fbpx
Menu

Posts tagged with “Pain”

The People We Need to Forgive Can be Our Greatest Teachers

By

“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” ~Marianne Williamson

I lay huddled in a ball, my arms tightly around my knees, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Stop!” I wailed.

It was November 30, 2006. The next day I was turning 13, and it seemed like my life was crumbling before my eyes.

Earlier that night I was on my computer mindlessly clicking, with the usual soundtrack in the background, my mother and stepfather screaming at each other—until I heard a shattering smash. For minutes the house lay silent.

I …

Direct Your Emotional Memory to Feel Good Now

By

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~Henry Ford 

You’re stuck at work and you dream of something better.

This dreaming usually starts off great. You imagine yourself sitting at a desk working on a million dollar project or teaching underprivileged kids how to multiply seven times three.

Whatever your vision is, it’s good to daydream about this, but what usually happens is that we snap out of it, and reality smacks us in the face. We’re answering phones, running errands, and hating our lives.

I’ve been …

Moving on from a Mistake: 5 Tips to Relieve Your Pain

By

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

We all make mistakes, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that when we’re in the midst of them. We try to avoid them at all costs because the pain and price can be high.

It can cost us our jobs, our reputations, or our driving records.

In their election ads, political candidates often focus on their opponents’ negative aspects in order to make us vote for them instead. It’s almost as if we’re voting for the person least likely to …

Relationships That Hurt: When Enough Is Enough

By

“Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than hurt yourself trying to put them back together.” ~Unknown

There was a time when I was quite black-and-white with relationships. I either trusted you implicitly, assuming you’d never intentionally hurt me, or believed you wanted to cause me pain and questioned everything you did.

Once you moved yourself into the latter category, there was no going back.

Eventually, I realized I was limiting my relationships by not recognizing the grey area, where people are human, they make mistakes, and they need forgiveness and understanding.

From there I …

5 Tips to Help You Embrace Extreme Change

By

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

My obsession at an early age became to follow my heart—a life’s search for meaning, adventure, and enlightenment.

This search has been remarkable, a journey that has brought me to fascinating places for extended stays (Japan, the UK, Australia, you name the place) and has led me to relationships with some of the most interesting, loving people from around the globe.

As exhilarating the feeling of following your heart can be, it’s not always the yellow brick …

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

By

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …

Relieve Physical Pain by Releasing Your Grievances

By

“Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.” ~Buddha

When the mind is burdened by a perceived wrong for an extended period of time, the body automatically steps in to carry part of the load. We store many of our painful life experiences deep within the framework of our physical bodies.

If we don’t consciously feel and heal these hurts as they occur, they linger in our muscles, organs, and tissues long after the mind has consciously forgotten the specifics of the event.

The body is actually a repository that faithfully carries this load until the essence …

How Pain Teaches Us to Live Fully

By

“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” ~Anais Nin

There have been times when I’ve experienced pain when all I wanted was for its cessation.

I’m not sure whether I’m “unique” in my experience of pain or in how many times in my life I’ve had to deal with physical pain. While I don’t consider myself “cursed” by it, I’ve endured enough of it to become somewhat of an “expert” on its presence and its effects.

Besides the normal cuts and scrapes that we all experience, I’ve had the (un?)fortunate luck of having had—at separate times in my …

Reaching Out for Help When The Road Gets Rough

By

“Pain is not a sign of weakness, but bearing it alone is a choice to grow weak.” ~Lori Deschene

There was a time in my life when I struggled to share my pain. I actually took great pride in how stubborn I had become. It wasn’t until I started looking within myself that these prideful attitudes started to shift. Actually, my whole life started to change.

Once I started my journey of self-discovery, I no longer wanted to deal with my pain by myself. I slowly reached out to others and asked them for help.

It was in …

20 Ways Life is Amazing (Even When it Hurts)

By

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Frank

I have a confession to make: The last few weeks have been some of the hardest I’ve lived through in my entire life—but not for the reasons you’d think.

Thankfully, all of my family is safe and sound. Today is actually my grandmother’s 80th birthday, and we’re having a wonderful dinner to celebrate her life.

My husband and I have just moved into a beautiful new home and are ecstatic to finally have a little nest of our own. I …

How to Turn Pain to Joy: 11 Tips for a Powerful Gratitude Journal

By

“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot” ~Hausa Proverb

In my early, dark days of first acquiring a disability, I didn’t feel I had an awful lot to be thankful for.

It was like I had spent my whole life getting to the point where I had a thriving holistic therapy practice I loved, an amazing social life with great friends, and my beautiful dog, who I would regularly take into the country for long walks and my adrenaline pumping exercise routine.

Life was perfect. I had so much to be grateful for, but then it …

Coming Home to Our Light by Embracing the Dark

By

“Turn you face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” ~Māori Proverb

I am looking out of the window of the airplane. We are above the clouds; the evening sun is just setting. There is a glow all around me. I am lost in this moment. I feel like I’ve never been closer to the heavens. I can stay here in these clouds forever. I am at peace.

I am returning from my first trip to Jamaica.

I went to this island paradise on what was supposed to be a fun, party trip. Yes I had fun …

6 Ways to Decrease Your Suffering

By

“The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.” ~Helen Keller

You’ve probably heard the saying “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”

For many years, I didn’t understand how pain and suffering were different from each other. They seemed inextricably wrapped up together, and I took it for granted that one was the inevitable consequence of the other.

However, as I have grown to understand my own capacity to create happiness, I noticed something interesting about the nature of my suffering.

As I reflect back on painful episodes in my life, I can recall losing people …

Be Gentle with Yourself When Dealing with Heartbreak

By

“Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.” ~Unknown

I’m sitting in the nail salon near my apartment, perusing Vogue and making small talk with the woman who is cradling my hand and filing my nails. We’re catching up on our lives; I tell her I’ve been in Phoenix for the month. She nods and, in broken English, inquires about him.

I’d like to say my subsequent tears are a rarity, but lately, they seem to have a mind of their own.

I sit across from my best …

Learn to Forgive Yourself Even When You’ve Hurt Someone Else

By

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

Think back to the last time somebody apologized to you about something. Did you forgive them? There is a very good chance that you did.

Now think back to the last time you harmed someone else. Have you forgiven yourself? Probably not.

We all make mistakes. Oftentimes, through our actions, somebody gets hurt.

During this past year, I served as a liaison between my fraternity and a seventeen-year-old cancer patient in a local hospital through the Adopt-a-Family program. This patient, Josh Goldstein, passed away …

Waking Up and Forgetting a Bad Day

By

“Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” ~Denis Waitley

Yesterday was a bad day.

My husband and I got really close to buying a car before we walked away—again. This time it was because it was above our budget (with taxes), because the current owners didn’t have the title (their bank did), and because our own car broke down on the way to trying to buy the new car (didn’t see that one coming).

I was fine about the ordeal yesterday, seeing …

Emotionally Closed Off No More – How I’m Healing My Pain and Learning to Love

By

“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~ Buddha

There’s only one way to survive life. Shut down, or get hurt and die.

Well, that’s what I once believed.

At some point during my childhood I decided that the only way to survive in the world was to shut down and close off my heart. I’m sure given a choice I would have chosen only to avoid the pain of life (not the pleasure), …

The Transformative Powers of Pain: Healing from Abuse

By

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

We all have our stories of how people have wronged us and caused pain. Allow me to tell you mine.

I’m a survivor of abuse: mental, emotional, physical, and sexual. I was born into a family of abusers and witnessed it from the day I was born until age sixteen.

As a child, I thought my family was perfect. However, when I was twelve years old, I realized just how truly dysfunctional my family was. It was as if a light bulb went off and the …

Shifting Suffering into Gratitude: Go Upside Down

By

“Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb

They sound so cliché, sayings like, “There’s always a silver lining” or “Look on the bright side” or “there’s a positive to every negative.” Whenever struggle or suffering showed up in my life, those key expressions seemed to flow out of the mouths of family and friends.

That’s not to say they aren’t helpful. Sure, it helps a little to hear my best friend say, “It’s going to be ok,” when I spilled water all over my computer and lost everything—everything! …

Finding Meaning in Tragedy and Moving on Stronger

By

“Whenever something negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I’ve experienced a unique situation that has taught me a surprising lesson about the scope of the human races’ ability to choose love over hate, understanding over anger, and belief over fear.

I’d rather not have to tell a story like this, and my wish is that no one would ever have to learn lessons from an experience such as this. You see, my husband’s mother passed away just at the end of June.

But she didn’t just die of old age, or …