WHY HEALING IS NEVER JUST ABOUT YOUR BODY
What chronic illness reveals about identity, control, and becoming
Over the weekend, I sat across the table from friends who wanted to know how chronic illness had supported my spiritual evolution.
So, I talked about my resilience, my faith, all the obvious things.
But after reflecting in private, something deeper came to light.
There was a time when my life consisted of protocols, practitioners, procedures, and mindsets. My “health challenges” and their supposed treatments consumed my life.
The dominant narrative was this relentless push to “get better”, to “fix” my body, to change, to overcome.
In hindsight, my spiritual evolution wasn’t so much about my strength or faith. It was about healing my relationship to myself while dismantling and rebuilding my identity from the inside out.
For years, I saw myself as a failure. How could I not be the master of my body? How could I let this happen?
How could I let life seemingly pass me by?
But life wasn’t passing me by. It was delivering the precise conditions my soul needed—to become the master of my human experience.
Not the master of my body.
Not the master of my mind.
The master of my ego.
Chronic illness strips everything:
Your career
Your social life
Your passions
Your autonomy
Your independence
And when all of that falls away, you either collapse into the “why me” story or you begin to see things differently.
(BTW – if you’re in the “why me” story right now, it’s okay, I spent some time there too. It’s normal to dip in and out of feeling empowered and then feeling like a puddle on any given day, when navigating the ups and downs of a chronic illness.)
I’ve come to realise that most of my suffering wasn’t physical, though that played a part—it was identity collapse. Everything I’d once clung to as proof of my worth had dissolved. And I had to face the question: who am I without it?
What’s left when there’s no external measure of success, achievement, or even ability?
As it turns out, what’s left is a woman who still has so much to give.
Because when you rebuild your identity from soul instead of ego, you start valuing what truly matters:
Your relationships.
Your connection to the natural world.
Your spirituality.
Your gratitude, compassion, and capacity to love.
And through that lens, your contribution becomes limitless.
Also, the people who remain—those who meet you at the soul-level—mirror your truth back to you in ways no shallow connection ever could.
Your litmus test for friendship suddenly becomes less about shared interests and more about shared essence.
Less about fun and more about mutual reverence.
Less about doing and more about seeing and being seen.
This is how chronic illness facilitates identity collapse: through the shedding of false connection.
And yes, that can hurt. Especially when your sense of worth was entangled with the people who are no longer there.
At one point, almost no one was left in my circle, except those living overseas who hadn’t faced the reality of my illness.
But those who stayed? They turned out to be soul companions.
The kind of relationships that feel forged beyond time.
They see me, and I see them.
And because I now lead from soul, I’m more selective about who I let in. My energy isn’t available for shallow. It’s reserved for sacred.
Then there’s the control.
When you’re chronically ill, control becomes a coping mechanism.
You deep-dive into protocols, ingredients, supplements, lifestyle tweaks. You tweak and tweak and tweak because the idea of surrender terrifies you.
You control everything:
Food.
Environment.
Information.
Emotions.
At one point, I asked people not to wear perfume or light scented candles near me. And while that sensitivity was real, the hypervigilance was something else entirely.
It was the belief that control could keep me safe.
But viewing the body as something to fix… that’s its own kind of spiritual crisis. True healing began when I stopped seeing my body as a problem to solve and started seeing it as a divine ally.
A wild, wise vessel doing its best to keep me here, to help me fulfil my soul’s mission.
This reframing softened everything.
I stopped micromanaging and started listening.
Stopped fixing and started relating.
Stopped forcing and started attuning.
Healing became something I allowed, not something I chased. Even if symptoms lingered, my nervous system softened and my inner tone changed.
I became gentler with myself.
And that gentleness? That was healing too.
Not the flashy kind, the deep, cellular kind.
The kind that reorganises your entire sense of self.
Because healing isn’t just about symptom resolution, it’s about reconnection.
To your inner voice.
To your worth.
To your truth.
To your soul.
And most of the wellness space doesn't make room for that.
There’s very little support for the grief, the identity collapse, the soul-level recalibration that chronic illness demands. I know, because I was a health coach.
I used to teach control as empowerment. I didn’t know I was perpetuating the same pressure that had me collapsing in the first place.
But once I saw the disconnect, I couldn’t unsee it.
I changed and my clients felt the shift. And while not everyone got the physical outcomes they hoped for, they felt less trapped, more empowered, more peaceful. And in many cases, that translated into real, tangible relief.
Eventually, I left the health coaching space, it just didn’t fit anymore.
I chose to deepen my spiritual studies instead. And that path led me to numerology—a tool that speaks to healing on all levels, not just the physical.
Now, I don’t promise fixes. I offer something more essential:
Soul-based support through identity unravelling
Anchoring through life’s liminal spaces
Sacred companionship through uncertainty
Recognition of worth beyond productivity
Resonant clarity on what’s truly aligned—physically, emotionally, spiritually
Healing of the 10 energy bodies for complete well-being
So if you’re in a season where your body is asking questions that medicine alone can’t answer—
Please know that this is the breakdown that can lead to your becoming.
And I see you.
If you’re navigating this kind of reckoning, and you're craving support that meets you at the depth you’re actually living from—I’m here.
Not to fix you, but to walk with you.
All my love,
Alicia x
