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Posts tagged with “Pain”

9 Insights on Dealing with Change, Challenges, and Pain

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

This year has been one of unprecedented change for me. From January to March, I traveled to Mozambique, Africa to do volunteer work. I did not speak the language; I did not understand the culture. I was immersed in a completely strange world for two months.

In April, we put our house up for sale. The prospect of uprooting and moving is destabilizing, and one of life’s biggest stressors.

Then in May my marriage failed, and I …

7 Ways to Cope With the Grief of Heartbreak

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“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis

Shock. That was the first feeling. Shock and disbelief.

This isn’t really happening. Denial.

Look into her eyes. Slow realization. I’m not dreaming. Fear.

Wave upon wave of torrential sadness. Messy.

We’d been in a long-distance relationship, and as far as I was aware, everything was inutterably perfect. I was as happy as I’d ever been; I was in love.

For months, I’d been planning to travel across the country to see her. …

Why Letting Yourself Feel Broken is the Key to Feeling Whole

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

I spent my twenty-fifth birthday crying alone at the foot of a mountain. While I had always found solace in spending time by myself, in that moment, I did not recognize my “self.”  Without my self, I had nothing.

I was utterly alone.

Three weeks earlier, a man was shot just feet away from my front door. My then-boyfriend and I performed CPR until an ambulance arrived, but the man had been killed on impact. The police left my home at 3 a.m.; …

Learning to Love and Live Again When Life Gets Hard

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“The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown

It’s when you’ve woken up with a full day ahead of you after only two hours of sleep.

It’s when there’s nothing for you to do but sit by your friends as they deal with tragedies and all the hard stuff life throws at us.

It’s when you don’t know how to handle the situations in your life that are anything but black and white.

It’s when you feel utterly helpless and powerless as you watch someone you care about aching with the deep soul wounds that …

When You Don’t Feel Good Enough for Someone Else

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“Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.” ~Lululemon

I recently started going through what has been the most difficult situation I have ever had to bare in my life: the end of my twelve-year relationship.

I have gotten to know the darkest and most hidden places inside me, and pain so deep that I did not know we as a species were capable of feeling it.

It has been through this process and my will to endure, survive, and overcome that I have had to dig deep to find meaning and answers.

I …

No One Should Feel That They Don’t Deserve Love

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“We accept the love we think we deserve.” ~Stephen Chbosky

There are those moments in life when things suddenly shift from a deep, sad shade of blue to a lighter shade of sky, and then eventually the beautiful reds and pinks and oranges of a sunrise.

When a light bulb snaps on in your head and you see something that you’ve been missing for days, months, maybe even years, though it doesn’t change what caused the sea of blue, it makes it look more like a calm lake than a raging ocean.

I had one of those moments not too …

You Are the One: 5 Helpful Tips for the Brokenhearted

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“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” ~Sir Thomas Browne

Anyone who has ever gone through some sort of heartbreak knows what awful pain it can cause, both physically and mentally. It can be devastating, shattering, and overwhelming for your spirit.

In the beginning of 2012 I had my heart broken by a person who I thought was “the one.”

Between tears and desperate calls, I found myself searching the Internet for remedies to get over an ex. I knew I was a strong person, but I just couldn’t see anything becoming brighter or better ever.

I constantly …

How Feeling My Pain Made Me Feel More Alive

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“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~Kenji Miyazawa

I used to run from pain.

My father died suddenly when I was six. For years I stuffed it down, never letting anyone know my emotions, how I was feeling, and I ran from situations that could cause me to lose, to feel pain.

My heart would jump and feel fear every time I received bad news or a “bad” email from a boss. I only wanted to feel good things. I stayed out of relationships for fear of the eventual loss and bad feelings, …

The Gains in Our Losses: Growing Through the Pain

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“In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.”  ~ Anne Sophie Swetchine

I’ve always been a “cat guy.” This was long before my Buddhist friends told me stories of how cats are true earthly masters, here on earth to show us the way. Or, to demonstrate the meditative perfection of the feline purr. Or, how the life of a cat is seen in some traditions as reward for good karma.

When I lived in rural Nova Scotia, the house was blessed with two cats named Midge and Mooch—tabby mixes, who would come …

Finding Life Through Death: How Loss Teaches Us to Appreciate More

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“If you learn from a loss you have not lost.” ~Austin O’Malley

The police officer walked toward me, leaving the multi-car accident behind him as he placed a bloody wallet in my hand. He asked me to open it up and verify that this property was indeed my best friend’s, who also happened to be my only brother.

At that very moment, the world I had so carefully crafted around me shattered, and became an unfamiliar and unwelcoming place for me. My parents divorced within months of him dying, and I used his loss and their separation as an excuse …

Facing Life’s Big Challenges and Coming out on Top

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

I will never forget that day.

It is still as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday.

My son was just a little over three. He was going to a mainstream kindergarten and, well, his teacher had very gently suggested we seek a professional’s help.

You see, he didn’t understand what the teachers were saying to him. He was restless and fidgety. He also bounced form activity to activity.

This was our first ever visit to a speech pathologist, and she …

Forgiving the Unforgivable and Ending Your Own Suffering

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“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” ~Malachy McCourtro

I was completely unprepared for the emotional hailstorm that bombarded me when, back in 2001, I learned that my wife had been having an affair with my best friend of twenty-plus years.

My normal, predictable life (which I absolutely loved, by the way) had been virtually shattered overnight. Not only did it culminate in a very bitter war (see: divorce), it also marked the onset of a toxic poison that had begun to work its way into my veins: resentment.

It began with …

How My Anger Led Me to Forgiveness and Peace

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“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.” ~Alice Duer Miller

As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a relative, I had become accustomed to keeping secrets. Silence, I was taught, was a good thing. It protected people that I loved.

So for over a decade, I carried the dark and overbearing weight of my past in secrecy and in silence, believing I was the only one in the world who’d ever experienced such abuse—until I learned from a college workshop that one in four women and one in five men fall …

Reclaim Your Authentic Self: 4 Steps to Recover from Bullying and Abuse

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When I was in fourth grade, a girl from another class bullied me. I was in the bathroom during class when I heard the door creak open and whoosh shut. There was silence for a moment, then the girl’s hands appeared on the top of the stall door, followed by her face.

“Whaddaya doin’ in there?” she asked.

I quickly covered myself, and replied as nicely as I could, “I’m using the bathroom.”

“Well, hurry up,” she said. “Because I want to go.” There were three other stalls, so I knew I was in trouble.

I had no idea who …

Emotionally Overloaded: Are You Taking on Too Much of Other People’s Pain?

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” ~Havelock Ellis

I would have done anything for my friends, until one of them nearly broke my heart and spirit. He was my best friend. We felt like platonic soul mates.

We had a standing lunch date every week, called each other terms of endearment, cried together, laughed together—the standard best friend things.

Then, tragedy struck him. Over and over.

His long-time partner left him. Then he lost his executive-level job. Next, he had a string of major medical issues that put him in …

Learning to Trust Again When You’ve Been Hurt in the Past

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“The only way to know if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ~Ernest Hemingway

In a world where it seems as though all we hear about and see is how one person betrayed another, how do we allow ourselves to trust someone to get close at all, let alone trust them to be near the most fragile parts of us?

Over the course of the last year, I’ve been working as an intern-counselor at a residential high school with around seventy teenagers. Many of them have come from unbelievably challenging backgrounds where they have had to learn to …

After Tragedy: 3 Reasons And 21 Ways to Find Joy Again

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“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

My brother died suddenly, at just thirty-nine years old. One moment he was in the midst of a regular working day. Half an hour later he was gone. Twenty-four hours later he was buried.

With things happening so fast, I found myself alternating between paralysis and intense waves of pain, anger, guilt, sorrow, and devastation. I guess we all felt this way. Only it didn’t quite look like we all did/

In between waves of sadness and silence, my brother’s …

We Can Control How We Respond to Things We Can’t Control

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“When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

Every year, March 13th is difficult for me. This year, I marked the day with a long hike in the woods near my house and an extra-long hug for my wife, Kathleen. My sisters and I called each other and just said his name out loud. Wherever he is, we want him to know he is gone but not forgotten.

March 13th would have been my brother Jimmy’s 64th birthday. He only made it to 26.

But March 13…

Tragedy Can Help Us Find Our Life’s Purpose

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“Sometimes in tragedy we find our life’s purpose. The eye sheds a tear to find its focus.” ~Robert Brault

Just over two decades ago, I happened to be planted in the Midwest. Chicago. The southside to be exact. A location once recognized as a haven for successful black people handling their business while their kids frolicked throughout the streets, making up secret handshakes, basking in the sun and enjoying their youth.

And then, as the years progressed, things began to change; our haven was becoming less safe.

As if a nebulous cloud began to form over our neighborhood with a …

4 Lessons on Surviving and Thriving When Times Are Tough

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“Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.” ~Unknown

Five months ago, I was sitting outside with a friend when a mosquito bit me under the arm. I went to scratch the bite and felt a lump on the side of my breast. My doctor sent me for a mammogram, ultrasound, and fine needle biopsy. I had breast cancer.

I am a 44-year-old single mother of two beautiful young girls with primary custody. I am also Director of a psychology practice and self-employed.

The day I was diagnosed was the day I lost the carefully …