The Body Keeps The Silence

This week, I found myself wondering something I wasn’t sure I was ready to answer.

What are we actually afraid of — being alone… or being left with ourselves?

I’ve always been a woman who could be alone. Truly alone. I could spend my days with my mother, my family, my cats — a full life, no man required. I’ve never been the kind of woman who needed partnership to feel chosen, protected, or complete.

Still, I’ve heard the jokes.

“She has too much testosterone in her body,” some idiots like to say — a familiar taunt aimed at women who don’t follow the prescribed script. In their version of womanhood, a “proper” Arab or Muslim woman my age would already be married with five or six children.

That life was never my wish.

I’ve never — and I mean never — wanted marriage or motherhood as milestones. If I’ve softened to the idea of marriage at all in recent years, it’s only because I respect accountability. I respect structures that require two people to show up consciously — and to be honest, I’ve always been a fan of systems where a woman is compensated for the time she invests.

But the question of being alone is one I hear every single day.

Loneliness has become an epidemic no one wants to name — and yet I’ve been warning about it since 2020, after nearly two decades working as a relationship expert.

We confuse solitude with loneliness. Partnership with safety. They are not the same.

Three days before my first client consult back, I received the call I’d been holding my breath for over three months.

No cancer.

Even though my actual diagnosis meant I wouldn’t return to “normal” until mid-year, the words landed softly. Carefully. As if they didn’t want to startle me back into fear.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t immediately call my brother or older sister — who, like my mother, have walked beside me through every step of this.

I just sat there.

Quiet.
Grateful beyond words.
And strangely awake.

It felt as though fear had loosened its grip, leaving behind a much larger question:

Now that you have time… how exactly do you want to live?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for months. One that forced me into action at the beginning of this year. One that demanded I reevaluate every corner of my life, and I mean every single corner.

That same week, I returned to consulting.

My first client sat across from me at the Thai restaurant we chose, twisting her hands the way women do when they’re bracing themselves for a confession they’ve rehearsed a hundred times.

“I’m so tired,” she said. “I’m tired of waiting for Mr. Right, Faiza. Where is he? Is he even coming? I feel like I’m gonna be alone forever!”

I smiled — the kind of smile that says I’ve heard this sentence a thousand times. Because I have.

“How’s your health?” I asked instead.

She blinked. “My health?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because as long as you have that, your story isn’t over.”

She shifted in her seat. She hadn’t been single since she was fourteen.

“You need time alone,” I continued gently. “Real time. Time to heal. Time to learn yourself. Love doesn’t arrive when we’re desperate — it arrives when we’re ready.”

She hesitated. “But what if I end up alone?”

There it was.

The question that always reveals itself eventually.

“We all spend most of our lives alone,” I said. “Even when we’re partnered. Even when we’re married. And when we leave this world — no matter who’s in the room — that part is a solo experience.”

Her eyes widened. I realized this probably wasn’t printed on any inspirational mugs.

“But,” I added, smiling, “that doesn’t mean it has to be lonely, girlfriend.”

She swallowed hard. “It feels shameful,” she said quietly. “Being alone. Like something’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing shameful about having standards,” I told her. “Or about learning how to be your own companion before inviting someone else in.”

She nodded. “Faiza, I don’t even know how to be alone without feeling pathetic.”

“I’ll teach you,” I said, just as our egg rolls arrived.

What I didn’t say — what only became clear to me later — is how differently this conversation would have sounded to me just a few months ago.

Because when I was waiting on test results heavy with generational history, when doctors were watching numbers closely and choosing their words carefully, the thought that never once crossed my mind wasn’t Will I be married? Or will I have a man by my side?

It was work.

My unfinished work.
My words.
My voice.
Everything I hadn’t yet said out loud.

All the time I spent investing in others so I wouldn’t have to sit with my own pain. The shame. The silencing. The years of being told, “You’re still talking about that? Get over it.”

That terrified me more than anything else.

For nineteen years, I’ve listened to women hold themselves together so tightly that their bodies eventually rebel. Women who don’t speak up. Who don’t ask for what they need. Who swallow anger, grief, and disappointment because they don’t want to be “too much.”

And then they get sick.

Not because they’re weak — but because suppression has a cost.

Stress doesn’t live only in the mind. It settles into the nervous system. It takes up residence in the body. It waits patiently until it can no longer be ignored. And eventually, the body speaks — loudly.

I learned this the hard way.

Women don’t break down because they feel too much.

We break down because we feel everything so deeply… alone.

After Pan, I lived fast. Too fast. I moved like I was being chased by something I refused to name. I brushed my teeth like I was late for a life that wasn’t even happening. I rushed through mornings, meals, moments — as if slowing down would invite the pain to catch up with me.

This fall, my body forced a pause.

And in the stillness, I noticed something simple and radical:

Life is lived in the moments we allow ourselves to slow down.

I vacuum slowly now — like the floor deserves my attention.
I brush my teeth like I plan to keep them.
I move through my days as if they matter now — not after someone chooses me or a green light finally appears.

The green light is waking up with air in your lungs and another day to live.

And maybe that’s the question I’m circling this week:

If love — or success, or partnership — isn’t what saves us from being alone… what if it’s simply what we’re finally ready for once we stop running from ourselves?