Sarah Hackley Quotes

Remember this: You are the expert of your body.

No matter what stage of illness we are in, whether we’ve just been diagnosed or we have lived with chronic migraines for decades, there are adjustments we can make to increase joy in our lives and to live more fully.

Past traumas are like old scars on tissue that never quite healed properly – they occasionally must be cut open, re-examined, and sutured anew.

No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we’re going through, even when the medical profession doesn’t understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts.

Dissociation can enable us to withstand pain and loss under which we would otherwise break. It enables us to survive and pull through. But, a habit of continual dissociation – especially after the trauma has passed – leads to the shut-in feeling I was experiencing. While I imagined I was being strong in the face of pain, in reality, I was merely hiding.

Sometimes the boxes we’re put in fit. Other times, we find ourselves shoved into places too confining for our growing sense of self.

I had built such a wall between my experiences and how I felt about those experiences that I was incapable of reliving both simultaneously. I could talk about my traumas, even walk through them, but I couldn’t feel them. When I tried to bring it all together, when I tried to remember how I had felt, I disappeared in my own head. My to-do list took on grave importance. The book I read the night before filled my thoughts. Yesterday’s article suddenly called out to be rewritten. I couldn’t get inside myself.

Sometimes falling apart is the bravest act of all