I was going to write about listening to my body, but if I listened to my body right now, I’d sleep until Christmas. When I was a corporate employee, I used to say that to Charles all the time. Some things haven’t changed.

My daughter S woke up this morning with a stuffy nose. Yesterday, she told me that she wasn’t feeling well, and at one point she complained about a headache which she rarely has. She even took a nap yesterday afternoon which she hasn’t done for a long time, so I started to wonder whether her body was fighting a bug. But this morning she didn’t have any fever, and she said that she felt good enough to go to school after having some warm oatmeal for breakfast, so we thought she’d be okay. However, when we walked up to the school where the cold wind was surprisingly biting, Sophia repeated again that she wasn’t feeling well. She pouted and said, “I kind of don’t want to go to school today. I’d rather stay home but Dad would get mad if I do.”

I stopped our walk and turned toward S. “You need to advocate for yourself. ‘I kind of don’t want to go to school today’ doesn’t cut it for me. If you really believe you’d rather stay home today because you aren’t feeling well, then you need to say so with conviction.” “Also,” I continued, “why would Dad get mad at you for staying home? And even if he did, you need to decide what’s best for you!” She looked at me with her teary eyes, and said, “I really don’t feel well, Mom. I want to stay home today.” It felt silly to have a stern teaching moment with my child when she wasn’t feeling well, and both of us were standing in the cold wind, but I didn’t want to let go of any chance to help my daughter practice her self-advocacy. In fact, when you’re most vulnerable is when you need to advocate for yourself the most. It’s a skill that wasn’t underscored for me when I was a child growing up in Korea where obedience and compliance were the two most prized virtues for school children. I believe self-advocacy is a life skill that my daughters need to learn now, because I won’t always be able to advocate for them, especially as they grow older and move further away from my purview of protection.

After coming home and tucking S into bed for a nap, I asked Charles, “Why did S say you’d get mad if she stayed home for not feeling well?” Charles was surprised and said, “That’s odd. I am the one who suggested at breakfast that she stay home if she didn’t feel well.” I confirmed another instance of my theory that generally children want to please their parents, and they do so based on what they assume the parents might or might not like. For some reason, S thought that Charles didn’t want her to be at home unless she was boiling with fever. Probably because he touched her forehead and told her that she didn’t have any fever, which she interpreted as she wasn’t sick enough to stay home in bed.

I recall numerous times when I tried to please my parents, teachers, professors, and then my employers after I entered the workforce. There is nothing wrong with pleasing others per se, but there always seemed to be an invisible line that I often crossed after which point I mucked up the balance between my pleasure and others’ gain. If I maintained that balance of exerting enough effort to please others while not cutting into my own sense of well-being, then I felt I could sustain that mode; however, if the balance was off because I was sacrificing my own well-being, then I felt it physically. I’d use my will to override what my body would inform me, such as “I had enough work, and now I want to go exercise, rest, play, be with friends and family, or sleep!” I used to either ignore or bulldoze over such messages in order to please others around me. This way of not honoring my body’s signals was praised as having good “work ethics” by those who gained from my lack of regard for my own well-being. In the end, it wasn’t sustainable for me when my head was ruling over my body in a command and control fashion. My head had to learn to cooperate and collaborate with my body to sustain my well-being and achieve what my heart wanted me to pursue.

I rarely took sick days when I was a corporate employee. In my mind, to take a sick day I had to be suffering from a high fever and/or be unable to get out of bed due to illness. However, I reached a point last year when I just couldn’t get out of bed because I completely lacked the energy to start each day. I had no fever and no ache, but my body wouldn’t cooperate at all. It was determined to “Occupy Bed!” Also, as recently as this summer, I experienced extreme fatigue in the middle of the day in the office: all of a sudden, I’d “shut down” like a computer going to sleep. All my energy would rapidly drain out of my body in the blink of an eye and suddenly I couldn’t continue to work! All I could do to recover was to come home and slip into my bed and sleep until next morning.

I recall one particular afternoon when that happened and I came home early because I was useless in the office. When I arrived there was no one at home; it happened to be the time Charles went to pick up the girls at their school. I crawled into bed and was almost asleep when I heard the garage door open, followed by the girls’ cheerful chatter telling Charles about their day at school. For some reason, none of them noticed my car in the garage, and they went on with their after-school routine without knowing that I was resting upstairs in bed. I then realized the importance of having a physical body. These three people are the ones I love most in this world. If I didn’t have my physical body, then even if my spirit could hover over them and listen to their giggles, laughter, and chatter, I wouldn’t be able to say anything to them, or kiss or hug them to show how much I love them. Since that moment, I promised myself to:

• Befriend my body and treat it as my prime partner in this lifetime;
• Take good care of my body and listen to my body wisdom as much as my mind wisdom; and
• Remember to rest, relax, and recharge my body so that it can cooperate with my mind and my heart.

Now I’ve learned to trust my body more than my strategic mind because the former doesn’t lie when the latter tries to manipulate or convince me otherwise. Honoring my body wisdom also helped me tune into my intuition which I have learned to trust as my prime navigation tool in embracing the unknown. Well before my head figures things out, my intuition tells me which direction to turn to. It is comforting to “know” something in my belly even before I can articulate it using my cognitive ability. This is a new way of living and learning, and I enjoy listening to my body wisdom as I explore, experiment, experience and expand.