It’s 4am and I’m lying in bed in the dark, writing this on my phone because I couldn’t go back to sleep. Just now, I took my first dose of thyroid medication — levothyroxine, if you want to be precise. I’m not starting it for the first time. I’m going back on it, after my doctor and I agreed it was time to try again.

This isn’t new territory for me, but it feels different this time. I know what it’s like to live without it… to drag through the days foggy, cold, and exhausted… and I know the specific glowing relief that comes when it starts working. There’s always a mix of dread and hope in swallowing that pill again.

Clarification, because lately I’ve mostly been talking about my brain, so, before anyone jumps to conclusions: this is not a mental health medication. It’s for my body. For the small, butterfly-shaped gland in my throat that refuses to do its job properly.

But truth is, you can’t really separate body from mind when it comes to this stuff. Low thyroid means exhaustion, brain fog, rashes, joint pain, weight fluctuation, mood swings, DRY SKIN, and hair loss too. It’s all connected. So yes, the pill is for my thyroid. And yes, it will ripple into how my mind and spirit function too.

If you’ve never been here, let me tell you… the toll isn’t just the symptoms. It’s the endless cycle of tests, the waiting, the casting a wide net, trying new things, the feeling that your own body is a science project that keeps failing QA. Every adjustment comes with the same two companions: dread and hope.

I’m not here to whine. I am fragile… but as the saying goes, fragile like a bomb… I can break things open. I can change the landscape. I can carry both the tenderness of being unwell and the power of refusing to disappear into it.

Somewhere along the way, I learned this truth: treat the symptom, tend the soul.

• Treat the symptom. Take the pill, follow the diet, put the lotion on the skin (yes, I hear it in Buffalo Bill’s voice too)… wear the socks.
• Tend the soul. Pick the lip balm flavor that feels like a gift, light the candle, wrap up in softness, give myself permission to be human.

That’s how I keep from drowning in the clinical. That’s how I stay more than a patient. Because I refuse to let my life shrink down to a list of side effects and lab results.

This is me… in the dark… up too early… pill just swallowed… telling the truth: I’m back on thyroid meds. I’m tired. I’m tender. I am fragile like a bomb. And I can still carve out space for joy, still poke at the silence that tries to make me small, still tend the parts of me that medicine can’t touch.

And yes, even here, there’s dread. And yes… there’s hope. Always both. And if today that hope looks a little like lotion on the skin… so be it.

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What about you? When your body demands attention, how do you tend your soul through the dread and hope of healing?