07/24/2026
I went back to school. 🏫 📖 🖥️
“Today Kendra” is showing up for “9-yo Kendra” and all the people “9-yo Kendra” felt called to help.
Little did I know nearly four decades ago exactly how huge that would turn out to be.
I plan to begin sharing what I learn on my Kendra Conquers socials and will be opening my schedule in the fall by invitation, but today’s reading hit me particularly hard and I didn’t want to wait to share it.
I feel it deeply because I experienced it personally and if find it so important to share because I think of so many of my friends and their children as I read it.
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“The fact that hospitalizations and medical procedures routinely produced traumatic results comes as a surprise to many. The traumatic after effects from prolonged mobilization, hospitalizations, and especially surgeries are often long-lasting and severe. Even though a person may recognize that an operation is necessary, and despite the fact that they are unconscious as the surgeon cuts through the flesh, muscle, and bone, it still registers in the body is a life-threatening event. On the “cellular level” the body perceives that it has sustained a wound serious enough to place it in immortal danger. Intellectually, we may believe in an operation, but on a primal level, our bodies do not. Where trauma is concerned, the perception of the instinctual nervous system carries more weight - much more. This biological fact is a primary reason why surgery will often produce a post-traumatic reaction.”
Peter Levine
Waking the Tiger
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I’ve said it for 2.5 years now. . .
I woke up in a different body after having my gall bladder removed on Nov. 29, 2023. My body didn’t feel the same and my mind didn’t work the same. My nervous system was completely highjacked while I was under anesthesia and the surgery that was supposed to cure me… made me more worse.
For so long, I felt so alone. Who could possibly understand this level of trauma from something so….routine?
I do.
I created an album about it. In fact, my “internment selfie” is one of my most-loved posts ever. I wrote it the day I wrote my eulogy. No one knew that.
You are not alone.
If your body says it’s not normal, it’s not.
And to my medical momma’s…. I have more for you, but this was a lot on its own.
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