Embracing Our Suffering
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars -Kahlil Gibran
Suffering, pain, chaos, doubt, and fear intermingle throughout the human condition.
This darkness can toughen our souls. It might lead us to turn away, dissociate, as we defensively close off our hearts even further.
Yet, we can use this unfathomable pain to grow if we so choose, building ourselves a masterpiece of nicks + cracks that glistens in the sunlight. The reflections might remind another that they, too have a choice.
What if this suffering were here to help us?
What if we need to go through this mud in order to develop the richness of who we are, what matters, and what brings meaning to this very short human life?
How can we move through our suffering gracefully and let it transform us into even more resilient versions of ourselves? I’ve watched the chaos unwrap the most beautiful qualities and depth of character in so many individuals, so long as they are patient enough to let it. (Time is on your side, my friend.)
Like diamonds under pressure, we brush off the dust, shake the mud from our soggy boots, smiling in shock as we reveal something down right EXQUISITE. (Those are some nice boots! My goodness!)
On my path of overcoming and befriending chronic lyme, early-life va((ine injury, gastroparesis, panic attacks, mold toxicity, insomnia, infertility, autotoxemia, debilitating depression and everything that cocktail of symptoms entails, I was given a life-vest from all of the people patient enough to stick by my side that could see past where I currently existed.
On top of that network of support, visualization, breath work, and EFT tapping provided the tools to get my brain out of learned helplessness & shift my heart into a place where it could let a better future unfold DESPITE the doomful stories my brain was telling me.
If I could do it, so can you. The body always attempts to heal and organize in our favor.
Let us embrace our suffering and acknowledge that it is here to help us. Thanks goodness for our teachers.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. -Viktor Frank, Austrian neurologist & psychologist
