Connecting the dots

My first classroom wasn't at school or kindergarten; it was the tense, silent space of a childhood home where the air was often thick with unspoken anger, ready to erupt into frequent arguments. I grew up navigating a landscape without the steady anchor of two mature adult parents, learning early to read subtle shifts in tone and body language - a survival skill that would later become my profession.
To escape the unpredictable atmosphere indoors, I poured my energy outside, finding solace and structure in movement. The track, the pool, the forest — these were my first safe harbours. My rigorous dedication to athletics and love for languages not only earned me my degree in Sports and English Studies but built a body that was, for a time, a fortress.
Later, I translated this early life skill of reading tension into a career as an interpreter. For decades, I lived between two speakers, translating more than words: translating intent, feeling, and toning down the underlying stress of the communication.
Meanwhile, while I did my best to raise my two daughters into strong, independent adults and went back to school to earn my Degree in Psychology, my body was keeping its silent score all the while. The decades of inherited, childhood tension, layered with the stress of everyday life and the impact of old sports injuries, created a quiet hum of restriction beneath the surface.
Then came the shattering news: multiple myeloma, cancer hidden deep in the bones. The battle that followed wasn't a sprint; it was a gruelling, uphill march through a landscape of bodily betrayal. Rounds of punishing chemotherapy and the relentless, deep ache of constant pain.
Hard reset, I survived.
It was during the long, aching recovery that I started connecting the dots. The body isn't just a machine; it's an archive. It silently absorbs and holds onto every shock, every fright, every moment of sustained pressure, storing it as restriction and chronic tension, until we start to listen.