The Most Important Kind of Stroke Awareness Might Be Self-Awareness

6 days ago

5 min read

What two years of stroke recovery taught me about knowing my body, trusting my instincts, and the power of quiet.

There are countless medical awareness days. Each one comes with its own colour, ribbon, hashtag and carefully crafted list of warning signs. We teach people what to look for, what to prevent, when to act and, in the case of stroke, why every minute matters.

October 29th is World Stroke Day, and the messaging is no different.

Know the signs. Act FAST. Call 911. All of that matters.

But two years ago, on my first World Stroke Day as a stroke survivor, I wrote something that I still believe today:

The most critical awareness isn't always about the disease. It’s about self-awareness.

It's the ability to know your body so well that even the slightest deviation sends up a flare even when you can’t explain it. That level of awareness is impossible without intentional quiet.

BEFORE THE WORLD GETS LOUD

For years now, I've had a morning ritual. Before the world woke up and started demanding things from me, I would sit quietly for about 30 minutes. No talking. No scrolling. No television. No noise. Usually, just me, my coffee and the dark.

And I would check in:

How am I, really?
What feels normal today?
What feels different?
Is there tension somewhere?
Am I exhausted?
Is something not quite right?

It probably sounds a little dramatic, but it wasn't. It was simply how I had learned to pay attention. I didn't learn it because I was particularly enlightened. I learned it because I was an ultra-runner. Years of running long distances had taught me that my body was constantly communicating. I trained myself to understand my body like a living system of signals. Hunger. Hydration. Sleep. Breathing. Muscle fatigue. Recovery. Effort. Something as small as a change in my gait or a slightly elevated effort could tell me something important.

I became incredibly good at recognizing my own patterns. I could predict my own performance based on the smallest inputs. My body was a machine and I had the instruction manual memorized.

I knew what normal felt like, and I knew when something wasn't.

That knowledge became unexpectedly important on July 21, 2024.

I DIDN'T HAVE THE CLASSIC STROKE SYMPTOMS

When my stroke happened, I didn't have the dramatic symptoms most of us are taught to recognize. No obvious facial drooping. No slurred speech. No dramatic collapse. Nothing that looked like the stereotypical stroke.

But something was wrong. Very wrong.

I couldn't explain exactly what was happening. I couldn't give it a name. I didn't have a checklist in my head that said, Ah yes, this is definitely a hemorrhagic stroke in the basal ganglia. I simply knew that whatever was happening didn't belong to my normal.

And so I said the only thing I could: "I'm not okay." I said it calmly.

That sentence - and the way people knew I didn’t say it lightly - created just enough alarm for them to act. That is awareness. Not panic. Not textbook symptoms. Trustworthy self-recognition; knowing yourself well enough to recognize a deviation from your baseline.

TWO YEARS LATER, I UNDERSTAND THIS DIFFERENTLY

Back then, I thought knowing my body meant knowing how it performed:

How far I could run.
How hard I could push.
How quickly I could recover.
How much discomfort I could tolerate.

I had spent years learning how to listen to my body so I could ask more of it.

Stroke changed that completely.

Now, listening to my body is less about performance and more about preservation. It's about knowing when I've done enough. Knowing when neurological fatigue is creeping in. Recognizing sensory overload before it becomes completely overwhelming.

Understanding that a day that looks perfectly manageable on paper might actually require more from my brain than I have available. Learning that capacity isn't fixed.

And perhaps most frustratingly, learning that the instruction manual has changed.

The old one was pretty detailed. The new one feels like it came from IKEA…except the diagrams are missing!

Symptoms shift. Sensations change. Capacity fluctuates. Something that was manageable yesterday might be completely different today. I'm still learning the language of this body.

WE'RE LOSING OUR ABILITY TO HEAR OURSELVES

We spend a lot of time talking about recognizing stroke symptoms. But how good are we at recognizing ourselves?

Our world is incredibly loud: Notifications. Meetings. Phones. Podcasts. News. Social media. Work. Family. Traffic. Screens. Noise. Even our downtime often isn't quiet. We've become so accustomed to constant stimulation that silence can feel uncomfortable. So we fill it.

Somewhere in all that noise, we've become remarkably good at ignoring ourselves.

We push through exhaustion. We normalize pain. We explain away changes. We tell ourselves we'll deal with it later. We wait until something is screaming before we pay attention.

But what if we knew our baseline well enough to notice the whisper?

What if we didn't need something to become unbearable before we believed it was real?

QUIET ISN'T SELFISH

That 30 minutes of quiet every morning has become something different for me over the years. It isn't a productivity hack. It isn't mindfulness homework. And it certainly isn't about becoming some perfectly balanced human who never gets overwhelmed.

It's simply a check-in. A chance to hear myself before everything else gets a chance to speak.

Self-awareness isn't the same thing as anxiety. It's not obsessing over every sensation or assuming every unusual feeling is an emergency. It's knowing your baseline. It's understanding your patterns. It's recognizing when something is different.

Perhaps most importantly, trusting yourself enough to say something when it is.

AWARENESS BEGINS BEFORE THE EMERGENCY

Stroke awareness absolutely matters. Knowing the warning signs matters. Knowing when to call 911 matters.

But there is another kind of awareness that deserves a place in the conversation: Knowing yourself.

Know your baseline.
Pay attention to changes.
Protect some quiet.
Listen before your body has to scream.

If something doesn't feel right, even if you can't explain why, don't dismiss it simply because you don't have the perfect words. You don't need a diagnosis to know something is wrong. You don't need to prove it. You can simply say: "Something doesn't feel right."

Sometimes, that is enough to start the right conversation. And sometimes, it might save your life.