“I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!”
J.K. Rowling
“You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
So, Lovelies, let’s talk about pain.
Physical pain. Emotional pain. Psychic pain.
I’m not talking minor annoyances. I’m talking about deep pain and trauma and grief and loss – pain that feels like it will rip you apart, that might stop your heart, pain where it seems impossible you can ever breathe freely again, live again, be who you were BEFORE that pain. (Know that even without pain, every day you wake up different to the person you were yesterday. Change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same, including you.)
I have experienced these kinds of pain. This is what I have learned.
Meet it head on. Breathe into it. Face it. Let it roll over you.
It’s like being in a gigantic thrashing surf. If you turn your back it will smash into you and tumble you over and over until you lose yourself.
So, face it. Own it. Be with it. Attend to it.
I know, it’s terrifying. But don’t turn your back. When you turn your back and get lost in that tumbling white water you might not ever find your way back to shore.
Stay with the pain. Feel into it. Let it fill you completely until it is all you are.
Soon, you’ll find that you will stop holding your breath. You’ll find a way to be with the pain. It might take everything you have, and it might completely surround you but you will find yourself surviving the unsurvivable. You will continue to breathe. You will continue to exist in the midst of pain.
Over time, existing in the pain will create space. Just a tiny bit of space. Breathing room where you can expand yourself out just a little more.
You’ll find ways to cope. You’ll find a way to bear the pain. To co-exist.
The pain will teach you. It will teach you how to survive. It will show you who you are when the pain has burned everything else away. You’ll find a path forward. Pain can become a clarifying place, and a healing place – just as long as you keep facing it head on. Because if you keep facing it, your honesty will render it smaller. And smaller still. You’ll find a way to be with it.
Eventually you’ll find that the pain becomes small enough that you can hold it in your hand. Now you have a choice. You can make a place inside you, so you can carry it safely, and continue on in life, existing with that pain, managing it and at peace with it. Or you will see that you can put it down, and walk away. And its shape will leave you changed, but free.
Pain visits us all. It reveals us. It transforms us.
You may have no say in how the pain arrives, or in what form, but you do have power and choice in how you face it, and how it evolves or destroys you.
You’re stronger than you know. Courage, my friend.
All my love, Nicole xx
Thank you Jenny <3
Thanks Nic:)
So strange u post about that this wk.. have been wondering how I’m meant to live with the deep pain u described for the rest of my life. And I don’t feel like I am who I used to be either I miss my old excited for life self..
big hug n luv to you xxoo
Pain is good at times it helps us process stuff if that makes any sense
Thank you Nicole for this post. I hear you. I get what you are saying and I know it is true and realistic,and that is in fact the only way o get rid of this pain. The thing is, although I know that’s what I need to do, I am trying and not succeeding. Today, it’s been exactly 2 months since my friend passed and even though I am constantly tearful and choking like now as I was reading your post, I just can’t hfind the strength in me to allow myself to feel that pain as it is SO HUGE. It is so much bigger than I can describe. Because if I describe it, it will sound untrue. If I say I lost the ONLY person who truly loved me, I know many people will say but we al love you and I know they do, but it is not what I feel. I lost the only person who loved me the way I need to be loved, as imperfect as I am, with my depression, with my pain, with my past, with my mistakes. She is the one who loved ME, and not the person she wants to help me become or the person she thinks I should be. And now, i don’t want to live anymore. I just don’t see the point because where there is no love there is no life. I’m just expressing my feelings. It doesn’t mean I willdo anything, I’m just saying what I feel and why it is so hard to feel that pain. Thank you for this opportunity to let it out. Love.
Oh darling . Oh my dear . Please feel my arms around you from across the world . So much love to you Nikky