The Tin Man Chronicles: An EDS Expedition Down the Yellow Brick Road of WTF

When your body rusts shut, your joints scream for lube, and movement is just another twisted fairytale.

Once upon a not-so-freaking-magical time, a hypermobile human woke up in a body made of scrap metal and pain. Every joint creaked. Every ligament protested. Every tendon felt like it had been left out in the rain too long and was now stiff, soggy, or just plain missing.

They weren't broken—they were oxidized.

Welcome to the world of the Tin Man.Not the cute one from Oz. The real one.The one who needs WD-40 just to get out of bed.The one who has to lube up the knees, hips, ribs, spine, and jaw just to function for five godforsaken minutes.The one who rusts from resting too long but shatters if they move too fast.

Sound familiar?

An EDS Body is Basically a Leaky Tin Suit

Every morning starts with an inventory of what's not working.

Knee? Grinding.Shoulder? Clicking. SI joint? Unstable.Neck? Might actually decapitate you today if you sneeze too hard.Ribs? Floating into another time zone.

And so, the daily ritual begins. Heat pad here. KT tape there. Roll out the joints, crack what cracks, and pray to the gods of fascia that your body holds together long enough to brush your teeth.

This isn’t a workout routine. This is mechanical maintenance. You’re not training—you’re triaging. And if you skip even one step, the whole tin shell seizes up.

Lube, Oil, Repeat

Let’s be real: your joints don’t glide—they grind.You stretch to avoid freezing up. You stabilize so you don’t unravel. You move so you don’t rust. And still, some days it feels like your limbs are attached with paperclips and trauma.

Movement is no longer fitness. It’s daily damage control. It’s greasing the bolts of a body that never came with an owner’s manual.

And everyone has an opinion on how to fix it. But guess what?

They’ve never had to manually relocate their own hip in a grocery store parking lot. They’ve never felt their spine rebel mid-sneeze. They don’t get it—and they won’t.

Who the Hell Is Oz?

They told us to follow the Yellow Brick Road. Find the answers. Find the wizard. Follow the path of the experts and you’ll get your cure.

But here’s the plot twist no one saw coming: Oz isn’t real.

Oz is just a curtain. A well-branded lie behind a degree. A system that promises healing and delivers gaslighting.

We’re not skipping down a golden road.We’re limping through a gauntlet of misdiagnosis, medical PTSD, and insurance denials.

And the “wizard”?Sometimes it’s a rogue PT who gets it. Sometimes it’s another zebra you meet in a Facebook group at 2am.

Sometimes—it’s you.

You pull your own damn strings. You oil your own hinges. You figure out how to keep your joints from mutinying.

You are Oz. You always were.

The Moral of the Story?

You don’t need a brainwashed scarecrow or a cowardly lion. You don’t need to prove your worth to a wizard in a white coat. You need a damn can of oil, a crash mat, and maybe a good cry.

You are the Tin Man. You are the hero and the mechanic. And every time you stand up and face another day in this scrap heap of a body, you’re rewriting the ending to this story.

There’s no place like home?

No. There’s no place like a body that finally gets heard.

Want more metaphorical meltdowns and connective tissue confessions? Join the Zebra Underground where we keep it raw, real, and rusted but still moving. Subscribe here: zebras.substack.com

We’ll bring the oil.

Join us as a paid subscriber to the Connective Circle where this month we’re sharing content on safe and stable movement as medicine with expert webinars from expert PTs who know how to tap their heels together to send you home happy.