Your body has been trying to tell you something.
(Part 2 — the one I actually wrote.)
Hey friends,
Last week I showed up in your inbox half-delirious with The Crud, made my point by accident, and went to go find a Netflix rom com. I promised you the real version this week.
So. Here we go.
For most of my years building businesses and raising kids at the same time, I woke up at 3am like it was my job.
Not gently. Not like some peaceful early riser with a gratitude journal. I mean jolted awake, heart already going, a running to-do list in my head that I could not make stop. You know how I talk in the Nurture Method about those early days when we didn’t have real systems yet — when I was keeping everything in my head and I was literally the chink in the armor of getting things done? The 3am wake-ups were like that. Like my brain was refusing to let go of the list until I dealt with it.
So sometimes I would. Pull out my laptop. Start emailing. At 3 in the morning.
I know. I know. Bad idea. But I thought I was being productive. I thought I was staying on top of it. I didn’t realize I was actually just proving to my nervous system that there was, in fact, a five-alarm emergency happening at all times.
Meanwhile my shoulders were so tight that my massage therapist started calling them angel wings. Not because they were heavenly. Because apparently that’s what it looks like when your traps are so seized up they basically sprout off your back like two rocks growing out of your shoulder blades. She’d work on them and I would just lie there thinking this is fine, this is just how shoulders work.
It is not how shoulders work, y’all.
And every single virus, cold, sinus infection, stomach bug — anything Ben, Emmy, or Kate dragged through the front door? I caught it. Every time. Josh, sleeping next to me in the same bed, living in the same house, eating the same food — almost never got sick. I remember looking at him one time during a particularly brutal season and thinking how are you not sick right now? It genuinely made no sense to me.
Now it makes complete sense. He wasn’t carrying what I was carrying. It’s really that simple.
The pneumonia years deserve their own paragraph because honestly they were embarrassing.
I had it, I think, three or four times. And every single time — every time — I propped myself up in bed with my laptop and kept working. Orders to answer. Emails to send. Problems only I could solve, or so I’d convinced myself. Because I was the entrepreneur. The engine. If I stopped, what happened to E by Design? What happened to RSG Sales? What happened to everyone counting on me?
So I didn’t stop. I just got sicker and slower and more depleted, and then I’d drag myself back upright before I was actually ready and wonder why I couldn’t get back to full speed.
My body wasn’t failing me. It was doing the only thing left it could do after I’d ignored every single gentler signal it sent first.
Here’s what I do now when I get really sick. And I want you to notice how different this is.
I stop. I get an IV infusion. I go to my chiropractor. I do the things that actually help my immune system instead of fighting it at every turn. I let Nugget and Blue curl up next to me on the couch. I watch the silly rom com.
And I don’t open my laptop.
Not because I’ve suddenly become someone who doesn’t care about her business. Because I finally understand that recovery is the work. That rest is not the opposite of productive — it is part of the system. And I am a systems girl. I should have figured this out a lot sooner.
So here’s what I want to leave you with.
Your body is not being dramatic. It is not weak. It is not inconvenient. It has been sending you really good, honest data — probably for a long time now. The 3am wake-ups. The shoulders you’ve just accepted as tight. The fact that you catch everything and your husband catches nothing. The exhaustion that doesn’t go away even when you sleep.
That’s not your body failing you. That’s your body trying to get a meeting with you.
And it’s okay to finally take it.
XO, Heather
P.S. Next week — trusting your gut in business. And what a $50,000 mistake taught me about ignoring mine. You won’t want to miss it.