There are nights where I feel it in my shoulders first – a dull heaviness that sinks in without warning. Then in my chest. My back. My legs. A full-body ache that doesn’t have a source I can name. No pulled muscle. No physical reason. Just this quiet, relentless weight.

It took me years to realize that this isn’t random. That pain can speak in languages other than sharp or sudden. That sometimes your body is just tired of carrying what you never got to say.

Because the body remembers. Even when your mind learns how to forget just enough to keep going. Even when you convince yourself it wasn’t that bad, that you’ve moved on, that it’s over. Your body doesn’t lie like that. It keeps the score. It keeps the tone of the words that broke you. The sound of the door slamming. The breath you held during every argument. The way you flinched when love turned into something else.

And on those nights, when I can’t sleep and nothing soothes the ache, I wonder how many stories my body is still holding for me. The ones I was never given space to tell. The ones I silenced so I could survive.

Healing, I’m learning, isn’t just talking about it. It’s letting your body release what it was never meant to store in the first place. And that, sometimes, is the hardest part. Because it means you have to feel it. Really feel it. Not just name it. Not just survive it. But sit with it, without running, until your body finally believes it’s safe to let it go.