When Your Body Doesn’t Feel Like Home

My journey to self-acceptance with chronic pain.

Image provided by the author.

This was first published in the Chronic Evolution newsletter, where I help people evolve their mindset, cultivate positive habits, and overcome limiting beliefs so they can step into their best, authentic selves. Subscribe for free.

You know that feeling you get when you’re wearing someone else’s clothes? That tingly sensation that whispers, “I don’t feel like me.”

Sometimes that sparks boldness, freeing you to escape the mundane and embark on a glorious adventure where you can invent a whole new you.

But other times, all you can feel is the scratchy wool fibers of someone else’s sweater, and you’re counting down the seconds until you can be back in your soft, cozy shirt that smells like the right laundry detergent.

Having an invisible illness is like the second one. You long to peel off your skin and zip yourself up into something new. Something pain-free. The body you used to know and love.

Receiving a diagnosis of arthritis in my early twenties, and dealing with chronic pain for years around the same time, has taught me a thing or two about body alienation.

But somewhere along that way, the longing for what once was turned into a deep love for…