What if Illness Isn’t a Problem to Solve?

We’re taught to treat illness like a fire to put out. But what if it’s more like a knock at the door? What if your body isn’t breaking down—but breaking through?

My homeopath once said to me: “Symptoms are our blind spots. They highlight what we will not—or cannot—fully perceive.” I’d shared this idea with countless patients. But it wasn’t until I faced my own struggles that I truly began to grasp its meaning.

Illness can be more than discomfort. It can be a message. A signal. A thread, trying to show us something we’ve overlooked.

When I sit with patients, I often see what they can’t—in their gestures, their stories, their symptoms. But when it was my turn to navigate these signals in myself, I discovered just how hard it is to see clearly from the inside.

We’re not taught to relate to pain this way. We’re taught to resist it, medicate it, move on. But what if the very discomfort we want to get rid of is actually trying to help us?

Maybe healing isn’t about silencing symptoms. Maybe it’s about listening. When we begin to pay attention—really pay attention—we start to notice the rhythms in our discomfort. The patterns. The places where life is nudging us toward change.

This isn’t passive observation. It’s active engagement. A way of walking through the storm not by fighting it, but by learning how to move with it.

In my book The Door Behind My Belly Button, I explore this idea through story, through lived experience, and through the lens of the Law of Similars—a principle that helps us recognise symptoms not as enemies, but as guides.

What if your body isn’t working against you? What if it’s working for you?

What if symptoms are invitations? Back to yourself. Back to what your body has been trying to tell you all along.