Pain Demands to be Felt
I remember what it felt like to lose my dad at 14. My parents were divorced, so my mom and stepdad took me to the hospice home to visit him on Father’s Day. He wasn’t much of a human at this point; he had been in hospice for three months, connected to machines to help him breathe. The cancer had been caught too late and had quickly done its damage, leaving my strong, tall, 53-year-old, healthy hero of a dad looking like a shriveled up, weak, and tiny 80-year-old man. Little did I know that us leaving to get lunch was my parents’ way of shielding me from the blow that was about to take place. The nurse had told them within the hour that my dad would no longer be alive. His death was a shock to me, even though I knew it was coming. This was the first moment I can recall where I learned how to stuff my emotions. I remember feeling debilitated, not sure how to act or what to do with my emotions, which felt out of control, on the two-hour drive home. I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to feel because no one had told me. My dad was an abusive husband, but a great father to me. He adored me and treated me like a princess. I didn’t know how to let anyone into my pain, because I was afraid the rest of my wouldn’t understand, as I was his only child. I remember my parents and siblings reaching out to check in on me, but how do you grieve with others when you’ve never been taught about grief and you’re afraid of being misunderstood for your intense pain? I went into survival mode, assuming somewhere along the way, I would have to take care of myself and thus was born the many coping mechanisms that would protect me from ever feeling the pain that was knocking at my door.
Pain. Let’s talk about it.
If you’ve been alive during 2020, you’ve probably experienced pain to some degree, just this year alone. Uncertainty, fear, and change have all been running rampant. But I want to talk about pain as an experience that has continually shown up in our lives time and time again. Loss, rejection, failure, and heartbreak are only some of the factors that produce pain. They blindside us and fill us with emotions so deep that we feel we might not survive. I am still guilty of resisting pain in my own life that demands my acknowledgment and attention. I can feel memories, thoughts, and feelings begin to rise up and I have gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing painful thoughts and pushing anything away that even slightly feels like it might hurt. However, in the past couple of years, I have realized the incredible benefits that come from actually processing and validating hurt, allowing it to work its way through me. The truth is, you can only stuff it for so long before it manifests in other areas of your life. Anxiety, depression, complacency, physical issues, and sickness are all side effects of undealt pain. You cannot get around it, you have to get in it in order to move through it.
Pain and grief demand to be felt.
I love that silly quote by Michael Scott from The Office, “Everywhere you go, there you are.” How true it is though. You and your pain are inescapable and inseparable. You can travel, numb, or busy yourself with distractions, but it only lengthens the healing process and detaches us from what we are actually experiencing. Pain will find ways to beg you to feel it — not because it’s evil, but because of what is on the other side. Your pain is not proof of weakness, it’s proof of love. You were designed to be affected by people, circumstances, and issues. This means you are alive and living with an open heart. This means you are human. Jesus was the ultimate model for feeling pain. He didn’t escape it; rather, He wept, He grieved, and He had self-compassion. He suffered and His pain was used to heal the entire world. When you think of your pain as unto something, it changes what it means to you. What if your pain leads you to healing? What if it heals someone else? What if your experience gives you empathy for your others?
Processing losing my dad came in layers. I wish it was as easy as having a cry session and then being able to move on, but that wasn’t the case. I had to stop judging myself for still having grief even 12 years after his death and give myself grace to be where I was at. At first, I thought I was only grieving the loss of an incredibly important person in my life; I thought, “I did it! I made it through the pain and it didn’t kill me!” It was a surprise to me when more pain would be revealed with new experiences. I realized the other layers came in having to process not just losing a parent, but not having a dad for the last 12 years and giving this little girl inside of me compassion for having to parent herself in some ways. Then I had to grieve the experiences he wasn’t or wouldn’t be present for. You know the ones where you really want your dad? Graduations, big moves across the country, birthdays, breakups, a wedding, and babies. But the difference in where I am now and where I was, is that I have stopped expecting “to be over this by now”. I have allowed myself to cry, to let people in when I am hurting, to miss someone who has been gone for over 12 years and to give up the timeline of grief. The less I shove my emotions away, the more I can celebrate who he was with laughter and fond memories.
Pain is a “check engine light” for your soul, alerting you that something is off inside. When you ignore the wounds that need tending to, like any physical wound or injury, the healing process lengthens, the wound gets infected, and eventually can lead to taking you out of the game altogether. Internal pain is like this — the more we ignore the issue, the harder it is to recover. It takes intentionality and courage to slow down and tend to the wounds that are desperately crying out for your attention. When you have physical pain, sometimes you actually have to stop moving in order to heal and other times you even have to ask for help. When you are willing to acknowledge your pain and process through it, that’s when you find healing for yourself and for others. You get to contribute your story to the world, grow in your compassion, and share Love with everyone you meet. Your story of overcoming can be the very thing someone else needs to hear. Our suffering isn’t a badge of honor, it’s the hope we hold onto in the midst of hurt that is our true victory. When we come to the end of ourselves and feel the pain that is required of us, it can be used to light up the world. Your story becomes hope and an answer to another’s question in the midst of their pain and suffering.
Be unafraid to feel the emotions that want to come up. Allow them to move through you — on the other side of grief and pain is healing.
