When My Body Said No

I’ve worked since I was sixteen.

Not just worked — hustled. Two jobs, always.

There was always more to do, more to earn, more to prove.

I built a life where being busy wasn’t just normal — it was my identity.

I worked in a CPA firm, trained students, managed my own book of clients. And because that wasn’t enough, I did bookkeeping from home too. Evenings were booked solid — dinners with friends, drinks, errands, birthdays, always something. Summers were spent camping every weekend at our trailer, surrounded by our chosen family. Winters were just as full: potlucks, game nights, more wine, more laughter, more noise.

Always moving. Always doing. Always surrounded.

I wore my busyness like armour. It made me feel important. In control. Like I was doing it “right.”

But what I didn’t see then — and what I only understand now — is that I was using all that noise to avoid being alone with myself. I didn’t know I needed stillness because I’d never had it. I grew up in Newfoundland, surrounded by a huge family on both sides. Someone was always around. Being alone wasn’t a thing — it wasn’t modeled, it wasn’t encouraged, and I never questioned it. I didn’t know how to sit in silence because silence made me feel everything I had learned to suppress.

So when the panic attacks came, they hit hard.

I couldn’t work. I couldn’t function. And worse — I couldn’t hide anymore.

I remember the phone call like it was yesterday.

I had just had another panic attack — shaking, sweating, heart racing so hard I thought something was wrong with me. It felt like I was dying, and I’d felt like that more than once by then.

I sat on the edge of my bed, still in my robe, and called my doctor.

I barely got the words out, but he knew. I told him about the panic, the exhaustion, the fear. How I couldn’t concentrate. How everything felt like too much.

He didn’t sugarcoat it.

He said,

“Shannan, your nervous system is in a constant state of alarm. This is not something you push through. If you don’t stop now, your body will stop for you.”

And something inside me just broke.

I didn’t take time off work because I wanted to.

I took time off because I was told to. Because I had no choice left.

So I stopped. For the first time in my adult life, I stepped away from the busyness. I walked away from the titles, the responsibilities, the endless striving. And suddenly, I was left with… me.

At first, it felt like a kind of death — the loss of everything I’d built myself around. I didn’t know who I was without my to-do list. I didn’t know how to be without being needed.

I didn’t call it healing. I called it survival.

But it was the beginning of something I didn’t have words for yet.

This was the unraveling before the rebuild.

The silence that forced me to listen.

And the first time I had ever truly chosen myself — not because I was brave, but because I couldn’t keep going the way I had been.

This was where the shift began.

Not in light. In the dark.

Shannan