“Sometimes, we need to be hurt in order to grow. We must lose in order to gain. Sometimes, lessons are learned best through Pain.”

~ Unknown

Like it or not, pain is a fabulous teacher. Pain is our educational system, where school is always in session, and we are enrolled full time, 24/7. No one is excused from class.

We do not learn what we really need to know in life by laying enveloped in a lover’s arms after an evening of passionate bliss; wisdom is not forged in the high of hearing magnificent news—of securing that dream job, that new home, even waking up to a three-pound loss on the scale.

No. Lessons are born on the cold, hard bathroom floor after a night of regretful drinking, of epic arguments with the one we vowed to cherish all the days of our lives, of the unexpected phone call that implodes our world, of a disappointment so deadening that the only response is complete disintegration, where our heart melts like frost in a warm March rain.

Indeed, pain is the greatest of teachers. And we, its weary students.

Yet for all the soul-searing, fall-to-our-knees, can’t breathe moments, pain is a gift—the only real way to advance, to awaken, to gain wisdom, strength, and a fundamental understanding about what this life experience is really all about. About who we are and who we need to become.

This is what I know about befriending Pain:

Sitting with pain is the best way to minimize it.

The more we try to avoid Pain, the deeper we are hurt. We can try to numb it, run from it, deny it, or rage at it, but Pain will never leave, only knock harder to be heard.

After my mother died unexpectedly from a cancer that ravaged her within 30 days from first diagnosis, then my sister to pneumonia just three short months later, then my husband, diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer, I numbed the agony by staying endlessly busy, working longer than necessary, exercising vigorously, and drinking that second and third glass of wine in the evenings to lull me into that delicious state of semi-unconsciousness. “It really didn’t happen,” I lied to myself. “I can still send that internet joke to my sister, I can still call my mom and be welcomed with her soothing question,” “How are you?  My husband’s biopsy? …we’ll get a second opinion.”

Distraction, denial, deadening—they worked for a short while, allowing me to actually say ‘Ok’ when someone inquired about my state of well-being. But not for long.

Pain grew tired of my inattention, clutching me hard by the throat. “Feel me!” it roared. “Feel my searing grief to your essential core—fall down and don’t get up!”

And I didn’t get up. Not for a long time. I stayed pinned to the mat, melted by emotion, facing the grief dead on, driven mad by the stabbing, relentless agony. Not moving, not thinking. Just feeling…just feeling…the devastating depths of it all. A descent into madness.

Surrendering to the pain, riding the rise and fall of bucking emotions, suffering as you never imagined possible, facing what is, is the only way through it, the only way out, and the only way to awaken to the essence of self, and claim the lesson bearing your name. Pain provides wisdom gleaned no other way: to cherish the time spent now with loved ones, to feel gratitude for the breath in our body, to awaken to the beauty of what “is”—for time, for health, for love, for all life moments which will never come again.

Stay present with the gift of Pain, and the lesson, a new self, will be birthed.

Surrendering, enduring, reveals slivers of light in the dimness and a reason to tilt our eyes ever so slightly upward and outward.

While I will never welcome Pain into my life, I do know I must wear his designer jacket outfitted just for me, feel his breath against my collar, and play his endlessly upsetting game of ‘hide and seek’—going about my day, then confronting Master Pain where I least expect it: at the card counter, knowing I will never again send another “Mother’s Day” card, or in the cereal aisle, where he lurks behind the Fruit Loops, the childhood cereal my sister and I once shared every Saturday morning in chipped cornflower-blue bowls.

I now know I can never outrun, out-power, or outwit the teacher. Fighting is futile. Resistance only intensifies the madness.

I must surrender, take in the lesson, and trust the process, knowing that at times, on my knees is the most powerful place I need to be.

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Editorial Assistant: Kristin Monk/Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photos: elephant archives