Last week, I tore the meniscus in my left knee chasing my cat.

Let me set the scene, because it’s ridiculous.

It’s morning. The ducks are laying their eggs out in their wilderness nests, which is a sacred, vulnerable time. And Jack, our cat, has discovered that the most entertaining game in the world is to creep into the bushes, wait, and then explode out to scare them off the nest. The ducks go quacking in terror in one direction. Jack saunters off in the other, chuckling to himself. (I have no proof he chuckles, but I have my suspicions.)

So there I am, trying to protect the girls, intercepting the cat, and my hypermobile body, in its infinite wisdom, attempts to go two directions at once.

Twist. Pop. OUCH.

And now I’m hobbling around the property, barely able to walk, writing this to you with my leg up and an ice pack sliding off my knee.

Funny, right? A woman undone by a cat and three ducks.

Except.

It took me a while to comb through it

Because it’s more than a knee.

Next month is the anniversary of my son Connor’s death. He was killed in a crosswalk by a distracted driver who ran a red light. A predator, if you like, who came out of nowhere. Something I could not have seen or stopped or protected him from, no matter how vigilant I was.

And yet here is my precious body, every year around this time, repeating the cycle. Bracing, guarding, throwing itself between something I love and a danger that arrives without warning. Trying to protect the ducks the way I couldn’t protect my son. Twisting myself in two directions at once, toward the threat and toward the ones I love, until something tears.

My body remembers what my calendar mind tries to schedule around.

It does this every year. The form changes, but the message is always the same. Something in me is bracing, guarding, and refusing.

Last year, at exactly this time, I got shingles, three times in a row. Nerve pain that follows the old pathways, erupting from somewhere deep. The year before, I tried contact lenses for the first time, and let’s just say my body rejected the whole notion of letting anything that close to my eyes. (Does anyone have a smooth transition to contacts? Asking sincerely.) My body refused to let me see something up close.

Different costume. Same grief underneath.

The point is, my body keeps the appointment.

Our bodies feel for us

Your body is not separate from your grief, your memory, or your love. It holds all of it. It feels for you, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, and sometimes by tearing a knee in the garden so you stop and pay attention.

We like to think we process things “up here,” in the mind, on a schedule we control. But the body has its own calendar, memory, and way of saying the thing you haven’t let yourself say. The anniversary you’re “fine” about until your back goes out. The loss you’ve “made peace with” until you can’t sleep in a particular week every year.

That’s a body doing exactly what it’s designed to do, which is carry what’s too big for the conscious mind to hold all at once, and release it in pieces, when it’s ready, whether or not you’ve given permission.

Why this matters right now

This week, the energy turns toward exactly this.

The pace slows, and the mind turns inward and backward toward family, home, the past, and the people in it. So, be prepared for old grief to resurface, and conversations you thought were finished to come back around. The season practically insists that you stop rushing and feel the thing you’ve been outrunning.

It’s definitely a tender time. A nostalgic, watery, memory-soaked time. And if something old is coming up in you, whether that’s an ache, a heaviness, or a date your body remembers before your mind does, you’re right on time.

The invitation is to feel it and let it move. To stop bracing against it and let it do what grief does, which is to keep loving someone who isn’t here in the only way left available.

The belief that won’t survive this week

“If I were really healed, my body wouldn’t keep doing this.”

That’s not how it works.

Healing isn’t the absence of grief or sorrow. It’s not a finish line where the body finally stops remembering. The people we love don’t get filed away and closed. They live in us, in our tissues, our nervous systems, our knees, and our summer.

My body grieves Connor on schedule because my body loved him. Still loves him. The ache and the love are the same thing, wearing different clothes.

So when your body speaks this week, when it aches, tears, or when it gets shingles or won’t sleep or simply needs to lie down, don’t scold it for not being “over it.” Thank it. It’s carrying something precious, and keeping the appointment your love made a long time ago.

One more thing

I’m going to be gentle with myself this July. The knee is forcing the issue, which is maybe the point. I can’t run after cats. I can’t chase ducks. I can barely walk to the compost. I have to sit and be still. I have to let the season do what it does.

And maybe that’s my body’s actual wisdom. It’s not just remembering the loss, but insisting I slow down enough to honour it. It wants me to stop guarding for one week and sit with my boy in the quiet instead of bracing against a world that already took him.

The ducks are fine, by the way. Jack is unrepentant. And I’ll be here, leg up, loving someone who went ahead of me.

Jonni

P.S. If grief lives in your body too, or a certain season or date undoes you in ways your mind can’t quite explain, this is so much of the work I do inside UNLIMITED. We won’t fix the grief, but I’ll walk you through learning to listen to what your body has been carrying for you. 7, 30, or 90 days, whenever you’re ready. 

P.P.S. Connor, this one’s for you. Always ahead, never behind. 🕊️