I’ve spent much of my life battling chronic pain. While I’ve often felt mentally ready to move beyond it, my body had different plans.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from this long, winding journey is that the body never lies. It holds the key to healing, though it took me years of trial and error to understand the language it was speaking.

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At 19, I was diagnosed with a rare heart defect called ALCAPA, even though I barely had symptoms. Just two months later, I was on the operating table, undergoing open-heart surgery with a 50% chance of survival. What followed was a nightmare...