When Healing Becomes Invisible

When I wore a neck brace, strangers stopped me everywhere.

“What happened?”

“Did you get in an accident?”

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?”

For more than four years before that, I lived with invisible pain. No brace. No cast. No outward signal that anything was wrong. For much of that time, I kept going as best I could. And even when I couldn’t anymore, nothing looked broken.

So the world assumed I should be fine.

It was the first time in years my pain made sense to the outside world.

I didn’t realize at first that the hardest part wasn’t the pain.

It was what happened when nothing on the outside reflected what I was carrying.

When the brace appeared, the world slowed down around me.

People adjusted.

They believed me without explanation.

I didn’t expect how much safety came from being visibly unwell.

The brace wasn’t something I chose. It was medically necessary support for an unstable neck, and I wore it for over a year and a half.

For the first time, I didn’t have to explain.

I didn’t have to justify my limits.

Before leaving the city one afternoon, my family ducked into a small pizza shop across the street.

The girls debated pizza toppings.

My husband ordered at the counter.

The usual hum of conversation pressed in around us.

At the next table, a toddler sat in a highchair, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes. After a moment, she turned to her father, wrapped her small hands around her own neck, and said softly, “Owie.”

We left soon after, settling back into the car for the drive home. The moment stayed with me.

About six months after surgery, I was cleared to remove the brace during the day.

It was an important milestone.

One people still point to as progress.

But this is where the story gets quieter.

I cannot drive. I am enduring intensive physical therapy. I live with constant pain in my neck and the entire back of my head, areas that remain numb from surgery.

None of that shows on the outside.

Without the brace, there are no signals.

The world returns to its normal pace.

And I feel the return of something familiar.

Invisibility.

This time, it is different.

Before, I was unseen while suffering.

Now, I am unseen while healing.

And that brings a different kind of vulnerability.

That kind of invisibility settles in gradually.

I noticed it in how I moved,

and how I held myself when no one was looking.

I found myself hesitating in small ways.

Wondering if what I needed was too much.

If what I was doing still counted

when no one else could see it.

Without the brace, there was no mirror.

No signal coming back to tell me I was doing enough.

I had to decide whether I trusted myself without that confirmation.

I did not lose my identity when the brace came off.

I am learning to hold it differently.

The work itself hasn’t changed.

It is where the authority lives.

Not in how others see me,

but in how I am learning to see myself.