I was told that something occurred before I was born, something that, when I first heard it, had no context and no explanation.

I never set out to seek this story out. It came to me, again and again, through people I met years apart, in different cities, from different spiritual traditions, from Tarot readers, Shamans, Santeros, Babalaos. Each of them, without knowing my medical history or my family dynamics, paused at some point and said some version of the same thing: something was placed on you while you were still in the womb.

At first, I dismissed it. Then I noticed the pattern.

I am one of six children my father had. I am also the only one whose body struggled early and often. My childhood unfolded in doctors’ offices and hospital rooms, with bronchiolitis, severe allergies, chronic ear infections, tonsillitis, and breathing issues. Long before I understood fear, my body learned endurance. Long before safety was explained to me, my nervous system learned vigilance.

Eventually, that vigilance became part of my daily life in a much more permanent way.

At the age of 9, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a condition that doesn’t come from lifestyle or poor choices, but from an immune system that turns on the body it’s meant to protect. A body that never fully gets to rest. A condition that requires constant monitoring, precision, and self-regulation just to stay alive.

I don’t claim to know exactly what causes autoimmune illness, whether it’s genetics, childhood viruses, stress, environment, early trauma, or something more ancestral that science hasn’t yet learned how to name. I only know that my body arrived alert. Already managing itself and working overtime.

During the spiritual readings, they would describe my brother’s mother as the one who had worked against my existence. There was always so much confusion around this knowledge, but as I learned about the dynamics of my father’s indiscretions, I felt pity. Then, I began to consider: What if the body carries more than biology?

What if memory affects biology? What happens to an unborn child when the mother’s experience during pregnancy is filled with instability and negativity from the people around her?

A few years ago, my brother’s youngest son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. When I heard, I felt something familiar move through me, not judgment, not satisfaction, not a sense of cosmic justice. I felt pity once again. Another child learning early what it means to live inside a body that requires constant attention to survive.

I don’t call this karma. I don’t call it punishment. And I don’t claim to understand the mechanism.

This is a pattern. And patterns, once seen, don’t ask to be weaponized; they ask to be understood.

Whatever happened before I was born, whether energetic, emotional, environmental, or something I may never fully understand, my body responded by becoming highly intelligent. Adaptive. Self-regulating in ways most people never have to learn.

Type 1 diabetes didn’t make me fragile.
It made me precise.
It made me aware.
It made me deeply attuned to signals others are never taught to notice.

This is not a story about blame. It’s a story about what the body does when it senses instability before the mind exists to explain it.

And it’s where everything else begins.