This week has been a tough one. It marked two dreaded anniversaries of moments that disrupted my life in major ways. One being the loss of my mother 26 years ago, when I was 18 years old. The other, the loss of my grandmother, affectionately known as “Ma”, 2 years ago, when I was 42.
One moment, a young boy. The other, a grown man. Regardless of the stage of life, the sting was much the same. Pain – a deep, searing pain that left me lost and frustrated. These marvelous women were both such profoundly positive forces in my life. And then, in the blink of an eye, they were gone.
Each year this week brings that painful, stinging sensation rushing back to me. Every mix of every emotion imaginable envelops me at various moments. While nowhere near as debilitating today as the days I lost them, it still strikes sharply. There was a time, not so long ago, where I tried to push the pain down deep, pretending as though it didn’t exist. I tried to convince myself that all I needed to do was shift my mindset towards joy and hide the pain.
But, this week I want to stretch and, maybe, challenge your thinking on the role pain plays in our lives. Over the course of time I’ve come to realize the fact the pain exists reveals the enormous forces each of these phenomenal women were in my life. If there had been no love there’d be no pain. The pain exists because love exists. As Garth Brooks famously sang “I could’ve missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” The two are inseparable.
Far too often society tells us to pretend to be ok when we’re not – to tuck the pain away. We hide in the cloak of toxic positivity to mask the pain for fear of looking weak. We’re hiding in plain sight. We become numb to the feeling of putting our fears, anxieties, and deepest concerns on the back-burner for fear of judgment and work to be ok on others’ timeline. But what we resist, persists. We must find ways that work for us to embrace the pain and resist avoidance strategies that have been hardwired in our psyche to neglect it.
On both days this week, I say quietly each morning in prayer and meditation, allowing myself the space to center specifically on the pain. Facing it and pulling it inward provided protection from the avoidance strategies laying in wait to hijack my well-being. This protection allowed the freedom to pour into my purpose as a husband and father throughout the week. Instead of being consumed by it, I consumed it to create fuel for my purpose.
But here’s the thing – this is your journey. Not a single person reading this will navigate their pan the same, nor have the same timeline. But I encourage you to feel it. Don’t run from it. As the poet, Rumi, said “the cure for pain is in the pain.” It is my solemn hope and prayer that your pain sparks purpose and that your purpose carries forward the legacies of those you’ve loved and lost.
The idea of embracing pain is an important one, and I’m always encouraged to read perspectives like yours because I wholeheartedly agree. As I tell my kids, we have to feel our feels; otherwise, we’ll bury ourselves while trying to bury our feelings. It’s a paradox for sure—you have to feel pain in order to live through it. Feeling pain is essential to living with grief, especially the kind of grief after losing important people. You can’t process loss without feeling pain. And you can’t continue living—truly living—after that loss until you learn how to co-exist with the grief that will stay with you forever.
Thank you for sharing your heart!
To piggyback on some of my experiences with life and death calls for silence 🤫 mediation over the life I shared with my love ones and friends. This impact at a very young age helped me to understand how important life is and the connection to loss which is death. The loss hurts deeply and to watch family and dear friends experience loss hurts greatly.
My life have been a living experience dealing with an illness that my son has had since birth. This illness is a threat to his wellbeing and his life over and over. Individuals ask me co- workers, family, friend, and strangers say you are strong dealing with you son and his illness. My response would be it has nothing to do with being strong. I engage with helping others and thanking God and praying for bring us through these times over and over. I pride myself on being there and making his life normal and getting things done. At the end of the day if I don’t ever get another blessing I am good. My son is now 43 years old and thriving feeling his self determination living his best life ever. Faith and Hope is everything in life. There is something in living that teaches us all something each and everyday that helps us to be the best we know how to be. We still pray for our family members that have passed on and enjoy the years we had with them. Feeling their love ❤️ always as well as the love ones we still have with us even in the difficult times.
Thank you all for your honesty and vulnerability. Pain comes from many KINDS of losses… death, divorce, infidelity. We experience many losses in our lifetime. As a wise older woman of 75, I have experienced a that pain. Thank you for reminding me that the feeling of loss and pain comes from LOVE ❤️