When My Body Hit Pause: Injury, Illness, and Learning to Fuel Again

Rebuilding trust with a body that stopped me in my tracks, and finding that rest and recovery can be powerful forms of movement.

“How do you love your body, when your body doesn’t love you?”

It’s a question that used to sit quietly in the back of my mind, but over the past year it’s been shouting.

Growing up, movement was my everything. Dance, the gym, long classes that left me drenched and smiling, they were more than hobbies. They were coping mechanisms. They gave me structure, a sense of purpose, and most importantly, permission to fuel myself. I told myself that strength needed food. That if I wanted to be powerful, I had to eat. And for a while, that mindset worked. I treated fuelling like a job, one that kept my body doing the things I loved.

Then life quite literally hit the brakes.

After my car crash, everything changed. My body, once the thing that carried me through choreography and classes, suddenly became something I didn’t recognise. Every small movement felt foreign. Pain replaced rhythm. Independence became something I had to fight for again. I wasn’t just recovering physically, I was learning to exist in a body that no longer felt like mine.

"When your identity has always been tied to movement, injury feels like losing a part of yourself."

I went from constant motion to complete stillness, and that silence was deafening. For a while, I didn’t know how to take care of myself when I couldn’t “earn” it through exercise.

It was hard to love a body that I felt had turned against me.

Feeding myself became a strange battle. Not over the amount, but over the type of food I wanted. When I was very ill, I craved processed food, the kind that was quick, easy, and comforting. Fresh food felt too much. I neglected it without meaning to. But there’s something important in that. Because eating “perfectly” isn’t the goal. If I eat too clean, it can become obsessive. If I eat too processed, my body starts to slow down. The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.

Now, as I move through recovery, I’m learning to find that middle ground again. I’m fuelling properly, not as a reward or a chore, but as an act of respect. And it’s working. My recovery is speeding up. I feel clearer, stronger, and more like myself. It turns out a healthy body really does support a healthy mind, and when one struggles, the other follows close behind.

"But that doesn’t mean recovery is easy. It’s messy. It’s emotional. Some days I still look in the mirror and grieve the version of my body that could do more. But I’m also grateful for what it’s doing now : healing, adapting, and reminding me that stillness doesn’t mean failure."

I’m learning that strength isn’t just about lifting, leaping, or sweating. Sometimes it’s about patience. Sometimes it’s about eating the food your body actually needs, even when it’s not “perfect.” And sometimes, it’s just about saying thank you to a body that’s still trying.

Because even when it feels like it’s let me down, my body has never stopped fighting for me.

Written by Milly Best Dance Artist & Choreographer