“The way toward freedom from a situation often lies in acceptance of the situation.”
—Rachel Naomi Remen
We can’t sow hope in frozen ground.
This lesson, like so many in life, kept showing up for me until I genuinely got it.
I don’t think I was actually taught to run from and resist pain at all costs. Nonetheless, I carried the run-and-resist habit from childhood well into adulthood. Avoidance seemed to be working moderately well, until my first husband left me and I became a single mom with two little boys. Unable to ignore the pain and shame of divorce and the trepidation of single parenthood, I searched for ways to bring meaning to the experience and hope back to my soul. Much to my surprise, many teachers and sages I came to admire advised embracing pain rather than avoiding it. Stoically enduring unavoidable suffering I could understand, but embracing pain? No way.
Finally, through hospice work and my private counseling practice—and of course the ever-present personal work—I came to accept that embracing pain leads to its transformation. Resisting pain not only doesn’t make it go away, it actually magnifies it. Believing in the wisdom of embracing pain doesn’t, as my spiritual mother Annabelle would say, “automagically” make it easy to do. We need to continually remind ourselves not to close down, clam up, and tough out pain alone, especially not emotional pain like depression and hopelessness.
The late Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh encouraged us to “recognize a painful feeling, smile at it, and bring it relief by embracing it tenderly like a mother.” Ironically, as I write this, I am filled with pain concerning one of my adult children. While lying sleepless and sad, I visualized angels surrounding my child and asked for my special angel to help me cradle my mother’s heart. In my mind’s eye, I imagined the angel tenderly holding my child, myself, and my heart as a warm light flowed softly around us all. Nothing dramatic happened, but I did fall asleep soon after.
Perhaps the simple act of opening up to my feelings and asking for help embracing them comforted me enough to quiet my mind and allow sleep to work its magic. In order to heal into inherent hopefulness, it’s so important that we become a loving mother to ourselves and learn to kiss our own owies with care and gentleness.
Thich Nhat Hanh expanded on the benefits of embracing pain by explaining, “Embrace your suffering, and let it reveal to you the way to peace.” This holy man’s prescription seemed especially helpful for my hospice patients. Many whose hope had been snuffed out by fear—fear that they couldn’t endure the pain, were surely headed to hell, had not done enough or been good enough, or that their children would flounder without them—found peace and hope by embracing the very fears that had tormented them. Those who accepted and embraced their pain and grief—no matter what form it took—often became serene and hopeful about their situations and very compassionate toward others, which brought great comfort to their families.
In the throes of a bout of righteous resistance to letting go of what I perceived to be an unkind and undeserved emotional attack, I wrote the following two ditties:
Resist, resist, resist...
glimmers of possible surrender...
No way!
resist, resist, resist...
More persistent thoughts of surrender...
I can’t! I won’t! I’m right
Because painful feelings are emotional bullies fueled by fear, the best way to transform them is to face them head-on.
resist, resist, resist...
Maybe I can surrender—a little...
resist, resist, resist...
and
Shredded, bleeding, broken, hopeless
Maybe I’ll at least be
good compost
For those who follow!
Writing these poems gave me an inescapable peek at how much my Drama Queen/Victim personality was enjoying being wronged. In her element at center stage, she was tearing garments and crying copious tears. Writing gave her a chance to express herself and me a chance to temper her behavior, appreciate her passion, and chuckle at myself in the process.
Excerpted from How to Stay Upbeat in a Beat Down World by Sue Patton Thoele. Available on Amazon.
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