In When the Body Says No, physician Gabor Maté reveals a hard truth: when we silence our emotions, our bodies eventually speak for us—through illness. Autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, even cancer often emerge in people who have spent years denying their own anger, grief, or needs.
For many women raised in strict religious or cultural systems, this is painfully familiar. Submission is praised as holy. Anger is condemned as sin. Speaking up for your needs is labeled selfish. You’re told to comply, to endure, to forgive endlessly. But the cost of obedience shows up in the body: headaches, stomach pain, exhaustion, depression.
That’s the hidden truth about submission—it doesn’t protect us. It makes us sick.
In my novel Wife Material: A Novel of Misbehavior and Freedom, the main character lives this reality. Elizabeth believes obedience will save her soul, but her health deteriorates the more she submits. Her body begins saying “no” long before her voice can.
Healing begins with listening. To the fatigue that follows another silenced argument. To the anxiety that spikes when you’re forced to comply. To the deep exhaustion of pretending.
Freedom, even when messy, is medicine.
Wife Material is about misbehavior as survival—about finding health and wholeness in the very act of saying no.
Because sometimes the bravest, holiest thing you can do is honor what your body already knows: submission is making you sick.
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