From Atti’s youngest days, I have had him out in the streets, raising his fist to the air from his stroller. That’s what comes with having a community organizer for a mother. We have attended protests on everything from student’s rights, to LGBTQ+ protections, to gender equality within religion. It’s a holy thing to me, being surrounded by people, united together in calling for a better future for us all.
I have heard people use the word ‘protest’ to describe their body too. Like, “My back is protesting,” when stiffness and pain present. Or “My digestive system is protesting” when food isn’t agreeing with them. That’s actually kind of literally true.
Sensation is the language of the body. Sensation is how our body communicates it’s needs to our brains. Burns cause pain so we’ll move from the source. If we’re hungry, we feel a stomach pain. We know when we need to raise our body temperature through the sensation of being cold. If there is something that needs medical attention, our bodies will give us sensation to alert us to that.
So when that communication is being unheard, your body protests. Just like I would hit the streets to protest when I felt people were being unheard and not getting their needs met, your body protests with pain, fatigue, muscle tightness, poor digestion, poor sleep, lowered immune response, etc, when it is being unheard.
Martin Luther King Jr famously said, “A riot is the language of the unheard,” and there have absolutely been times in my health journey when it felt like my body moved on from protest and started smashing shit up.
When you need to get someone’s attention and they’re not giving it, you may start with calling their name, then try waving your hands, a little at first and then with more energy when that didn’t work. If they still refuse to hear you, you have two choices: Give up, or escalate.
If your body gives up trying to communicate with you, you will be cut off from sensation. Disassociated from your body you might not feel the pain, but you also won’t feel any alarm bells signaling the need for care, or the joy and pleasure sensation can bring. If your body escalates, it means more pain, more fatigue, more health problems until you finally stop ignoring its protests and address its needs.
We ignore the body protest we experience for the same reason power ignores protests from the people. Because we make more money when we ignore it (and for many of us that’s a choice of survival), because we’re afraid of what consequences we’ll discover if we listen, because we can’t imagine a world where all needs can be met without someone losing.
I’ve seen lots of people look at someone with advancing health problems that at one point could have been corrected and, out of judgment, say, “How did someone let themselves get like that?” People featured on shows like “My 600 pound life” or who have tumors that grew to impressive size. Others who haven’t had those experiences can’t imagine the circumstances that led to that situation. But it’s actually pretty simple. They have either had healthcare withheld from them out of bigotry or financial hardship, or when warning signs started to show, they didn’t or couldn’t act on them. The same way an institution can get to the point where they’re being protested. By ignoring the whistleblowers and not meeting needs.
Your body is a collective and you are the head of this organization. It’s a collective of cells, a collective of systems, a collective micro-biome. Working in collaboration with the collective you lead will get you much farther than trying to practice an authoritarian control you will never be able to achieve. If you learn to listen to its communication and respond thoughtfully, you can avoid the protests and work together to get through this life as successfully as possible.