Endometriosis Validation

Why does endometriosis validation seem so rare, even when your pain is screaming inside your body? How many times have you needed endometriosis validation and instead felt brushed off, doubted, or told to push through it?

You feel invalidated because endometriosis is invisible, complex, and still badly misunderstood. Your pain doesn’t “look” dramatic on the outside, so people assume it can’t be that bad. They are wrong. Your pain is real, and you deserve to be believed.

I’ve watched my wife go through this again and again, and it still hurts me every time someone minimises what she lives with every single day. The world sees a “functioning” woman; I see the way she curls up after a flare, the way she prepares herself to be dismissed, the way she apologises for having needs.

You might have started to question yourself, wondering if you’re exaggerating, if maybe you’re weak, if you should just “cope better” like people seem to expect. That quiet self-doubt is what this lack of validation does. It doesn’t just hurt your body, it chips away at your sense of self, at your trust in your own reality.

If all of this touches something in you and you need deeper validation, I’ve put my heart into a completely FREE 130+ pages eBook: “You Did Nothing To Deserve This” – filled with 20 chapters of gentle validation for women with endo, written by a husband who’s seen it up close.

It’s my way of telling you, in much more detail, that your pain, your complex response to treatment, and your emotions around all of it are real, understandable, and never your fault.

It’s not a medical guide. It’s a human one. Here’s what’s inside:

1. This Was Never Your Fault
2. The Girl You Used To Be
3. When Your Own Body Feels Like an Enemy
4. The Invisible Battles Nobody Sees
5. Am I Just Lazy? – The Lie You Have Been Taught
6. Gaslighting, Dismissal, and the Trauma of Not Being Believed
7. Guilt: The Weight You Were Never Meant to Carry
8. Love in the Middle of Pain
9. Intimacy When Your Body Hurts
10. The Loneliness of Being the Strong One
11. You Are Allowed To Take Up Space
12. Tiny, Gentle Hopes (Not Toxic Positivity)
13. If You Could Hear My Voice Every Flare Day
14. You Deserve Partners, Not Witnesses
15. When You Wish He Understood
16. Motherhood, Fertility and the Grief Nobody Sees
17. When Anger Is the Only Honest Feeling
18. Learning to Trust Your Body Again
19. Building a Life That Fits Your Reality
20. You Did Nothing To Deserve This

You Did NOTHING To Deserve This!

Endometriosis Validation for Women with Endo

Why Endometriosis Validation Needs to Start at Home?

When I first started to understand what my wife was living with, I thought love alone would somehow fix the loneliness she felt. Very quickly, I learned that love isn’t enough if she keeps stepping into a world that questions her pain at every turn.

Home had to become the one place where she didn’t have to prove anything, justify anything, or perform strength just to be taken seriously. That began with me listening differently, not just to the words she used, but to the way her shoulders dropped when a flare was coming, the way her voice went quiet when she tried to push through it.

I realised that my job wasn’t to cheerlead her into pretending she was fine, but to say, calmly and consistently, “I believe you, even when nobody else does.” This is what endometriosis validation looks like in real life: not grand speeches, but small, repeated moments of choosing to trust her experience over other people’s ignorance.

Sometimes that means cancelling plans without making her feel guilty, or telling family members that no, she’s not “flaky”, she’s in agony and resting is not a choice but a survival strategy. Sometimes it means sitting on the bathroom floor with her at 3 a.m., not offering solutions, just letting her know she doesn’t have to suffer in silence.

Living with chronic illness has changed everything about the way we organise our days, our work, even our dreams, and I’ve had to accept that this isn’t a phase we can simply power through. But inside that acceptance, there’s also a strange kind of freedom, because once you stop fighting her reality, you can start building a life that fits it.

For us, that has meant shifting toward working from home, reshaping our home into a softer, safer space, and quietly deciding that her body will never again have to fight for the right to be heard inside our four walls.

How Can Endometriosis Validation Start to Heal the Damage?

For a long time, my wife thought she was the problem. Not the disease. Not the system that missed her diagnosis for years. Not the people who told her it was “just bad periods.”

When you’re constantly dismissed, you start to internalise that message. You begin to wonder if you are too dramatic, too emotional, too much. Your body is screaming, but the world answers with a shrug, and that gap between what you feel and what you’re told becomes its own kind of wound.

Real healing doesn’t start with medication or surgery alone. It begins when someone finally says, “What you’re feeling makes sense.” When a doctor doesn’t rush you, when a partner looks you in the eyes and says, “I believe you,” something inside your nervous system loosens, even if the pain itself is still there.

The first time my wife said, “You’re the only one who really gets it,” I felt both honoured and heartbroken. Honoured, because I knew my listening mattered. Heartbroken, because it meant so many others had failed her long before I ever showed up with heat pads and late-night cups of tea.

This is why endometriosis validation is not some soft, fluffy concept.

It’s a form of emotional first aid, a way of stopping the bleeding that happens when you are doubted again and again. It tells your brain, “You’re not crazy, you’re not weak, you’re not imagining this,” and that message can be the difference between coping and collapsing.

When women are believed, they advocate differently. They walk into appointments with more calm, more clarity, more strength, because they know at least one person stands solidly in their corner. They feel safer asking for adjustments at work, saying no to social events, or choosing rest without drowning in guilt.

As partners, we can’t fix the disease, but we can stop adding to the harm. We can stop minimising flare-ups, stop comparing pain, and stop pushing toxic positivity when what she really needs is a witness. We can create a life where her body is not treated as an inconvenience, but as something worth protecting, even if that means changing the way we live, work, and plan our future.

And in that new kind of life, validation becomes part of the daily routine, not a big speech, but a steady, quiet “I see you” woven into the way we talk, the way we schedule, the way we love.

Next, I want to break this down into smaller pieces and look at the different layers of feeling believed, from the medical side to the home, so you can see where your own validation has been missing and where it can gently begin.

Being Believed at Home First

When my wife tells me, “Today is a bad pain day,” I treat that sentence like a fact, not a debate. That is where healing quietly begins. Endometriosis has already forced her to argue with doctors, employers, and even friends who meant well but didn’t understand how brutal this pain can be. She cannot also fight for belief at home.

So I try to show her, in small daily ways, that she never has to convince me. If she cancels plans, I back her up instead of making her feel guilty. If she says, “I just can’t today,” I do not ask her to prove it; I ask, “What would help?”

Over time, this kind of endometriosis validation starts to soften that constant readiness to defend herself. Her shoulders drop a little sooner. She apologises less for needing rest. She begins to feel like home is not another exam to pass, but the one place where her body’s truth is enough.

Undoing the Harm of Medical Gaslighting

The hardest stories my wife tells are not always about the physical pain, but about the appointments where she walked in hopeful and left humiliated. Being told “it is just stress” or “some women just have lower pain tolerance” cuts deeper than most people realise. It teaches you that your suffering is inconvenient, that you should shrink it down to make professionals more comfortable.

I cannot rewrite her medical history, but I can stand beside her while we slowly reclaim her reality. That might look like helping her prepare notes before an appointment, reminding her she is not “overreacting” when she asks follow-up questions, or simply saying, “You were not treated fairly today, and it is okay to feel angry about that.”

When someone you love mirrors back the truth you feel in your bones, it starts to stitch together the parts of you that were torn by disbelief. Bit by bit, the story shifts from “maybe I am crazy” to “I was badly let down, and I still deserve proper care.”

Relearning to Trust Your Own Body

After years of not being believed, many women begin to doubt their own signals. My wife used to say things like, “Maybe it is not that bad, maybe I am just weak,” even when I could see the pain written all over her face. That self-doubt is a quiet side effect of living with an illness that is constantly minimised. You stop trusting your own body because everyone else has treated it like an unreliable narrator.

One of the most powerful forms of validation I have seen is when she starts naming her pain without apology. When she says, “This is not just a period, this is a flare,” and nobody argues, something shifts. I answer with, “Okay, then we adapt today,” instead of “Are you sure?”

Slowly, she begins to trust that her body is telling the truth, even when others have not. That trust matters. It helps her notice patterns, advocate for better treatment, and protect her energy before she crashes. It also reminds her that she is not weak for hurting; she is strong for surviving what most people will never fully understand.

Calming a Nervous System on High Alert

Living with chronic pain feels a bit like having the fire alarm stuck on. Your nervous system is constantly scanning for the next wave, the next dismissal, the next “you are exaggerating.” My wife does not just brace for the cramps; she braces for the reactions to them. That double stress wears down even the strongest person.

Endometriosis validation gently lowers that alarm. When she knows she will be believed, she does not have to waste energy rehearsing explanations in her head. She does not lie there thinking, “How do I justify this?” but instead, “How do I care for myself through this?”

A calm, honest response from me, like “Your pain makes sense, let us adjust our day,” signals to her body that she is not about to be attacked or judged. It does not erase the pain, but it removes a layer of fear wrapped around it. Over time, this can be the difference between a life lived in constant defence mode and a life where, even in pain, she can exhale.

Turning Home Into a Soft Place to Land

For many women, home is where they push the hardest to appear “fine” because they feel guilty for how much their illness has already changed everything. I have watched my wife apologise for lying on the sofa, apologise for not cooking, apologise for existing in pain. It broke my heart, because the person I love most was treating herself like a burden in her own house.

So we started changing the script. We rearranged our home office so she could rest between tasks without feeling like she was “slacking.” We added softer lighting, blankets and small comforts so flare days felt less like failure and more like allowed recovery. I began saying things like, “You are not lazy, you are injured,” and backing that up by taking over chores without sighs or martyrdom.

Slowly, the atmosphere shifted. Our home stopped being the place where she had to catch up with everyone else’s expectations and became the one place where her body set the pace. That is what validation looks like in bricks and furniture and daily routine.

Letting Go of Guilt Around Rest

One of the cruellest lies endometriosis whispers, especially when society repeats it, is that resting makes you weak or selfish. My wife used to push through days that would flatten most people, then cry from exhaustion and shame when her body finally collapsed. She felt guilty for every nap, every cancelled plan, every task left undone. It was like her worth was measured only in productivity, never in survival.

Validation challenges that lie. When I tell her, “You are allowed to rest before you break,” I am not being kind; I am being accurate. Her body is doing heavy work behind the scenes, fighting inflammation, coping with chronic pain, and handling the emotional weight of it all.

Of course, she needs more downtime. When we treat rest as responsible management rather than failure, the guilt slowly loosens. She starts to choose pacing over crashing, gentle pauses over dramatic shutdowns. And in those moments, I see something beautiful: a woman who is no longer apologising for the care her body needs, but claiming it as a normal, worthy part of her life.

How Validation Shapes the Life We Build Together?

At some point I realised that believing my wife was only the starting point; the real test was how our whole life reflected that belief. If I said I understood her pain but kept expecting her to live like someone who is healthy, my words meant nothing.

So I began to look at our days differently. I asked myself, if a doctor fully accepted her pain levels and limitations, what would they tell her to change, and why was I expecting anything less at home? That question became a quiet guide for how we organised work, rest, and even our dreams.

This is where endometriosis validation turns into practical choices. She chose remote work so she does not have to commute in agony. Setting up a home office where she can lie down between tasks instead of forcing herself to sit at a desk while her body is screaming. Redefining what a “productive” day looks like so it includes surviving a flare, not just ticking off a to-do list.

I want you to know that you deserve that same level of care in your own life. If you were my sister, my best friend, I would not tell you to push harder; I would ask how we can redesign things so your body has half a chance to breathe. You are not high maintenance for needing adjustments; you are living with a condition that demands respect.

When we finally started honouring my wife’s limits instead of resenting them, something softened between us. There was less secret pressure, less silent disappointment, more honesty about what she could and could not do. Our plans became more flexible, our home more gentle, and our future more about what was possible with her body, not in spite of it.

How Endometriosis Validation Helps Us Redesign Everyday Life?

When I look back at how our life used to run, I can see how much of it was built for a healthy body, not the one my wife actually lives in now. We woke to alarms that ignored her night of pain, rushed through mornings, and treated her flares like an interruption instead of the central reality they are.

Learning to slow down started with simple, uncomfortable honesty: asking her what a survivable day really looks like, not what she thinks others expect. Sometimes that means starting later, sometimes it means doing just one meaningful thing instead of ten, and sometimes it means admitting that today is about nothing but breathing through the waves.

It is not laziness or giving up; it is finally aligning our schedule with her body instead of constantly dragging her body behind the schedule.

Work had to change too, which is why I fought so hard to build our online life and home office, so she could earn and create without fluorescent lights, rigid hours, and painful commutes.

There is a different kind of dignity in knowing she can close the laptop, lie down with a heat pack, and still be allowed to call that a valid working day. Designing our space around her needs has turned the house from a battlefield of expectations into something closer to a sanctuary where she is not punished for being ill.

This is what endometriosis validation looks like in our world now: not just saying the right things, but building a life that stops arguing with her body. You deserve that same gentle redesign, a life that bends toward your reality instead of demanding that you constantly betray yourself just to keep up.

Rewriting Mornings Around Her Body

For years, our mornings were ruled by alarms and obligations, not by how much pain she woke up with. I watched her drag herself out of bed after nights of stabbing pelvic pain, pretending she was fine because that is what the world expected. Now we start by asking one simple question: “What does your body need this morning?”

Some days it is a slow start, soft clothes, and quiet. Other days, she feels strong enough to move more, to stretch, to work earlier.

Instead of judging the day as “good” or “bad” based on productivity, we look at how kindly we responded to her symptoms. Coffee might wait while she lies with a hot water bottle.

Emails can be answered later, so panic attacks are less likely to creep in. Our mornings are no longer about beating the clock. They are about meeting her where she is, and that small shift carries a huge message: that her body is not an enemy to overcome but a partner we listen to.

Designing a Home Office That Does Not Punish Pain

When we first started working from home, I realised our setup still copied the old office world. Rigid chair, standard desk, long stretches of sitting that left her doubled over. It made no sense to escape the traditional job and then recreate the same torture at home. So we began to design a space around her illness instead of around some magazine idea of productivity.

The desk became adjustable, the chair softer, and the sofa part of the workspace, not a symbol of defeat.

We added small things that make a big difference, like a basket with heating pads, medication, and a cosy blanket within arm’s reach, so she does not have to “earn” comfort. Lighting grew warmer and kinder, so migraines from fluorescent bulbs were less likely.

A laptop stand lets her work from bed on the worst days without destroying her posture. This is not about being spoiled. It is about refusing to let pain be punished by the environment. Our home office now says, “Your body is welcome here,” and that changes how she feels about every task.

Planning Social Life With Built-In Exit Plans

Before we accepted how serious her symptoms were, we treated social plans like fixed promises. Say yes, show up, stay the whole time, smile through it. I remember watching her sit at dinners while cramps and nausea twisted through her, too scared to be the one who ruined the evening.

Now we plan everything with flexibility as the default, not as an awkward afterthought. When we agree to meet friends, we are honest that we might need to leave early or switch to a quieter setting.

Sometimes we choose places close to home, so getting back quickly is easy if a flare hits. Sometimes we invite people to us, where she can lie down if she needs to, without feeling like a spectacle.

I let her know from the start that I care more about her comfort than finishing a night out. When your partner backs your decision to leave, the shame about listening to your body softens. Social life becomes less of a performance and more of a space where you are allowed to exist as you really are.

Letting Work and Money Follow Health, Not the Other Way Around

Money fear is very real when chronic illness changes everything. There was a time I was scared that if we did not keep chasing the traditional path, we would lose safety. But the truth is, she was already losing herself trying to keep up with a world that did not fit her body.

That is why I poured my energy into blogging, building online income streams, and turning our skills into something we could do from home. It was not about chasing luxury. It was about buying her breathing room.

When income comes from writing, creating, and sharing our story instead of sitting in an office chair for eight painful hours, her body pays a smaller price each day. We can adjust workloads around her flare schedule, not the opposite. Of course, it is still stressful at times, and I carry a lot of responsibility, but it feels different when every pound we earn supports a life that does not crush her.

Work now follows her health. That is the opposite of how the world taught us to live, and yet it is the only way this makes sense.

Making Rest a Normal Part of the Schedule

For a long time, rest in our house arrived only after she had fully crashed, usually in tears, exhausted and angry with herself. It felt like a failure, like proof she could not keep pace with “normal” people. But living with chronic illness means your body uses energy differently, and pretending otherwise just adds more harm. So we started to build rest into the day on purpose, not as an emergency stop but as a normal, scheduled thing.

She now has planned pauses, small windows where she can lie down, stretch, or simply breathe without screens or demands. I treat those breaks as non-negotiable, just like a meeting or a deadline, because they keep her from sliding into full burnout. When she sees me protecting those times, she slowly believes that her needs are not a nuisance but a priority.

Rest is not something she has to apologise for any more. It is one of the ways we show respect to a body that has been through surgery, trauma, and constant pain, yet still fights to carry her through each day.

When Validation Becomes the Way We Love

If we ever sit across from each other with a cup of tea between us, I want you to know this: I do not see you as “too much” because of your pain. I see you as someone who has carried far more than most people ever will, often in silence, and is still here, still trying, still loving the people around you. That alone deserves more respect than the world has given you so far.

As a husband, I had to unlearn a lot of what I was taught about strength. I grew up thinking love meant fixing things, stretching yourself thin, and staying quiet about your own fears.

But loving a woman with a chronic illness has taught me that real strength looks different. It looks like slowing down when it would be easier to rush. It looks like sitting in the dark with her during a panic attack instead of throwing empty reassurances from the doorway. It looks like building a home office and a new kind of life, so she is not forced to choose between survival and a paycheck.

I am still learning every day, and I will make mistakes, but one thing will not change: I refuse to treat her symptoms as an inconvenience or a drama. I will not downgrade her experience to make others comfortable. And I want you to know you deserve that same standard.

You deserve people in your life who take your words seriously the first time, who adapt plans without resentment, and who see your worth beyond how much you can do in a day.

If any part of this resonates with you, please know you are not asking for too much when you ask to be believed. You are asking for something basic that every human being deserves, and you do not have to apologise for needing it. My hope is that as you read this, you start to feel a little less alone, a little more certain that your reality is valid, and a little more willing to imagine a life that bends gently toward your body instead of breaking you to fit everyone else’s expectations.

Letting Her Story Be the Center

When my wife tells me her story, I try to treat it like a book with her on the cover, not a chapter squeezed into everyone else’s schedule. For so long, she had to shorten her truth to fit ten-minute appointments or quick conversations in hallways, and that trained her to make herself smaller.

At home, I want the opposite. I want her to be able to ramble, contradict herself, circle back, and still feel like every word is welcome. This is my private version of endometriosis validation.

There are evenings when we sit on the sofa,and she shares memories of surgeries, missed diagnoses, or friendships that quietly faded when her illness became inconvenient. I do not rush to add my perspective; I let the silence stretch so she knows I am not going anywhere. That kind of listening is slow and sometimes heavy, but it tells her she is not an interruption in my life. She is the main story, and everything else can wait while she speaks.

Speaking Up for Her When She Is Too Tired

There are days when pain, fatigue, and anxiety weave together until even forming sentences feels like lifting weights. On those days, asking my wife to advocate loudly for herself is not love; it is cruelty dressed up as empowerment. So sometimes, loving her means gently taking the speaking role when she nods in my direction with that tired look in her eyes.

I become the one who explains to family that we need to cancel, or to a waiter that she needs to sit somewhere quieter, or to a doctor that no, this is not “just” period pain.

I do not speak over her, I speak beside her, checking in with her eyes and her small gestures so I do not hijack her agency. My goal is not to be her saviour but her microphone on the days her voice has been shredded by years of not being believed. Knowing that I will step in without resentment gives her permission to rest, not just physically, but emotionally, from constantly justifying her own suffering.

Keeping Intimacy Safe, Even When Touch Hurts

Nobody talks enough about how much pressure chronic illness puts on intimacy. When pain flares in her pelvis, even the gentlest touch can feel like a threat instead of comfort.

At the start, I took that personally, like a rejection of me, and that only added shame to her pain. I had to learn to separate my ego from her nervous system. Loving her meant saying, “Your no is safe with me,” and meaning it every single time, even when my own needs felt loud.

We found new ways to be close that did not demand a pain-free body: lying side by side listening to music, holding hands, sharing quiet conversations in the dark, kissing her forehead while she curled up with a heat pack. When she saw that I would not sulk or withdraw affection because sex was off the table, her whole body softened a little.

Intimacy stopped being a test she could fail and became a place where her limits were honoured, not negotiated away, and that has been one of the purest forms of endometriosis validation in our relationship.

Letting Her Dream Again Without Deadlines

Illness stole so many dreams from my wife that she stopped daring to make new ones, just to protect herself from more disappointment. Watching that light dim was one of the hardest parts for me. Love, for us, has meant carefully inviting dreams back in, but without turning them into pressure or proof of progress.

We talk about places she might one day visit, work she could do on her better days, and small creative projects that make her eyes shine for a moment.

When we dream like that, I do not secretly think, “So when will you be well enough?” I hold the possibilities loosely, knowing some plans may stay as gentle maybes, and that is still valid.

Chronic illness already weighs on her with heavy expectations from doctors, family, and society. She does not need mine added on top. So I remind her that a few pages written, a short walk in the sun, even simply allowing herself to imagine Italy again, are all real wins. Our dreams now move at the pace of her body, and that softer rhythm keeps hope alive without breaking her heart.

Building Routines That Protect Her Mental Health

Endometriosis did not only attack my wife’s body; it also wrapped itself around her mind with depression, anxiety, OCD spirals, and nights where intrusive thoughts scared both of us. Loving her means treating mental health as part of the illness, not a side note once the physical pain is handled. We build routines around this reality, not around some fantasy version of her who never struggles. Mornings might include a check-in about her mood, evenings a small ritual that grounds her before sleep.

On harder days, we deliberately lower the bar for what counts as success so she is not crushed by impossible standards. Making a phone call, taking a shower, or sending one honest message to a friend might be the win of the day, and that is enough. When I respond to her spirals with steadiness instead of frustration, she feels less ashamed of needing support.

Over time, these quiet, repeated responses tell her she is not broken for needing help; she is human in a life that would shake anyone’s mind.

Refusing to Compare Her to Healthier Versions of Herself

There is a grief that comes with loving someone whose body has changed so much from the years before illness took over.

I remember how she danced, travelled lightly, said yes to almost everything. But if I constantly hold up that past version of her as the standard, I turn our love into a quiet competition she can never win. So I make a conscious choice not to say, “You used to…” as a weapon, even when I miss the way things were. Instead, I honour who she is now, in this body, with these scars.

We look at old photos not as evidence of what has been lost, but as proof of how much she has already survived. I remind her that the strength it takes to endure daily pain is as real as the strength it took to dance for hours on stage. When she sees that I am not secretly waiting for her to “go back” to the woman she was, she feels safer being the woman she is today. That safety is a deep form of love, one that does not demand she rewind her life to deserve affection.

Letting My Own Vulnerability Sit Beside Hers

For a long time, I thought my job was to be unshakable, the solid rock that never cracks. But pretending I was never scared, never tired, never overwhelmed only created distance between us. She felt guilty watching me carry everything in silence, and I felt alone inside my own armour.

Love became more tender when I started sharing my feelings without making them her responsibility to fix. I could say, “Today I feel afraid of the future too,” while still holding her hand firmly.

Letting my vulnerability sit beside hers does not mean collapsing on her shoulders when she is already drowning. It means being honest enough that she knows we are facing this as a team, not as a patient and a perfect carer. When she sees that I can admit fear and still stay, still plan, still show up for the next flare, it strengthens trust between us.

Our honesty becomes another kind of safety net, one where neither of us has to pretend to be less human than we really are.

Choosing Love That Stays, Even When It Is Quiet

Illness has a way of stripping relationships down to their foundations. The grand gestures, the glamorous trips, the big nights out all become rarer when pain and fatigue dictate the schedule.

What remains are the quiet, unphotogenic acts of love: making her tea at 2 a.m., rubbing her back during a panic attack, sending emails so she does not have to explain again why she cannot make it. From the outside, it might look ordinary. From the inside, it is everything.

I have learned that the most powerful declarations of love in our lives rarely come as big speeches. They arrive as consistency, as showing up on the hundredth difficult day as faithfully as on the first. Staying when you are tired of waiting lists. Staying when the future feels uncertain, and the present is heavy.

That decision to remain, to keep choosing her in all her reality, is the quiet heartbeat of our relationship, and it is where she finds the deepest sense of being truly loved.

Final Word on Endometriosis Validation

If you are reading this with tired eyes and an aching body, I want you to know something simple before anything else. You are not difficult, dramatic, or weak for needing to be believed. You are a human being who has carried pain for far too long in a world that often insists on looking the other way. You deserve gentleness, you deserve respect, and you deserve safety inside your own life.

What I have learned walking beside my wife is that being believed is not a small extra on top of treatment; it is a pillar that holds everything else together. When someone finally says, with their words and with their actions, that your experience makes sense, your whole system starts to breathe differently.

It does not erase the disease, but it eases that constant inner war where you are forced to choose between your body and other people’s comfort. That is what endometriosis validation really offers: a chance to live in alignment with your truth instead of constantly arguing with it.

For us, that truth has reshaped everything, from how we wake up in the morning to how we earn our living. It is why I built a life around working from home, so she does not have to drag herself through commutes and harsh office lights while pretending she is fine.

It is why our home office has blankets and heat pads within reach, why our schedule bends instead of breaking, and why Italy and Poland remain gentle possibilities instead of impossible dreams. Our life is not perfect, but it finally fits the body she actually lives in.

I have seen how lack of validation can feed depression, anxiety, panic, and that terrible sense that maybe the world would be better off without you. I have also seen the way a single steady voice saying, “I believe you, and I am not going anywhere,” can pull someone back from the edge.

My wife’s darkest nights taught me that love is not a slogan, it is a series of quiet decisions to stay, to listen, to keep building something softer even when the outside world feels brutally hard.

If nobody has told you this yet, let me be the one. Your pain is real. Your exhaustion is real. Your fears about the future are real. You are not a burden for needing help, for cancelling plans, for crying on the kitchen floor when it all feels too much. Anyone who makes you feel ashamed for surviving something this heavy does not understand the strength it takes just to stand up each day.

My hope is that this piece has not only described your reality, but held up a mirror that feels kind rather than critical. I want you to walk away with a little more courage to ask for what you need, whether that is a softer chair, a later start, a partner who listens, or a doctor who finally takes you seriously.

You are allowed to design a life that honours your body instead of breaking it in the name of being “normal.”

From one husband who refuses to look away from the woman he loves, to you who may feel unseen where you are, I promise this: you are not alone, and you are not asking for too much. You are asking for the minimum every person deserves: to be heard, to be believed, and to be treated as worth adjusting for.

Hold on to that. Let it guide your choices. And little by little, surround yourself with people and spaces that prove with their behaviour that your story matters. A life that fits your body is not a selfish dream. It is a fair one. You are worthy of building it, slowly, gently, on your own terms.

You are not crazy, you are not weak, and you are certainly not alone. Your story is valid, your body is telling the truth, and you deserve a future that finally listens.

In the end, this is what I want for you, a life where you no longer apologise for existing in pain, but feel deeply, quietly proud of how far you have come and how bravely you continue to stay.

Your pain is real. Your voice matters. You are worth believing. Your story does not end here.

You deserve a life that matches your reality, people who take your words seriously the first time, and days shaped around your body instead of everyone else’s expectations. Please do not shrink yourself to fit a world that refuses to see you. Let your truth reshape your world instead.

If this resonated with you, I would love to hear your story in the comments, and if you want to feel even more seen and understood, you can also check out the free eBook waiting for you.