I Stopped Trying to Keep Up; and My Body Finally Exhaled

5 days ago
6 min read

A personal reflection on stepping off the perfection treadmill and releasing the pressure to keep up.

This piece explores the body grief and unexpected relief that come with no longer performing for wellness, beauty, or success: and choosing alignment over appearance.

Long before I had language for it, my body knew when something was a yes… and when it wasn’t.

Even as a kid, I had a hard time ignoring that feeling. My dad used to call me a little pitbull, half-joking, half-proud. If I needed something, I went after it. And if something felt off, I didn’t… I just couldn’t… I couldn’t move on easily. I either pushed it away or stayed with it until it made sense — surely driving my family and friends a little nuts :)

I didn’t have words for it then, but I understand now that my body was always trying to guide me. My intuition didn’t just live in my mind — I felt it in my body.

Somewhere along the way, though, perfection found me. And after years of being critiqued, measured, styled, and learning that even when you nailed it, there was always something left to refine –my intuition slowly started to quiet, and I learned to override my body without even realizing it.

Perfectionism feels a lot like success. Like wellness. Like structure. Like discipline.

And you think you’re in control.

Until one day, you can no longer hear what your body is saying, or what it needs, or what you need.

And life doesn’t always ask. Sometimes it interrupts, and when it does, everything changes.

For me, that interruption came through loss—miscarriages that left me in a body I no longer understood or trusted. My final loss was losing identical twin girls at five and a half months. My body began asking me, relentlessly begging me, to stop trying to control it and start listening.

Loss doesn’t leave room for perfection or performance, especially the kind that comes from losing your babies, or the kind that comes from losing trust in your own body.

I couldn’t push through. I couldn’t fix it. All I could do was stand where I was — raw, exhausted, undone, and unmistakably myself.

It was absolutely terrifying.

And strangely, I think it might have been the first time in my life that I was completely honest with myself.

That moment cracked me wide open.

And before I could fully process that loss, my body began shifting again in ways I didn’t yet understand. What immediately followed was a season my body entered long before my mind could catch up. I had never felt more confused in my body.

It was the beginning of menopause. I had just turned 42.

Having no idea at the time, but I had my last period on Christmas Eve 2020, and it was intense. I felt like I was hemorrhaging pools of trauma. It felt like my body was releasing something I didn’t understand yet.

It seemed as if everything shifted overnight. Night sweats. Brain fog.

Workouts I could no longer keep up with. A body that no longer responded the way I wanted it to.—one that felt unfamiliar, and at times, hard to trust. A body I could no longer control.

I was confused, depressed, and vulnerable.

At the same time, we moved to a neighborhood that felt very different from the life I’d known for 25 years in New York City. Suddenly, I found myself in a rhythm I couldn’t quite keep up with — routines, appearances, and social calendars that moved faster than I could.

The version of me who once kept up quietly started to step aside.

Completely confused by my new body and foggy brain, I did what I always do when something matters —my pitbull persistence showed up, and I stayed with it.

Doctor appointments. Late-night Google searches. Questions. Prayers. Tears. Researching over and over, trying to understand what my body was asking for — what it needed.

A new version of me began to emerge, and I was rediscovering her like an old friend. I had to be kind and accepting of her. I had to listen to her. And in many ways, I was meeting her for the first time.

I was getting there.

And then Lyme disease dropped me to my knees.

Last summer slowed me in ways I couldn’t negotiate with. My energy completely disappeared. My body demanded rest — not the kind you think you’ve earned, but the kind that arrives without permission. Another interruption.

For the first time, I didn’t even try to keep up. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t.

My body needed sleep.

It needed quiet.

It needed to heal.

It needed me.

Lyme stripped away whatever illusion of control I had left. There was no pushing through it, no bargaining my way back to who I had been.

At one point, I thought I might be dying. “Is this the end?”

I spent the summer in pain and out of it, hooked up to IVs, on malaria medications, sleeping 16 hours a day.

My body felt like it was starting to shut down. I had lost feeling in my feet, my balance was so bad I had to hold on to things, I couldn’t pick up a water bottle with my right arm, I couldn’t remember anything, and my speech would slur if I was tired.

I kept asking myself, What is happening? How did this happen?

And I cried. I cried more last summer than I had in my entire life.

I would encourage my husband and daughter out of the house, and I would just sob. I needed to let something out.

And then somewhere through all the tears, I began to realize — I hadn’t been listening. And when you don’t listen in a relationship, it breaks down. As my therapist taught me years ago, relationships are one long conversation.

I had been ignoring the relationship with my own body.

My body hadn’t failed me; it had been communicating all along.

I began to see that while I hadn’t caused what my body was going through, I had lost connection with it, missing the quieter signals asking for care.

There was grief too—grief for the ease I once had, for the version of me who always did what she wanted without thinking twice about the consequences.

But I started to feel a strange, unknowing relief, too, as I let go.

I had stopped even trying to keep up.

And my body finally exhaled.

That season didn’t just change my body. It changed the way I live inside it.

And maybe, quietly, there’s a knowing that this version of me, the one who listens, who pays attention, might be the healthiest I’ve ever been because beneath all the unraveling, something steady remained. A stronger foundation. A clearer sense of who I am and what I want — a knowing that felt familiar, like something I had trusted as a child.

And if I’m being honest, I don’t know that I would have found my way back any other way but being brought to my knees last summer. I was so used to managing and controlling my body that I likely would have kept returning to that.

But as the layers fell away, like peeling an onion, everything unnecessary disappeared. It wasn’t something I created, but something I am returning to as I consciously listen to what I need.

I don’t move faster than my body allows anymore.

I don’t chase wellness or success as proof of worth.

I don’t confuse exhaustion with achievement.

I don’t say yes when my body is telling me no.

I don’t abandon myself.

And while I wouldn’t choose to go through it again, I can say this: standing fully in who I was — exactly where I was — changed everything.

Not because it was graceful

But because it was real.

It was super messy and really hard, but it was mine.

Slowly, things have begun to settle.

I’m moving again, but it’s different this time. I’m more aware and more honest.

I go to a workout class every Monday and Friday that humbles me. I laugh at myself and my balance, something that used to come so easily growing up as a dancer. And the strength I once took for granted is something I’m rebuilding, little by little, but this time, with a different kind of respect.

From the outside, no one would notice. But I do. Because my relationship with my body is stronger now, it’s more in tune, more aware, and more balanced.

And for the first time, I feel really proud of the relationship I have built with myself and my body, not because of how I perform or how I look, but because of how I listen to myself.