motherhood cracked it all open.
The overstimulation, the guilt, the sleep deprivation, the pressure to be everything all the time — it brought every buried feeling back to the surface.
And my body? It couldn’t hide it anymore.

It broke out. It bloated. It tightened. It shut down.
It was like it was finally done protecting me from myself.
And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The hug I’ve been chasing

There’s a memory I come back to often.
Years ago, when I was living in Indonesia, I went to a full moon meditation.
And during the session, I felt something — a presence.
It wrapped around me like a hug. Maternal. Protective. Loving.
I cried and cried. And I still cry when I think about it.

Because maybe that’s what I’ve been chasing all along.
That feeling of being held. Without needing to earn it.

And maybe… just maybe… my body has been trying to give me that this whole time.