From Raggedy to Repair

When my Body Finally Got Permission to Breathe

You know that game we all played as kids— Who can hold their breath underwater the longest? The burning in your chest. The desperate urge to surface. You stay down because winning matters more than breathing. We're all still playing that game, aren't we?

Except now the pool is capitalism.

We've convinced ourselves that coming up for air means losing. I had been underwater so long I forgot what my lungs were made for, until the plane touched down in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I finally broke the surface, gasping, flooding with air I didn't realize I was dying for.

The hot, thick air of Chiang Mai hit me like a warm embrace. Something had shifted the moment I stepped off that plane - not just location, but something deeper.

I felt like shackles were loosening, like a bird with wings mending, aching to test its wingspan. I felt possibility without yet knowing what was possible, without knowing how to reach it.

I was too exhausted to make a plan. The last few weeks of work were riddled with stress and insomnia so bad that I paid $200 for an app to help me sleep. I was pushing myself to end my job on a high note.

I was an Alto trying to hit Soprano notes in a play titled "Life of an Over-giver: Work, Family, Friends (barely) and Everything but YOU."

I tried to build a better existence for myself. But it's as if the system wanted me drained. Wanted me stuck. Wanted me to feel the defeat of my efforts. To chase my tail and feel like a failure. Like, the only problem in the equation was me. It was maddening.

My goal was simple: board the plane, land, and figure it out. Stretch my dollars to travel for 4 months. My best friend talked about getting me on that plane with such fervor that it felt like she had me on a stretcher and was wheeling me into an Emergency Room. I almost lack the words to describe it. I wasn't in a crisis like I had been in the past.

I was meditating after all.

No, this was like a slow-burning candle-wick. The wax was there. It's giving scent. But the wick was down to the bottom of the jar. If I could just get the lighter in there one more time.

The slow burn is deceptive because it keeps you confused and in the system. You are doing all the "right things," yet you are not seeing consistent quality of life results. You got yoga, the gym, matching workout gear, some green juice, a sleep app, supplements, a therapist, and even a neutral-toned living room [#Wellness], but you're still tired.

I landed in Chiang Mai, Thailand, tired, with my hyper-vigilant suitcase in tow. It was my 'just in case, what if, and what about' packed into wheels. Hypervigilance isn't just anxiety - it's a survival skill honed by years of scanning for threats, reading energy, staying alert to what might go wrong.

For Black women, this vigilance carries additional weight. The constant code-switching, the emotional labor of existing in spaces that weren't made for you, the mental energy spent navigating rooms where your presence is questioned. We think it's work or family that steals our energy, but the invisible tax of moving through the world in Black skin - that constant alertness required for basic safety - adds layers of depletion most people never see.

I was leaving behind a country and a system where I felt chronically unsupported and uncared for, so it made sense to pack everything I could need. I didn't know what to expect in Thailand or how I'd be received.

I arrived at my resort and was greeted with the warmth of a smile and hospitality that felt like it matched my energy for giving, but now it was being given to me, and I was ready to receive.

I melted into the new atmosphere. I felt safe. Safe enough to sleep.

And that's exactly what I did. I slept when tired, napped without guilt. It wasn't the perfect 7-8 hour sleep cycle wellness gurus tell you to chase. It was a collapse first — sleep when sleep called to me.

I woke up on Day 4 with New York urgency. Jet lag should be over. So, what should I DO today? Hike? Waterfalls? Elephants?

I got dressed but found myself disoriented and foggy. I went back to sleep, but felt guilty for it. I constantly had to remind myself that this wasn't a two-week vacation and I was free to move at my own pace.

But what was my pace? What would it mean to find my own rhythm?

For days, I did nothing. Me, doing nothing. It felt revolutionary.

So my days looked like this: wake up, put on a bathing suit, go down to the pool, have lunch and drinks, pretend to read on my Kobo by the pool, get into the pool, and float. I didn't even try to swim-I couldn't because stress and inflammation before I left the States had triggered a flurry of persistent physical symptoms: pain in my left knee, a weird clicking in the lower right of my back, and a bicep strain from overtraining at the gym. The sports medicine doctor who treated me advised me to add and remove a few things from my diet and decrease my stress. I had managed to improve my mental health, but my physical body was spilling all my secrets.

I'd spent years in therapy working through emotional patterns, but my body was still carrying the side-effects of stress. My mind had processed the trauma, but my nervous system hadn't gotten the memo that it was safe to relax.

Easing into my days at the resort let me see just how much I was operating in override mode, pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE on my body's systems.

I was starting to give my physical body space to be heard and myself space to respond and listen. No meetings scheduled over lunch. No back-to-back calls that ignored basic human needs. I wasn't overriding my body's wisdom with my mind's agenda.

Instead of creating the conditions for people to heal their bodies, we blame, shame, and condition people toward system-override and dysregulation, so common we think it's normal human behavior.

This is exactly what I was experiencing - years of conditioning toward override that I mistook for normal adult life. Only when I stepped into a different environment did I begin to see the pattern clearly.

In Thailand, the wellness practices I'd been collecting felt like they had room to breathe. Instead of cos-playing wellness between crises, could I actually integrate these tools into a sustainable way of being?

The difference between wellness theater and embodied healing became crystal clear.

I know what you might be thinking after reading this: it must be easy to feel this way when you escape to Thailand. But it's not that I don't have struggles here.

I deal with finite resources. Administrative headaches (I'm looking at you, USPS and Capital One). The stress of constant movement and adapting to new environments. And Geckos.

It's that the pace here supports my humanity instead of demanding I medicate myself into thinking I'm healing when I'm really just masking.

It's that the pace here creates conditions where I can implement changes more consistently.

For many of us, we know what our bodies need but can't sustain those practices within systems designed to override them. Knowledge without supportive infrastructure often leads to frustration and self-blame instead of sustainable practice.

True healing is like learning to walk after an accident. It's not just moving forward - it's releasing, rewiring, repatterining. It's listening not just to the spiritual voice that brought me here, but to the physical wisdom I'd been overriding for years. Thailand isn't a paradise.

It's a tropical rehab facility, fortifying my muscles and teaching me how to walk again.

But first we sleep.

Live: and learn to listen to your body's natural rhythm.

Give: yourself permission to rest guilt-free.

Trust: that your body knows what it needs to heal.

Be: still enough to hear your nervous system's signals.

Honor: traveling the journey, not the destination.