15/10/2026
The Body Knows
She couldn’t explain why she always felt tired after seeing him, nothing terrible happened. There were no raised voices. No cruel words. No obvious moment she could point to and say, *There. That’s the reason.*
Yet every time she walked through his door, something inside her changed. Her shoulders lifted slightly. Her stomach tightened. Her breathing became shallow.
She smiled more than she wanted to. Agreed more than she meant to. And carefully measured her words before allowing them to leave her mouth.
She had become so accustomed to doing it that she barely noticed anymore.
Until one afternoon.
She had been sitting at his kitchen table listening to him talk when she felt it—that familiar pressure beneath her ribs.
A quiet clenching. Her hand moved instinctively to her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she replied automatically.
But this time, the word didn’t feel true. Later, driving home, she wound down the window. Cool air rushed into the car. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, her shoulders dropped.
Her jaw softened.
Her stomach unclenched.
Then came the breath.
Deep.
Long.
Free.
She hadn’t realised she had been holding it. That was when she understood.
Her body had been speaking to her long before her mind was willing to listen. It remembered where she felt safe. It remembered where she became smaller.
It knew which people allowed her to expand and which rooms made her disappear into herself.
Her body wasn’t being dramatic.
It wasn’t overreacting.
It was communicating.
So she began paying attention.
To the tightness in her chest when she wanted to say no but said yes.
To the heaviness in her stomach when someone crossed a line she hadn’t yet learned to name.
To the tension in her neck when she swallowed words to keep the peace.
But she also noticed something else.
The places where her body softened.
The people around whom her laughter came easily.
The conversations where she didn’t rehearse every sentence before speaking.
The moments when she could breathe all the way into her belly and simply be.
Slowly, she stopped asking herself only,
*Am I being unreasonable?*
And began asking,
*What is my body trying to tell me?*
That question changed everything.
Because sometimes a boundary does not begin with anger.
Sometimes it begins with a tight chest.
A clenched stomach.
A raised shoulder.
A breath you suddenly realise you have been holding.
And sometimes healing begins with something equally small.
Listening.
The body keeps a quiet record.
And when we finally become still enough to hear it, we may discover it has been whispering our boundaries to us all along.
**A question for you:**
Where in your body do you feel the need for a boundary first?
Your throat?
Your chest?
Your stomach?
Your shoulders?
Perhaps, before answering with your mind, close your eyes for a moment and let your body answer instead.
