How the invisible load you carry impacts your body

I often share about the internal discoveries I've made and the lessons I've been invited to integrate through the process of unpacking the patterns beneath the autoimmune symptoms I used to experience.

These are explorations I now support women in delayering, and there is a great deal of overlap with this particular thread:

Your value isn’t found in your work.

Your work is finding your value.

What I mean by this is that it’s your greatest work to reconnect with your inherent value beyond work.

...Whether that "work" be in your career, in your household, in being needed, in how you help others, in how you hold it all together, or any other way you typically prove your usefulness or create relational safety.

Why do I share this? Because for years, I unconsciously exhausted myself in an attempt to earn my value.

If it wasn’t within my career (which was quite "esteemed"), it was...

• Around my home - so clean and well put together,

• In how I parented my children - holding and doing all the things, and

• In my relationships - always being there and showing up for people.

... I wasn't usually the friend you'd go to for having a fun time (even though I think I am fun.. lol).

I was the friend you'd come to when you were struggling - because I would hold it with you - maybe even for you. I would help, and then I felt like I mattered.

My relationship to being valuable was pervasive in how I related to life... and I often felt the overwhelm and the pressure, but I didn’t see the pattern...

Instead, it was pushed into the shadow - into the unconscious - and enmeshed with the “caring,” “high functioning,” and "I can do it all" identities I had taken on - along with the pain of the rejection, heartache, and not-enoughness of who I believed I was without them.

And guess what - I unconsciously distracted myself from this pain with more work. It created a loop - and around and around I went.

...But then it became pervasive through my body.

I exhausted myself right into the hospital - several times.

The fatigue and anemia reflected the level of unconscious exhaustion with carrying the invisible load and the patterns of work > rest, giving > receiving, and output > input.

The autoimmune symptoms reflected the lack of ease within my life and the internal pressure I operated from.

It was me against me.

This is what my body was reflecting.

And I couldn’t distract from it anymore.

When I reflect, the invitation was to see beyond the patterns and into my inherent value - and ultimately, into my deeper truth beyond the conditions (pun intended).

To actually receive and recognize myself - so that I could receive

Rest

Care

Support

Slowness

... without the symptoms forcing me to.

It was all so unsustainable - and yet it was how I operated without question.

I actually thank my body for interrupting these patterns for me - and I know that ROOTED course members have said the same.

What I learned is that:

No prescribed medication nor supplement alone can “cure” or save us from the deep relational imprints that live within our nervous systems, psyches, and bodies and impact how we expend and source our energy.

This is an inside job.

Our value and right to exist (and to be cared for by something larger) isn't conditional on usefulness, responsibility, productivity, carrying, being needed, or on anything that needs to be proven, earned, or validated externally.

These pattern may have kept us safe in systems where love, support, or belonging were conditional.

But these patterns are now exhausted - and that's why we are exhausted as women and as mothers - really, as a collective.

It took me being diagnosed with a dis-ease called STILLS DISEASE for me to learn how to stop it all, to be still, and to connect beyond condition or external form.

The irony and the humour are unparalleled - but they weren't when I was in it.

And PS - I'm still learning this lesson, but the difference is that I'm now listening... which has excused my body from expressing my deviation from truth because I've learned to attune to the subtleties instead.

This is why I created ROOTED - it's an immersive journey into these very types of patterns, and ultimately into seeing "beneath the skin" of what is presenting within our lives and within our bodies so that we can find our truth beyond the imprinted and inherited conditions we tend to operate from.

To tell you the truth - this whole reflection came up because this pattern subtly snuck up within me recently...

I sat down with my own medicine yesterday - the ROOTED Signature Framework that I offer within both my immersions - to delayer what was showing up for me, the emotions involved, and the deeper invitations present.

It was potent medicine - the only medicine I've found that actually addressed my symptoms from the inside out - and it's the very medicine I'm inviting you into if this work resonates.

Please feel free to reach out directly at info@natalieandrea.com if this resonates,and if you'd like to discuss how this work may support your individual circumstances.

With deep belief in your body's innate intelligence,

Natalie