When Your Body Is Still Protecting Who You Used to Be: A healer’s journey to rebuild the most sacred relationship of all
- Sep 17, 2025
- 3 min read
By DK Hillard
There comes a moment on the healing path when the question shifts.
It’s no longer “What’s wrong with me?”
It becomes,
“How do I let my body know it’s safe to receive what it needs?”
For me, that moment didn’t arrive in clarity or grace.
It came in collapse.
Physically ill. Emotionally spent. Out of options and out of answers.
I had tried everything—treatments, teachings, protocols, prayers.
Nothing reached the place in me that was still holding on in silence.
And so, in quiet desperation, I asked:
What do you need from me?
And the answer came. Clear.
Soft.
Tired.
“Stop subjecting me to this. Just let me be.”
I saw, in that moment, that my body didn’t trust me.
It still remembered the girl who stayed silent to survive.
The woman who said yes when everything in her said no.
The one who overrode her own signals to keep the peace.
My body was still protecting me—from me.
From the version of myself who had once abandoned her.
That realization broke me open.
And it began the slow, sacred work of rebuilding trust—not conceptually, but physically.
I started listening—not just spiritually, but somatically.
I began to learn the language of my own body:
The fatigue that was really fear.
The tension that held grief.
The subtle “no” behind the push to keep going.
This work isn’t linear. It isn’t clean.
There have been times I felt like a fraud.
How could I help others when I couldn’t heal myself?
But healing, I’ve come to understand, isn’t about fixing.
It’s about creating safety.
It’s about becoming someone your body can finally trust.
And without realizing it, I had already begun to do that.
Everything I had been creating—Soul Wraptures, Bubbe Pillows, sacred stones, rituals of scent and sound—were not just for others.
They were for me.
They were the language my body could understand.
They were the home I never had, made with my own hands.
I didn’t know, when I started making them, that I was building a sanctuary.
But now I do.
Now I know that when I wrap myself in what I’ve made, I feel held.
When I place a sacred pillow against my belly or a stone over my heart, I’m speaking to the parts of me that never got to rest.
That never felt safe..
When I light the smoke or listen to the beat of a sacred drum,
I’m not just performing ritual.
I’m speaking the only language my nervous system truly hears:
Presence. Stillness. Reverence. Return.
This is how I began to build safety from the inside out.
Not with protocols or performance, but with presence.
For many of us, our bodies are still living in the past.
Still bracing for harm that’s no longer coming.
Still holding on for someone to finally arrive.
And that someone… is us.
So if your body still aches, flinches, or retreats...
If you recognize the girl in you who never felt safe...
I invite you to ask:
What might happen if I stopped trying to fix myself, and started truly listening?
What would shift if I offered my body a sanctuary—one I built with my own hands?
This is the path I walk now.
It’s the space I hold—through sacred art, soul reflection, and healing tools created from my own need to feel safe in this world.
If your body is ready to be heard—
And you’re ready to listen—
I’m here.
Connect With DK
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