You Are Not a Problem to Fix: The War on Being Human

You’ve probably heard the voice before.

“Why can’t you keep up?”
“Get it together.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Stop complaining, you have it good.”
“Push through.”

We internalize these whispers young. Not because they’re true, but because they are everywhere. In school. At work. In medicine. In parenting. In capitalism. In colonization. In systems designed to extract, not nourish.

We live in a world that punishes being human.

Not just inconvenience or shames it, punishes it.

Rest is labeled laziness.
Grief is called weakness.
Slowness is pathologized.
Needs are framed as burdens.
And god forbid we break down.
God forbid we need help.
God forbid we listen to our bodies when they whisper no.

This is not personal. This is systemic. And it is ancient.

Systems Are Built to Deny the Body

The roots of this punishment run deep: through colonial conquest, industrial capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and ableism. These systems share a common goal: to sever us from our inherent wisdom and make us easier to control.

The body (your body) was never the enemy.
But empire had to make it one to survive.

Colonizers couldn’t build nations on stolen land without turning people into machines.
Factory owners couldn’t drive profits without disconnecting labor from life force.
Western medicine couldn’t professionalize without pathologizing everything outside its scope.

So rest became lazy.
Emotion became irrational.
Slowness became failure.
Dependency became shameful.
And healing became something you had to earn.

It’s no accident that you feel broken.
It’s conditioning.

This Isn’t Burnout. It’s Betrayal.

What we often call burnout is not simply a byproduct of a busy schedule. It is the somatic cost of betrayal; of being asked, over and over again, to abandon your body, override your intuition, and minimize your needs for the comfort of systems that do not care for you.

You were not meant to function at full capacity, nonstop, in service of someone else’s bottom line.

You were meant to live.

But we’re told:
– If you can’t keep up, you must be the problem.
– If your body says no, you must fix it.
– If you resist, you’re dramatic.
– If you fall apart, you’ve failed.

No.

You are not a machine.
You are not a productivity unit.
You are not a diagnosis to manage.

You are a human being with cycles, longings, grief, and rage. You are a body that remembers. You are a soul that resists.

What If Your Resistance Is Sacred?

What if your resistance isn’t dysfunction… but intelligence?
What if your burnout isn’t a flaw… but a boundary?
What if your overwhelm isn’t chaos… but a holy signal?
What if your body is not a liability… but a prophet?

We are not here to perform our healing in service of reentering systems that sickened us. We are here to reclaim a pace, a rhythm, a truth that honors our bodies as sacred.

Your ache is not shameful.
Your need is not excessive.
Your slowness is not failure.

It is time we stop pathologizing the body.
It is time we stop treating survival adaptations as character flaws.
It is time we stop blaming ourselves for responding to a world that is, by design, unlivable for the tender, the wise, the aware.

Let’s Tell the Truth

Let’s name it clearly: This culture punishes being human. And still, we resist. By resting. By grieving. By refusing to speed up. By remembering what we once knew.

This is not self-help.
This is soul-remembrance.

You are not a problem to fix.
You are a body telling the truth.
You are a spirit breaking the spell.

You are still sacred.

Ready to unhook from systems that demand your self-abandonment?
Come join us inside THE KEY: a seasonal rhythm for women ready to return to their body, their truth, and each other.