Your stomach knew first

and peace was waiting for you the whole time

“I feel like I’m dying!”

I shot up out of bed and gasped to my husband at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. I felt like vomiting. My heart was beating out of my chest. I couldn’t breathe.

Looking back on that night (and many more nights just like it), it’s wild how my stomach knew first. Then my heart. (Then my husband. lol) They all saw what was happening well before I did. But my brain just couldn’t seem to catch up with the rest of me. Instead, it fought against everything else until I hit my breaking point.

For weeks, I hemmed and hawed about whether to email my HR rep to ask about short-term leave for stress. I didn’t know how to navigate something like that. In all my years of working, I had always just... pushed through. I was a strong “boss lady.” Or so I thought.

I wondered: what if asking for leave made me look bad? What if my director found out I was exploring the option before I was ready for him to know? And the scariest thought of all: What if I eventually got let go for taking leave and being “unproductive?”

I sat on that drafted email for days. Then I told my therapist how I was feeling, and she gave me the permission I needed to send the email (because, for whatever reason, I couldn’t give it to myself).

The day after that conversation, I hit send. But the intrusive thoughts kept swirling around.

Just give it some time. You loved this job before, so why not now?

I tried so hard to rationalize my way out of what my body already knew. To talk myself into staying somewhere I could no longer see myself thriving in. To be strong. To suck it up already and just deal.

Here’s what I think was really going on, though. And perhaps you’ll recognize yourself in this, too:

I’m wired to be a helper. The one who just can’t let others down. To survive and smile through whatever’s happening, no matter the cost to my health and well-being. Societal and environmental pressures had me absorbing that messaging early, and I’ve carried it for a long time, no questions asked.

But all of that, eventually, manifests into a full nervous system breakdown. And omg I don’t want that for you AT ALL.

So, if you’re feeling the stomach flip right now, slogging through the day after 2 a.m. wakeups, and that low hum of dread that follows you into Monday (and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday…), you gotta heed the call. It’s a sign that something needs to change. Or perhaps resisted. Or walked (ran) away from.

Because, my friend, things change. People change. Companies change. But who you are to your core tends to stay pretty damn consistent. And when everything around you stops matching what’s inside you, your body is going to tell you again and again until you make a change, or it forces you to.

What I know now that I didn’t know before is that I was so focused on not letting anyone else down that I couldn’t see I was letting myself down. Every. Single. Day. If I had known how much lighter, healthier, and more authentically me I would feel, I would’ve listened to my stomach a whole lot sooner.

While I decided not to take a leave of absence (I’ll share more about that in a future post), just knowing what my options were allowed me to exhale a bit.

After emailing HR and gathering the info I needed, I realized I had choices. I realized I didn’t have to continue feeling like a shell of a person. I realized I could return to myself, without compromise.

While you’re here...I want you to know that the stomach flip, racing heart, and all-too-early wakeups are your body asking for something your brain probably isn’t ready to say out loud yet.

But what if you don’t have to have it all figured out?

What if taking a small step forward helps you swap the icky stomach flip with hopeful butterflies? Or some peace.

–Natalie