In this week’s post, guest writer Sian Ursa shares what happened when sudden abdominal pain sent her to the ER and a scan finally showed something. She explores the mask she has learned to wear in medical rooms and the holistic practices she has been leaning on at home to stay grounded while waiting for answers.
FEBRUARY 26, 2026
A couple of weeks ago, I ended up in the ER with abdominal pain, and it immediately felt different from anything I have experienced before. The pain had a steady, unignorable presence that changed how I moved, how I breathed, and how I oriented my body. It felt serious, and my system could not talk itself out of it.
What surprised me was how fast my mind tried to downplay it anyway. I felt the reflex rise before I even had language for what was happening. Minimizing has become its own kind of muscle memory, especially when life requires consistency and my son requires presence. He is only just over three years old, he is in preschool, and our days still revolve around routines that do not pause because my body feels unfamiliar.
I went to the ER expecting to be told it was nothing, because that has been my experience often enough to shape my expectations. The pattern has felt predictable. I arrive with symptoms that feel real in my body, and I leave with reassurance that sounds neat, measured, and final, even when the experience inside my skin does not match it.
I walked into the hospital wearing my usual mask.
The mask looks like composure, and it sounds like a steady voice that does not ask for too much. It answers questions politely, keeps emotion contained, and tries to be the easiest person in the room. The mask exists because I have learned what happens when a woman brings intensity into a medical space. People label, people interpret, and people decide the problem belongs to emotion rather than tissue.
The mask keeps the room comfortable. The mask also makes pain easier to dismiss, because pain delivered calmly can sound optional to someone who has not lived inside it. I fully expected to leave with that mask still holding everything in place.
Then the scan showed something.
Not a final diagnosis and not a tidy explanation, but a finding that shifted the tone in the room. I felt it in the way the questions changed, and I felt it in the way the next steps started to sound more specific. A subtle seriousness entered the conversation, and for a moment I did not know what to do with the internal whiplash of being taken seriously after expecting not to be.
Relief came, but it arrived tangled with anger and grief. Anger because I have learned to brace for dismissal as a default. Grief because part of me realized how prepared I had been to accept nothing again, as though my body needed to prove itself worthy of attention. That preparation came from repeated experiences of being met with certainty that made no room for nuance, and from the internal training that teaches a woman to present pain in the most palatable way possible.
I am choosing a different path, at least for now, while I wait for clarity.
I am still in the space of not knowing, which means I am living between appointments, between waiting, between information and uncertainty. The only thing that feels fully clear is that the pain has never been like this before, and it has changed the shape of my days.
From the outside, life can still look normal. I can do the preschool drop-off, smile at the gate, speak calmly to people, and move through the morning like everything is fine. Then I close the car door or walk back into an empty house, and my body reminds me that looking fine and feeling fine are two different realities. The mask still works, and that is part of what makes this situation so disorienting.
When I got home from the ER, I noticed a second reflex rise just as fast as minimizing. My system wanted to manage the pain through every tool I know, as a way to give my body relief while the medical story catches up. Holistic care has never been a trend for me. It has been a language my body understands, especially when conventional systems move slowly or when lived experience is treated as negotiable.
So I started doing the healing work nobody sees.
I began by paying attention to patterns, because pain without orientation can quickly become fear. I noticed when it flared, what movements sharpened it, what eased it, and what my body tolerated without protest.
I chose gentler movement that feels like listening rather than forcing. Slow stretches, short walks when my body says yes, and rest when my body clearly says no.
I also tuned into my body more deeply. I sat with my body and treated it like it held intelligence rather than inconvenience. I asked where the stress and pain were stored, what emotion might be riding alongside the pain, and what my body was trying to protect me from acknowledging. Some of what surfaced felt physical, some of it felt emotional, and some of it felt like old survival patterns that got louder once pain removed the option to ignore them.
That self inquiry does not replace medical investigation, and it does not need to. It gives me a way to meet myself without panic. It gives me a sense of contact with my own body at a time when my body feels unpredictable. It also reminds me that pain can carry meaning, context, and history, even when the cause is entirely physical.
The mask makes a person outwardly competent, but competence can become a trap when it stops us from taking our own experience seriously.
The lesson in all of this has not been about pushing harder, staying calmer, or performing resilience more convincingly. The lesson has been about refusing to abandon my own perception just because someone else cannot yet name what I feel.
A scan showing something did not solve the problem, but it did break the spell of dismissal that has shaped how I enter medical rooms. It also made me look at the mask in a new way. The mask has protected me, but it has also kept me quiet. It has helped me function, but it has also trained me to soften the truth of my body for the comfort of other people.
If something changes in your body and it feels new, you are allowed to treat that information as real even before you have a diagnosis.
If you have been told it is nothing before, you are allowed to ask again and keep asking. If you have learned to sound calm so you can be taken seriously, you are also allowed to speak plainly without cushioning your words.
Holistic healing can support that process, because it gives you something to do that is rooted in care instead of fear. It can look like warmth, nourishment, rest, minerals, gentle movement, breath, and the quiet internal work of asking your body what it needs. It can also look like deciding that you will stop treating your pain as an inconvenience that must be managed privately.
Right now, I am still waiting for clarity, and I am still mothering in the middle of it. I am still doing preschool mornings, bedtime routines, and all the small daily moments that ask for steadiness.
The difference is that I am no longer willing to wear the mask in the way that makes me disappear from my own story.
My body has been clear, and I am learning how to honor that clarity without needing anyone else to grant permission first.
By Sian Ursa
Sian Ursa has worked in the online space for over ten years, shaping brands and building digital experiences with clarity, depth, and edge. She is part of the creative lens behind The Jōrni, guiding messaging and creative strategy. She brings lived experience into everything she creates.