When the Body Says Nope: Grief, Burnout, and the Nervous System

Patria Rector, Founder of The Broken & Beautiful Collective

There are some experiences that don’t fit neatly into a story.

They don’t resolve.

They don’t teach something obvious.

They just… stay.

On March 31, 2021, I drove myself to the ER in Schuyler, Nebraska. I was leading a retreat at the Benedictine Center and had been having what I thought was a flare of GERD. I had been diagnosed the year before, so I assumed I knew what was happening. But the pain was unmanageable and getting worse.

At the ER, the doctor refused to give me pain medication unless I agreed to a CT scan to rule out a blockage. I pushed back. I wasn’t in network. It didn’t make sense to me. But I wasn’t okay. So I agreed.

The scan showed not just a blockage, but a complete obstruction—and a perforation. I needed emergency surgery. They put me in an ambulance and sent me to Lincoln. The 90-minute drive was one of the longest stretches of time I’ve ever experienced. The pain intensified in ways that are hard to describe.

The EMT did everything he could. He maxed out on what he could safely give me for pain. At some point, he chose fentanyl—not to take the pain away, but to help me not remember it.

I’ve had fentanyl before during surgeries.

But this time was different.

What I now understand as a bad trip.

Everything became one-dimensional.

And yet, I could see clearly.

I could see myself holding onto my husband and my children, knowing I couldn’t keep them.

Knowing I was dying.

I didn’t want to let them go.

But eventually, I did.

I gave them to God because I believed I wouldn’t be here anymore to take care of them.

What I remember most is not fear.

It was sadness.

Deep, unbearable sadness.

And something else I wasn’t prepared for.

There was no light.

No Jesus.

No sense of hope.

Only nothingness.

Aloneness.

Despair.

I remember thinking—this is not what I thought it would be. When I emerged from that bad trip, I woke up vomiting as they were rushing me down a hospital corridor.

There was a team waiting.

Everything moved quickly.

I didn’t resist anything.

Not even the NG tube.

They told me later they had never seen someone be so passive.

But I wasn’t being strong.

I was just… gone.

From that moment, something inherent in me, shifted.

I spent the next week in the hospital alone.

COVID restrictions meant no visitors.

No one sitting beside me.

No one helping me make sense of what had just happened.

My mind spun.

The medication didn’t help.

The isolation didn’t help.

And I didn’t have language for what I had just experienced.

The surgery revealed a Meckel’s Diverticulum.

I was told that while I didn’t technically “almost die,” without intervention, I would have.

I was on the edge of something.

Looking through a door I didn’t understand.

And then I came home.

And life continued.

But my body didn’t return to what it had been.

Adhesions formed.

It no longer functions normally.

If I don’t pay close attention, I risk another blockage.

So I spend a lot of hours each day managing something I didn’t choose.

Some days, I feel a despair.

The weight of it.

Other days, I feel only gratitude for being alive to bring myself to the world.

Something that has always mattered to me; to have impact in a positive way.

My therapist asks me about it sometimes.

I talk about it a little.

But not much.

I don’t really know what to do with it, but to keep living, putting one foot in front of the other and defy despair with a sprig of hope anyway.

Yesterday, I had one of those hard days.

The blues came in a concrete wave.

Out of nowhere.

A migraine.

A sore throat.

I went to bed early assuming I was getting sick.

This morning, I read an email from someone sharing about their experience with chronic pain.

I began writing a response, something I rarely do.

And as I was writing back to her, it hit me.

March 31 was the five-year anniversary of that horrible, awful, bad trip day.

My body remembered.

Even when I didn’t.

The body really does keep the score.

Not as punishment.

Not even as something to fix.

But as something that remains.

There is a kind of grief that simply does not resolve.

It refuses to remain quiet.

It does not move on when we think it should.

Scripture calls it the wailing of Ramah—

a grief that refuses to be comforted.

I guess... now that I'm thinking... I see that as holy rebellion, too. In a world where pulling up your bootstraps is seen as victorious, refusing to is a quieter, perhaps even braver, kind of work. At least I think so.

I don’t have a clean ending for this.

I don’t have a lesson.

I don’t have a way to tie it all together.

I just know this:

There are times when your body will not let you keep going.

Times when it interrupts you.

Stops you.

Pulls you under.

And maybe—

that isn’t failure.

Maybe it’s something else.

Something that doesn’t need to be explained right away.

If you’ve lived through something like this—

something your body still carries, even when your life has moved on—

you are not alone.

And if you’re in a moment where you can’t push through—

where your body is asking something different of you—

I dare you to pause.

Even if that's all you can do is stop.

Dear Reader,

As I sit here editing for publication, I'm aware that today, the day I write this, is Good Friday and/or the second day of Passover. Both days hold deep significance for me at this stage of life.

Even though I will not publish this until Easter Sunday which is the day of resurrection and celebration, grief is, well, as I wrote above, sometimes unresolvable. In my experience, no matter how emotionally profound the music is at church, Monday keeps on a-comin ' for most of us. I don't mean that as discouragement, only as a statement of solidarity with you, the quiet one whose leaves the service desperately longing to hold onto that feeling of hope a little bit longer.

The truth is that most of us are carrying unspeakable pain in some way or another. My hope is to gently hold it with you by acknowledging some of my own. I pray that this untidy little piece is meaningful as we contemplate loss, death and despair collectively. Lament is a holy work.

Love,

Patria

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