Being at the lowest point in my life and body actually taught me to trust my body more.

I spent most of the last year rebuilding my body after two, soon to be 3, knee surgeries after tearing both my ACLs in March 2026. I was thrown into the deep end as I didn’t have a lot of understanding about this area of my body or how to heal from something so drastic.

It was a steep learning curve. It was challenging. It was isolating. It was painful.

And all that aside the lesson that feels most present has been trusting what my body is telling me.

In August I had a big setback in my recovery and nothing seemed to be helping. The feedback I got from physical therapy and personal training was “you just gotta push through to build the muscle back”. But after several months something still felt off.

After 4 months of little to no change I got a follow-up MRI and found out the graft in my knee had torn again and a little flap was keeping my joint from moving correctly. The good news is that most of the graft is intact so my next surgery should be a simple clean-up, but since that MRI I’ve been able to recenter myself and my body and I’m seeing so much more sense in how difficult the last 4 months have been.

I wasn’t failing. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard enough… it’s that there was something physically blocking my path forward.

When we’re lost and dealing with body changes we don’t have knowledge of, we depend upon other people for guidance and support, but I think we’re often afraid of admitting we don’t understand a movement or we’re not sure we’re doing it right – we don’t want to be wrong.

You need to own your recovery. You are the one doing the hard work. Your practitioner is simply there as a guide – their knowledge and skillset doesn’t include your lived experience. It took months for my PT and I to find common language on how to work with MY body and not just run through routines that come out of a textbook. If I hadn’t asked questions and pushed back when things felt painful, I might still be pushing myself and wearing myself down not getting anywhere in my healing.

This is why so much of my coaching focus is on helping women connect with their bodies and learn how to express what they're feeling and experiencing. It’s about empowering women to own the experiences they want to have in their bodies. The world has conditioned us to muscle-up and push through pain when our bodies respond so much better to gentleness.

When you’re stressed out and tense and overwhelmed, your nervous system is lit up and your muscles get tighter and it’s harder for your body to move in the way it needs and wants to move. This is a big part of why healing takes so long for people – you’re constantly fighting against yourself to get movement and strength into places that are bracing against pain.

The moments where my healing has gone the fastest are the times I’ve been least concerned about “doing it right” or “pushing myself” to get it done. If anything, it’s the times when I feel like I’m half-assing it that my body has felt the best.

Even though I can’t guarantee my next surgery will fix all the things, I will walk away knowing that there isn’t anything physically limiting my healing anymore and that I don’t have to keep pushing myself through pain and stress to get there.

So to my mamas healing from pregnancy, my menopause gals playing whack a mole with aches and pains, and my wonder women dealing with chronic pain and illness - I see you. You don’t have to keep pushing yourself. You are allowed to slow down and listen to what your body is telling you. You are allowed to take time for yourself.

I know from my work with the Alexander Technique, DNS and now over a year of intensive PT – you get better results with less pain and effort when you aren’t trying to push yourself all the time. Even when your body feels broken and worn down, there is still tremendous strength inside of you… you might just need a gentler path for accessing it.

Where can you take the pressure of yourself to do or be at a certain level and simply be where you are now?