Women as Shock Absorbers

I've held three people's nervous systems steady in one afternoon and called it Tuesday. For years I thought that was just what capable women did, until I learned it has a name, a mechanism, and a bill that comes due later in the body. This piece traces the line from the vagus nerve to the immune system to the fact that eighty percent of autoimmune disease is carried by women, and asks what it actually costs to keep everyone else regulated while quietly running your own emergency. It's not an argument for absorbing more, better, longer. It's the beginning of a renegotiation, one where you get to locate what's true in your body, root back into it, and lead from there instead of translating yourself into something smaller and safer.