Illness Is A Language

When the Body Speaks the Truth Your Life Cannot Hold Anymore

Last week marked the two-year anniversary of my rebirth—the day Dr. Andrew Mallon removed the tumor from my throat that was temporarily stealing my life.

What is a tumor? What is any life-diminishing ailment? It’s information. It’s an opportunity for reevaluation about the things and people in your life that you’ve been focusing on.

I’ve had tumors, cysts, broken bones, and other life-threatening conditions that come and go. That’s normal.

I’ve been fed pharmaceuticals with toxic side-effects in exchange for unbearable symptoms, told stories about requiring them forever. But somehow I’ve figured out how to adapt to living without them. Many of us have to.

Thanks to being poor and unwanted I’ve not had consistent healthcare and have had to take issues into my own hands for survival more times than not. Most Americans have never had to learn the things that I do.

What I’ve come to understand is that anything and everything we experience in our lifetimes can be overcome. It’s always a matter of alignment.

God’s plan, your plan, or their plan.

Someone who cares about you will show up in your hours of need to hold the fort up for you. To give you an arm to grab onto and hand to squeeze. To facilitate a step forward, should you choose to take it.

Someone who wishes you pain will do the opposite. They’ll want you to tell them how hard it is so that they can suffer for you in their own lives—garnering sympathy from their social circles for how hard caring about you must be when they talk about their day and tell their stories over cocktails. Poor souls.

Meanwhile, they don’t lift a finger for you in service. Instead, they extend it pointed up to the sky in your direction—ready to take a few hours off for your funeral once you’ve croaked.

They’ll probably be able to get paid time off for mourning. Time while you’re here though? No thanks. They’ve got more important things to do.

From the time I recovered, and frankly since years before that, nobody I knew has genuinely given a shit about me. I mean, sure, they’d sit on the phone and commiserate if I want to hear all their problems, tell me how much I matter and what they “hope” for me. But would they go out of their way to make 10 minutes in service to me? Hell no! Make an introduction or referral? Get outta here! Only the rare strangers have.

I was driving through an area where someone I used to know worked and thought I’d swing by the office unexpectedly and say “hi”. It was nearly closing time but I figured I’d give it a try.

He had been a guest on my podcast about six years ago, but otherwise I hadn’t seen him in more than 30 years so I wasn’t sure if he’d find it weird for me to swing by, but I did.

He recognized me right away, despite my disheveled appearance, and welcomed me with a big smile and a hug.

In the few minutes we caught up he told me about an opportunity he heard of the day before, that was literally like the answer to a call I’ve been making to heaven. I followed up the next day with further follow up to do this week, and it continues to be vibrating high.

Whether or not anything ultimately comes of it, what it’s reminded me of is that I’m not wrong to expect people to rise up for others without expectations.

That I’m not wrong for treating people like gold, just for existing. Because even though my parents failed me, God always sends angels into the outfield for me. And this one is definitely one of the greats.

After returning from Germany I pursued a degree in Holistic Healthcare. At the time my thinking was to have a skill that furthered my ability to work with folks in sports and wellness, but what I ultimately discovered was how it would help me manage me.

Here’s what I know now:

Illness isn’t random. It’s a language. The body’s final way of telling the truth when the rest of your life is too full of noise to hear it.

By the time something manifests physically—a lump, a flare, a diagnosis—it’s not new. It’s accumulated. It’s been waiting for your attention. Waiting for your surrender.

For me, that tumor wasn’t just tissue. It was unsaid things. Words I swallowed to survive. Rage I never voiced because I was too busy playing peacemaker. Lies I absorbed until they nested in my throat and grew roots.

And once it was gone, it left a vacancy not just in my neck, but in the ecosystem of my life. I had to ask—what was that tumor doing for me?

What truths was it holding that I had been too exhausted, too polite, too afraid to hold for myself?

You don’t have to agree with this. But I’ve lived it enough times to stake my life on it:

When the body breaks down, it’s often cleaning up a mess the soul can’t carry anymore.

That’s not blame. That’s liberation. Because if dis-ease is a message, then healing is not a mystery—it’s a reckoning.

Sometimes that reckoning looks like letting go of who you thought loved you.

Sometimes it looks like standing in a stranger’s office thirty years later and realizing God still has you on His calendar.

There’s no formula. There’s only alignment.

You can take the pill. You can follow the protocol. You can do all the “right” things.

But if you’re still trying to heal in a system or relationship or worldview that’s keeping you sick, the body will keep reminding you until you listen.

And when you finally do—when you finally shift—you’ll feel it.

Not just in your organs. In your energetic field. In your memory. In your name.

You’ll remember who you are.

And more importantly—who never had the right to forget.