The Lounge Philosopher

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Hello, my dearest fellow Loungers!

HEALING HAS A PR PROBLEM

We expect healing to look like Instagram-worthy glow-ups, flat stomachs, clear skin without freckles like when we were in our twenties, boundless energy and before-and-after photos that make sense. We expect “doing better” to look better (like just after pregnancies in our early and mid 30’s).

But no one really talks about the middle part.
The awkward, confusing, deeply unsexy middle part of healing.

The part where your body starts changing, but not in the way you expected.

WHEN YOU DO EVERYTHING RIGHT, BUT IT STILL DOESN’T WORK

For over ten years, I went from doctor to doctor, hoping someone would really listen. I didn’t understand what was happening to this earthly vessel I’d been borrowed for my journey on planet Earth.

It seemed they didn’t quite understand either, or perhaps they weren’t looking at the whole picture. Like my teenage girls used to say when they were younger: “Mom, I’m just built different.”

Yes, darlings. We all are.

It took me almost fifteen years to finally understand what was happening, but when it clicked, the pieces finally started lining up.

I loved Biology in school, and after that, Anatomy and Physiology became one of my favourite subjects. I read and researched a lot. Still, it wasn’t until I saw a specialist a while ago that I finally got the answers I needed, after the most thorough check-up I’ve ever had; literally from crown to toes! The ultrasound showed something, and for the first time, there was an explanation that actually fit. I’m not a doctor or a medical professional, but it all finally clicked for me.

I’ve always seen life as one big picture, made up of many small pieces woven together like a tapestry. In the end, I try to see everything as not just physical, emotional, or spiritual. We are all of these at once.

My tapestry was finally starting to make sense. Enlarged adrenal glands… those little, much-needed buggers.

Well, that explained everything to me, at least in my non-medical, non-doctor mind.

Context matters. This isn’t a medical explanation.

Again, I’m not sharing this from a medical perspective.
This isn’t a diagnosis. It’s just my personal experience.

If anything here feels familiar, please talk to your own healthcare professional.

But I know where this came from.

For the past 16 years (after I got divorced), my life required constant output. I worked long hours because I was self-employed. Twelve-hour days were normal (09h00–21h00), and before Christmas, “last-minute clients” would say: “I can come before 09h00 or after 21h00”. Say what? I had two very young children under 8 at the time, and they wanted me to do what, now? I never went on holidays, and maybe took a few days off between Christmas and New Year. My workday may have had hours, but my responsibility didn’t. I was still a single mom, so I took it on. I still showed up for my girls because that’s what needed to happen.

I just kept going.

And my body adapted to that level of demand. What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was like the “Energiser Bunny”, but my battery was running out of… well… energy.

I’ve always been someone who feels things deeply; not just stress or pressure, but joy, connection, atmosphere, and even undercurrents most people don’t notice right away. I learned how to neatly pack emotions away and carry on. When life kept demanding that level of output for years, my body just kept meeting it, without ever really recovering. It didn’t switch off just because I told myself to cope.

My “adrenals” didn’t suddenly malfunction or give up on me.
They did what bodies do when they think they’re under threat. They responded.

WHAT SURVIVAL CAN LOOK LIKE IN A BODY

Survival doesn’t always look lean or disciplined.
Sometimes it means feeling (and looking) swollen, puffy, inflamed, or just always tired.

Back then, my body wasn’t betraying me. It was just trying to keep me going.

And here’s the part I wish someone had said to me much earlier:

Sometimes a body in survival mode actually looks worse, even when you’re doing everything you’re told is “right”.

That one realisation alone would have saved me years of blaming myself.

THE UNSEXY MIDDLE PART

What makes this harder to explain is that this isn’t my “first body”.

I used to be athletic, properly athletic. From athletics, netball, to karate, movement was never foreign to me. My body knew training. It knew discipline. It knew how to respond to effort.

So when things started changing, my first instinct was to try harder. I exercised. I adjusted. I tried diet after diet; every “this one finally works” approach under the sun. I even had DNA testing done, just to understand what my body was supposedly built for and what it could manage.

I didn’t avoid the work.
I chased the answers.

THE NOISE, THE ADVICE, AND BEING UNHEARD

Along the way, there was also the advice. So much advice.

Have you tried this?
Why don’t you do that?
Keto. Intermittent fasting. One meal a day. No carbs. More carbs. Calories in = calories out. Less everything. (Apparently.)

Everyone had an opinion. Most of them were well-meant. Very few of them were helpful.

The worst part, though, was when I realised how often I wasn’t actually being heard.

I remember sitting with one specialist, explaining that I was in constant pain and already eating once a day; not out of discipline, but because my appetite was simply gone. His solution was prescribing Ozempic “to curb appetite” and antidepressants for back pain. I wasn’t depressed, and while some antidepressants are prescribed for pain, this didn’t address what was actually happening in my body.

That was the moment something in me snapped.

Not because I’m anti-medication, I’m not, but because it was painfully clear he hadn’t heard a single word I’d said. He’d seen a body, a number, and a shortcut. Not a person.

I walked out angry, in tears, disillusioned, and, for a long time, without much faith in doctors at all.

It took meeting one last specialist, someone who actually looked at the whole picture, to give me a sense of hope again. Not quick fixes. Not silencing symptoms. Just careful listening and proper investigation.

And that changed everything.

And yet, none of that touched the puffiness, the inflammation, the sense that my body was holding onto something I couldn’t train or starve away.

Only much later, alongside emotional healing, nervous system work, and actually applying what I’d learned instead of fighting myself, did small changes start to show up. The kind you feel before anyone else notices.

That’s when I began to understand something I couldn’t see before.

This wasn’t a lack of discipline.
It wasn’t indulgence.
And it definitely wasn’t me “giving up”.

It was my body protecting me.

It’s not like I ate the entire Cheesecake Factory, including its employees!
I just survived a long season of pressure, and my body adapted the only way it knew how.

NOW THE PRESENT CHANGES

Over the last while, I’ve been making changes.
Not dramatic ones. Not the kind you announce or post about; irony noted. Just shifts in how I eat, how I move, how much pressure I put on myself, and how seriously I take rest and recovery.

One of the things I’ve started noticing, and this matters to me, is that my weight is finally shifting. Extremely slowly. Almost annoyingly so. But for the first time in years, it’s moving in the right direction.

That was the one thing no doctor could ever really explain.

Only recently, after looking at my DNA results and actually working with what my body can handle instead of fighting it, did that start to change. And even though it’s frustrating that it isn’t happening on my timeline, it is happening.

IF YOU’RE HERE TOO

If your body feels different in ways you didn’t anticipate, and you’re struggling to make sense of it, you’re not alone in that. Many of us only realise much later how deeply survival shaped us.

This isn’t you doing it wrong. It’s simply what it looks like when a body starts adjusting after a long time of holding everything together, because bodies remember.

Healing doesn’t always look like progress at first.
Sometimes, it just means your body finally feels safe enough to stop bracing itself.

This is not the final form.
This is just the unsexy middle part of healing.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly where real change begins.

I will be right here, cheering you on!

Much love,

Suz