Yesterday, I cried in my pelvic physical therapy session. I was frustrated because I had just discovered how much tension I was holding after the last seven years. Not just where you would expect, in the obvious place that brought me to pelvic PT in the first place, especially after my hysterectomy, but everywhere in my body. My back. My arms. My shoulders. My posture had even compensated for missing an organ in my abdomen and shifted forward. My muscles everywhere began to spasm on light touch by the therapist and it just reminded me of all that my body has gone through. It was like my muscles were battling a full revolt, and I didn’t even know that my body had started a war.

I want to say to every woman reading this, pelvic floor physical therapy is invasive and awkward. It will require you to have a level of comfort with your own body that nobody warned you about. And I am STILL recommending it to you anyway. Please advocate for yourself and ask your physician for a referral to pelvic PT. Your body keeps score in ways that show up long after we think we have moved on from any experience. Research confirms that the pelvic floor muscles function almost like a guard dog for your nervous system, it contracts to protect us when something feels unsafe. This truly means healing your body and healing your mind are not separate projects, they are one.

When my therapist saw me crying in frustration, she said to me: You will heal. And something in me finally clicked and exhaled after a very long time.

And I am healing. I recently started EMDR again, which is helping my nervous system with rewiring and releasing. Just like our body, our mind also holds onto trauma from the past, even the most miniscule punches, and holds onto it like a loop. From then on, that loop keeps you on high alert and affects your life and how you react to experiences. It is important to process through the past, in order to move on towards breaking that loop replaying it’s negative memories. With pelvic PT and EMDR, these two things together feel like the first time in a long time that I am actually doing the work instead of just surviving the load.

And along with this all, I decided to add three more things. Every day, I am going to do one kind thing for a stranger, one kind thing for my family, and one kind thing for myself. That’s it. Three things. It sounds small because it is small, and that is entirely the point.

Yesterday, at Aldi, I left my cart without getting my quarter back. I know this sounds absurd. But I thought about whoever would come along next perhaps in a rush, maybe with a toddler on their hip, maybe just having one of those days, and I left it for them. A quarter. A free cart. A twenty second reprieve from the friction of ordinary life. I don’t know if it made anyone smile. But choosing to do it made me feel like I had something to give.

For my family, I picked up all four boys early and took them for frozen yogurt. By myself. Which, if you know my four boys, you understand is an act of either tremendous love or temporary insanity, and the answer is probably both. They fought. Someone’s yogurt was “too cold.” There was a spill I am choosing not to revisit here. But they also laughed and got brain freeze. Of course, it was chaotic and real and exactly what we all needed.

For myself: I took the time to heal. I showed up to my appointments yesterday. I did the exercises. I let my body be a priority instead of the thing I keep promising to get to later.

Science, it turns out, is on my side. Research has found that people report greater happiness, resilience, and optimism, even lower anxiety and loneliness, during the weeks when they perform more acts of kindness. Just by choosing to extend something outward. I hope to try to continue this on a daily basis, but also giving myself grace if I don’t complete it if I too am having one of those days. I am going to teach this to the boys too, on top of their “high, low, buffalo” and newly added talking about five things they love about themselves. Because teaching a child to care for others at the same time as themselves isn’t a contradiction, actually it’s the whole lesson. Extending positivity outward and inward will take them so far in life. Something I should have done for myself at an early age, instead of just pouring out.

Now of course, I may not be perfect. In fact, every time I write what I want to accomplish on these posts, it makes me more accountable to my words. So I try my hardest and of course my husband holds me to it, always reminding me of what I wrote that past week if I fall from my trajectory by that weekend. One thing I want to strive for is to wake up early, before the boys and before the noise, and use that time for movement and quiet. I want to know what that morning version of myself could feel like. My cousin and sister-in-law do it. And I watch them from afar with admiration and aspiration. It requires a kind of self-motivation that I haven’t had come naturally to me just yet at 5am, but if I am being honest, I want to work on this.

To help with the healing. My PT told me I would heal. And I believe her. Not just about my back, or my posture, or the muscles that have been holding on too tight for too long. I believe her about all of it. And on the days when I don’t believe her, I leave a cart at Aldi, and I take my boys for frozen yogurt, and I listen to them talk about their “highs, lows, and buffalos” for the day, and I let that be enough.

We are healing. All of us, in our own ways, at our own pace. And that is not a small thing. That is everything.