Tracey Coleman

It Was Not My Marriage. It Was My Body.

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At 46, I was certain the intimate part of our marriage was behind us. I could not have been more wrong. Here is what changed. ======== Let me explain what "behind us" actually looked like. Eleven months without being close. Not because we had lost interest in each other. Because every single time we tried, my body shut it down. My hips seized. My back locked. My skin felt like it was on fire wherever he touched me. After enough nights of stopping halfway through, we gave up. Nobody said it out loud. We just quietly stopped reaching for each other. ======== At 46, I assumed this was simply what fibromyalgia did to people. Where I come from, you do not slow down for pain. You show up. You clock in. You handle it. I have been working since I was seventeen. Reception desks. Nursing homes. Double shifts when they were short. So when fibromyalgia started stripping things away, I did what I always do. I pushed through. It takes you apart in order. First your sleep. Then your energy. Then your desire. You turn into housemates who happen to share a last name. I thought that was just the way it worked. ======== So I tried to accept it. Read everything I could find about "physical intimacy with chronic pain." They suggested communication. Hot baths. New positions. Being patient with yourself. I tried to tell myself that was enough. ======== But it was not enough. I missed him. Not just physically. I missed him. The kind of closeness that only exists in that space between two people. I missed feeling like myself. Not just someone managing pain. I was 46, not 86. I was not willing to hand this over to fibromyalgia too. But where I come from, you do not say that out loud. You carry it. ======== My doctor was no help. Seven years. Same office. Same man. He read the chart. Not me. Put me on Cymbalta before he ran a single test. When I brought up the intimacy, he shifted in his chair. Changed the subject. Told me to "manage expectations." I walked out of that office feeling smaller than when I walked in. ======== Keisha is my daughter. She is a nurse. She sees women like our mama every shift. Women who hurt. Women who keep going. Women whose chart gets read while they do not. One Sunday she raised it over a plate. "Mama, I keep noticing something at work. Women with fibro. Women who look like us. Almost none of them have had their magnesium checked properly." I told her my doctor had never once mentioned it. She said, "That is the whole problem." ======== She broke it down like this: Magnesium plays a central role in regulating the nervous system. And women in our population are depleted at rates most doctors never screen for. The standard serum test misses it. It picks up four percent of total body magnesium. The rest sits in muscles and bones. You can be critically low and the bloodwork reads normal. And the form decides everything. The kind stocked on most pharmacy shelves, magnesium oxide, absorbs at four percent. The right kind, bisglycinate, absorbs at ninety. Then she said something that stopped me cold. "Mama, remember that bottle you used to buy Grandma?" I remembered. The big white bottle from the pharmacy. Magnesium oxide. I bought it for her every month for years. She took it with water every night in that recliner. It did nothing. She passed in 2019. Still in pain. Still in the recliner. I had been buying her the wrong kind. For years. I could not speak for a minute. ======== Keisha told me about a practitioner named Dawn. Women in the community had been seeing her. She listened like nobody in a white coat ever had. Dawn said something I have not been able to put down since: "Your body is not failing. It is starving. But the form of what you take decides everything. What is on most shelves absorbs at four percent. The correct form absorbs at ninety." Our bodies are not broken. They have been running empty. And nobody tested for it. ======== Keisha found Celuvida. 400mg magnesium bisglycinate. No oxide. Ninety percent absorption. Third party tested. GMP certified. Two gummies before bed. Berry flavor. Reviews from women in my exact situation. Women who look like us. Women with fibro. Women who had exhausted every option. "At last." "I am furious nobody told me this six years ago." "We are not finished after all." I started that night. Did not mention it to my husband. Needed to know for myself first. ======== It showed up three days later. I was not expecting miracles. Keisha said be patient. But five weeks in, he walked up behind me at the counter and rested his hand on my lower back. And my body did not tense. ======== Here is what happened after that: ✅ No seizing hips. No burning skin. No stopping to say sorry. ✅ We were simply together. The way we used to be. Except now I understood exactly what it had taken to get here. ✅ Afterward: "Where did you go?" "Nowhere, baby. I was here the whole time." ✅ He held me and neither of us spoke for a long time. Neither of us needed to. ======== That was five months ago. We have been close more in the last five months than in the entire two years before. Not because the fibromyalgia disappeared. I still have rough days. Because I finally stopped being strong about the wrong thing. Stopped pushing through on empty and started restoring what was missing. Stopped working against my body and started giving it what it lost. ======== Here is what I understand now. Our intimacy was not gone. It was waiting for me to stop carrying everything alone and start letting something carry me. At 46, I believed I was finished. At 47, I know I was only just beginning again. ======== If you have fibromyalgia and your closeness has quietly vanished... If you have been reading advice about "learning to accept" less from your body... If you have been too strong to say out loud that you miss being touched... If you have given up trying because the trying itself became too painful... You are not finished. Your body is just running on empty. And nobody checked. ======== 👉 Start the 90 Day Protocol. ✅ 400mg Pure Bisglycinate. Zero Oxide. 🩺 Recommended by Dawn, Integrative Health Practitioner ✅ Third Party Tested. GMP Certified. ✅ Two Gummies Before Bed. ✅ 90 Day Money Back Guarantee. ======== P.S. — I am 47 now. Last Sunday we did not get out of bed until eleven. Not because we were sleeping. Because we were together. Keisha stopped by later with a plate. Looked at us and smiled. "There she is." Grandma would have loved this. At 46, I was sure that chapter of my life had closed. At 47, I know it was just reopening. Do not let another year pass without finding out.