Reflections

I chose to begin my fortieth year with emptiness. No cake on the tongue. No champagne fizzing down my throat. No feast laid out with candles and laughter. Just water, cool and clean, moving through me like rain softening a parched field.

I did it because my body had been calling me all year — burning, inflamed, restless. The truth was, I had been moving through a Lyme disease flare, the drag of chronic anemia, and the steady discomfort of stomach issues that never seemed to let up. My body was asking — no, demanding — that I stop ignoring it. Resentment had begun to pool in my chest, and scarcity was the only rhythm I could hear.

I am someone who has always said yes to my health first. It’s the one thing I thought I would never betray. But somewhere between survival and ambition, I did. I kept putting it off, telling myself I would come back to it, and suddenly I was moving through a life that no longer flowed.

On the first morning, I woke feeling clear, almost electric, as if my body was eager to test what I could endure. I slipped into my running shoes and hit the pavement at sunrise, legs light, lungs open. The world smelled of wet grass and heat still waiting to rise. For a moment, I felt untouchable — stepping into the fast with energy I didn’t expect.

But by mid-morning the pulse shifted. A headache pressed at my temples, dull at first, then insistent. The hours dragged. Time felt heavy, each minute stretched like taffy. Hunger itself never arrived, but thoughts of food did. Ghosts of hunger circled me — cravings that didn’t feel like mine. YouTube became a shrine to pastries, steakhouses, chefs I had no intention of visiting. The thought of food circled like a song stuck on repeat, not because I needed it, but because without it, I had nothing to cover the silence inside.

That silence forced me into confrontation. It was the day of the Aquarius full moon, a day charged with questions about love and community, and I felt myself pulled inward to face truths I could no longer avoid. How have I been showing up in love? What do I really want from intimacy, from friendship, from family? And what am I willing to give without abandoning myself?

By evening, the strength of the morning had dissolved. The sun seared my eyes, the light too sharp to bear. My body felt feverish, heat rising from the inside out, each movement slowed to half-speed. I was moving through fog — heavy, sluggish, every step an effort. And yet beneath the haze, I understood: this was the point. To strip myself of every prop, every excuse, every distraction, until I could hear the truth of my own body.

I had always said health was the foundation, but this fast showed me what that actually meant. It isn’t something you postpone until the rest of life makes space for it. It is the ground under every step. And without it, I had been stumbling.

This fast became my line in the sand. If I was going to enter this new decade, it would be with clarity.

⸻

The second day broke me open.

I woke from a restless sleep, sheets twisted and damp, my body swinging between heat and chill, never settling. For a moment, opening my eyes felt like relief — almost as if strength had returned. But the second I stood, my legs betrayed me. A buzzing took over, a tremor that ran through every limb, as though my veins had turned into electric wires. My mind was clear, but my body was too weak to obey it. I lay back down, breath shallow, staring at the ceiling while the pulse in my ears thundered louder than thought.

By midday the nausea came in waves, cresting and pulling me under. Every sip of water, meant to steady me, churned my stomach instead. On the left side of my body, cramps gripped sharp and insistent, making me fold into myself, as if my organs were twisting against the emptiness.

By evening I was too hot, then too cold, then hot again. No position brought comfort. The air felt too heavy, the silence too loud. Sleep would not come. Every muscle ached, my head throbbed, and my body refused equilibrium. This wasn’t just cleansing — it was confrontation.

And yet, on the third morning, I woke with a clarity I hadn’t expected. My body felt lighter, my energy restored just enough to rise without collapsing. In my mouth lingered a sweetness — as though I had gone to bed with honey on my tongue, though I had swallowed nothing. It was strange, unsettling, but it felt like proof something was shifting inside me.

By afternoon, I laid my body down for a massage with Jorge. He is the only one I trust with this kind of work — intuitive enough to know what I need without me asking, steady enough to hold the weight of my body when I can’t. His hands moved with precision, pressing into the knots of tension and fatigue, pulling me deeper into myself. When he set the cups to my skin, I felt the pull immediately — stronger than before, insistent, as though it wanted to draw out everything I hadn’t yet released. The marks that bloomed across my back were darker this time, purple circles like stamps of everything being drawn to the surface. The ache was sharp, but beneath it came release, a loosening, as though something inside me had been given permission to exhale.

As the day stretched on, the calm of the morning gave way to grumpiness, to heaviness, to a mood that matched the bruises on my skin. I was sick of water. Sick of fasting. Sick of the emptiness.

The breaking was not a single moment. It was this cycle — clarity followed by collapse, calm followed by revolt. My body demanded everything from me, and then, almost cruelly, offered me just enough reprieve to keep going. And I understood: this was the test. Not just of hunger, but of endurance. Not just of body, but of spirit. To sit inside weakness long enough to discover the strength hidden beneath it.

⸻

The fourth day arrived on my birthday, and I woke with the weight of both milestones pressing against me — the middle of the fast and the threshold of a new decade. My body felt fragile, tired, not at full capacity, but I rose anyway. Brushing my teeth, drinking water, moving through the quiet of the morning — even those small acts felt like victories.

By mid-morning, my thoughts turned to the people who carry the hardest rituals. I thought about Sundancers, dancing in the sun for days without food or water, giving their bodies over to prayer. I had always respected them, but fasting brought that respect deeper into me, into a place words can’t fully touch. My own seven days felt like a trial, but theirs — to dance while empty, to sweat beneath the burning sun, to surrender everything — was another realm of endurance altogether.

I had done cleanses before — juice, parasite, and short water fasts — but never like this. My longest water fast had been no more than thirty-six hours. This time, I had chosen not just discipline, but devotion. To push myself spiritually, physically, emotionally, to enter my fortieth year with nothing lingering, no scarcity carried forward.

By afternoon, I felt the paradox of the fast more clearly than ever: moments of strength, moments of collapse. A walk beneath the heat of the sun drained me quickly, forcing me into shade, into stillness. Yet moving, even slowly, helped. Later, holding my friend’s baby in my arms, I felt something soften. The weight of a new life steadied me, pulled me back into gratitude. By evening, I felt restored enough to call the day a gift.

And it was. Because alongside the weakness, the fast had opened another current. Gratitude poured through me, raw and unfiltered. It rose until I was overwhelmed, until it spilled out of me in tears. Gratitude that I had lived long enough to see forty. Gratitude for the community that surrounded me. Gratitude for the resilience that had carried me through years I once thought would end me. That day, hunger gave way to thankfulness, and I let myself feel it fully.

On the fifth morning, I woke with a calm I hadn’t known in years. My body felt balanced, almost weightless, as though the fog had finally lifted. My mind was clear, my emotions steady, and the stillness inside me felt like a blessing.

By mid-morning, I gave myself permission to rest. No lists, no tasks, no guilt. Just rest. To lie in bed and do nothing but breathe. To release the performance of productivity. My body felt as though it had surrendered to the fast completely, adapting to its new rhythm.

But by afternoon, weakness crept back in. The nausea returned, sharper now, forcing me into bed once more. I drifted into sleep — something I almost never allow myself — because the fatigue was stronger than my will. When I woke, salt helped with the nausea, but my energy still lagged. The calm of the morning had cracked, revealing how deeply my body was still working, cleansing, repairing.

That night, lying in bed, I thought about food. Not from hunger — the growl had long since disappeared — but from longing. I realized how much of my eating had been for pleasure, for comfort, for reward. Food had been ritual, distraction, even entertainment. And stripped of it, I could finally see the truth: my body did not need as much as I had been giving it. What it needed was presence. What it needed was respect.

Day four gave me gratitude. Day five gave me clarity. Together they revealed the vision hidden inside the fast: emptiness isn’t absence — it is space. Space for truth. Space for healing. Space to choose how I want to be fed in this life.

⸻

By the sixth morning, I felt the rawest I had ever been. Rest had steadied me the day before, and now I rose with a mind unburdened, sharper than it had been in years. My body still felt fragile, weak in its movements, but inside there was a quiet strength, a sharpness of thought that felt like light breaking open the day.

The sweetness lingered in my mouth — unsettling in its strangeness, as if my body was inventing taste out of nothing. It reminded me that emptiness had its own flavor, one I was only beginning to recognize.

I was grateful for the stillness of the day. Unlike the choice I made on the fifth — to rest without guilt — this rest was different, born of necessity. I let myself move gently, conserving energy for the end that was now in sight. By evening, I felt almost suspended, as though my body was holding me steady in preparation for release.

The seventh day carried a different kind of anticipation. I woke with relief thrumming in me — one more night, one more sleep, and I would eat again. I moved through the day almost ceremonially, marking its edges with small acts: having my hair re-twisted, walking through the grocery aisles, choosing the foods that would greet me when the fast was done. Even then, the water resisted me — each swallow turning my stomach, every sip a test of will. I was tired of the taste, tired of the weight of it. And yet beneath the nausea, a quiet pride began to rise. I had made it. Seven days of emptiness, and I was still here, not hollow but sharpened, not diminished but redefined.

By evening, I noticed something else: the inflammation that had gripped me for months had eased. My body felt like mine again — steady, clear, unburdened. What may have looked like weight loss from the outside was really a return, a shedding of what didn’t belong, a homecoming to my natural state.

Breaking the fast was not the celebration I had imagined. I sat with fruit and juice, anticipation rushing ahead of me, only to feel my body revolt. The food I had longed for left me queasy, my stomach rejecting what it was no longer used to. Water, once my lifeline, had become unbearable. My body was confused — not ready to return so quickly to what it had once demanded without thought.

But as the hours passed, balance began to return. My nervous system, once wired for vigilance and survival, began to soften into something new. The tension I had carried for years — the constant bracing, the readiness for impact — gave way to a state I hardly recognized. What I had called paranoia was really the feeling that something was always about to go wrong. Now it shifted into its mirror. Pronoia. The quiet belief that life itself was conspiring for me.

Day six gave me clarity. Day seven gave me completion. And the refeed gave me the reminder that return is its own ritual — awkward, imperfect, but necessary.

The fast had stripped me, tested me, carried me through weakness into strength. But more than anything, it gave me space to begin again. To know that emptiness is not a void, but a threshold. That in hunger there is vision. That in stillness, there is rebirth.

I asked to enter my fortieth year with clarity. What I received was more than clarity. I received myself.

One love, ESS xo