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A letter · 4 minute read

When You Wonder If You’re Imagining It

This one is for the person whose tests came back normal, and who has quietly begun to doubt their own experience.

It usually starts with a well-meaning sentence. Everything looks fine. Then a second opinion, and a third, all saying versions of the same thing, until eventually a person stops describing the pain accurately even to themselves.

Here is what I want to say to that, without any hedging: a normal test does not mean nothing is happening. It means that particular test did not find anything it was built to find.

Those are very different sentences. Only one of them is about you.

Your experience does not require a scan’s permission to be real.

Tissue tension, guarding patterns, restriction that has settled in slowly over years — much of this does not photograph. It is felt. It shows up in how you move through a doorway, how you sit down, what you have stopped doing without ever announcing it.

I am not saying anything against your medical team. Keep them. Their tools are important, and some questions genuinely need imaging to answer.

I am only saying that when the tools come up empty, the correct conclusion is not that you invented this. You are the one living in there. You have better data than anyone.

You are not imagining it. — Tammie

If this letter helped you feel a little less alone today… carry that feeling with you.

Whenever you’re ready

If you’d like to stay a little longer

Three quiet doors, and no obligation to open any of them tonight.