fbpx
Menu

Posts tagged with “suffering”

Why I Stopped Measuring My Pain Against Others’ Suffering

By

“A history of trauma can give you a high tolerance for emotional pain. But just because you can take it doesn’t mean you have to.” ~Dr. Thema

I just returned from a walk with a dear friend—one of my favorite ways to catch up and socialize. This particular friend has endured significant challenges, especially over the past year. She faced the immense loss of her pets and many of her possessions in a devastating house fire.

The ensuing tsunami of grief and pain pushed her through a tumultuous year filled with deep suffering and intense healing efforts. All the while, …

How to Deal with Worries

By

“A lot of what weighs you down isn’t yours to carry.” ~Unknown

What are you worried about right now? No matter how hard we try to not worry, and even when we know that stress is terrible for our health, worry inevitably seeps into our boundaries for one reason or another. Chronic stress causes wear and tear on our bodies, potentially leading to a number of health ailments.

This terrifies me as a person with many stress points in her life, and as a widowed only parent of three young children. I want to live a long, healthy life so …

The Most Useful Mindfulness Technique I Know

By

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.” ~Rumi

When people start out with mindfulness, they want to feel better. They want all the worried, angry, or regretful thoughts to pipe down a little and stop making them feel so bad.

That’s great, as far as it goes, and mindfulness can deliver it if you practice consistently. But there’s something even better on offer, and it both is and isn’t about feeling better.

I learned this on an intensive meditation retreat.

There I was, excited to be there and ready to attain states of bliss, …

The Beauty in the Broken: How to Celebrate the Fragility of Life

By

“Sometimes you get what you want. Other times, you get a lesson in patience, timing, alignment, empathy, compassion, faith, perseverance, resilience, humility, trust, meaning, awareness, resistance, purpose, clarity, grief, beauty, and life. Either way, you win.” ~Brianna Wiest

Last month, I was feeling super fragile.

I was deep in the woes of another round of covid type symptoms, along with an onslaught of chronic health conditions that were flaring up left, right, and center. I was one month into a new job, and after the initial excitement, I was starting to feel wildly overwhelmed.

I spent two weeks waking up …

8 Things to Remember When You’re at Your Lowest

By

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.” ~Haruki Marukami

Last year was both the hardest year of my life and the most transformative. My partner and I had started in vitro fertilization after years of infertility. The daily hormone injections and invasive procedures were tough, but when we saw two blue lines on the …

Being Grateful for the Peaceful Coexistence of Joy and Pain

By

“It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that, but if you are grateful for your life, then you must be grateful for all of it.” ~Stephen Colbert

Life is not a war; you do not conquer it, nor do you overcome it. You simply accept that suffering is an inevitable and necessary rite of passage on our paths throughout life.

No one is immune to pain; it is only dished out at different levels, and our own internal experience is incomparable. We share similar human experiences—that is the tie that binds us all together—but …

Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important Things

By

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard

Let’s be clear:

This isn’t an article about positive thinking.

This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay.

This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong.

The kids call those things “toxic positivity.”

No toxic positivity here.

This is an article about my lifelong relationship with anxiety and what I’ve learned from something that won’t go away. At times the anxiety spikes and feels almost crippling. I have a hard time appreciating the learning at those times, but it’s still there.

That is what …

How to Ease the Pain of Being Human: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

By

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know” ~Pema Chödrön

We are all works in progress.

We all have skeletons in our closets that we may wish to never come out. We have all made mistakes. We will all make mistakes in future. We all have our scars.

None of us are close to reaching that mythical ‘perfect’ status. Never will be.

None of us should consider ourselves fully evolved. Not even close. There will always be space for improving an area of our lives.

Truth be told, most of us are a contradictory …

How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It

By

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

Few things have the power to totally transform one’s life as gratitude. Gratitude is the wellspring of happiness and the foundation of love. It is also the anchor of true faith and genuine humility. Without gratitude, the toxic stew of bitterness, jealousy, and regret boils over inside each of us.

I would know. As a teenager and as a young man, I lived life without gratitude and experienced the terrible pain of doing so.

Outwardly, I appeared to be a friendly, happy, and gracious person. I …

Why Trauma Doesn’t Always Make Us Stronger (and What Does)

By

“Literally every person is messed up, so pick your favorite train wreck and roll with it.” ~Hannah Marbach

You’ve probably heard this before: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” A beautiful saying, based on what Nietzsche wrote in one of his books (Twilight of the Idols). It always makes me feel like life can’t go anywhere but up. Forward and up.

According to Nietzsche, suffering can be taken as an opportunity to build strength. No matter the pain, sickness, or trauma you experience, you will come out stronger for it—as long as you take the …

You Have Just Five Minutes Left to Live – What Are Your Deathbed Regrets?

By

“Yesterday was heavy—put it down.” ~Unknown

Death is still taboo in many parts of the world, yet I must confess that I’ve become fascinated with the art of dying well.

I was thinking about the word “morbid” the other day, as I heard someone use it when berating her friend for his interest in better preparing for death. The word’s definition refers to “an unhealthy fixation on death and dying,” but who gets to define what’s healthy? And why are so many of us keen to avoid discussing the inevitable?

We talk about death from time to time on our …

3 Things That Turned My Suffering into Blissful Peace

By

“To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.” ~Jill Bolte Taylor

I’d just spent over six years trapped in my own worst nightmare. Then in a split second, my whole reality shifted to an experience of exquisite peace and bliss. Walking through the streets of my home city, I seemed to be radiating unconditional love out and into everything around me.

I didn’t know it then, but I’d just tasted the ultimate state of …

How Embodiment Can Make You Feel More Alive (and 5 Ways to Do It)

By

“Embodiment is living within, being present within the internal space of the body.” ~Judith Blackstone

When I was a little boy, I would dance whenever I heard a catchy pop song on the radio. There are photos of me throwing down dance moves, exuding joy and vitality. At some point, though, I lost my ability to dance.

If I were to guess what happened, I would say that I stopped dancing when I became self-conscious. I was no longer just being; suddenly, I became aware of being someone with a body.

So a long and complicated relationship with my body …

How I Lighten My Mood by Making a Bargain with the Universe

By

“Pain is what the world does to you; suffering is what you do yourself.” ~Gautama Buddha

I don’t expect things to be a steady state of bliss.

In fact, I agree with the Buddha that suffering is pretty much part of the human condition. Our expectations just get in the way of our experiences. I’m talking about your garden-variety suffering here, not the kind that comes with traumatic events that take you out at the knees or devastating clinical depression.

I see the now-and-then emergence of lethargy or melancholy as part of the whole emotional spectrum. And, like stepping in …

You’re Invited: FREE Wisdom of Pema Chödrön Online Summit

By

Hi friends. I know that many within the community are grappling with uncertainty right now—as really, we always are—and I also know how terrifying it can feel to embrace not knowing. Whether you’re dealing with health issues, unemployment, or relationship struggles, the question of what’s going to happen can keep you up at night. And then there’s the uncertainty in the world at large.

When we’re overwhelmed by groundlessness and fear, it can feel like we’re free-falling with nothing to hold onto. In those moments of panic, we search for something, anything, to help us calm the voice within and …

Feeling Weighed Down by Regret? What Helps Me Let Go

By

“Be kind to past versions of yourself that didn’t know the things you know now.” ~Unknown

When I taught yoga classes in jails in Colorado and New Jersey, I would end class with the Metta Meditation:

May we all feel forgiveness.

May we all feel happiness.

May we all feel loved.

May all our sufferings be healed.

May we feel at peace.

The women, all clothed in light gray sweatpants, would be in a relaxed yoga posture, usually lying on their yoga mat with their legs up the wall. The fluorescent lights would be full blast, as they always are …

When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

By

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” ~Viktor Frankl

When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning.

Trust me. I know.

In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didn’t want. There’s more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everything—my health, my love, my home.

During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything.

At the same time, within twenty-four …

Nobody Will Protect You from Your Suffering

By

Why I Don’t Define Myself as a Victim and What I Do Instead

By

“The struggle of my life created empathy—I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.” ~Oprah Winfrey

See yourself as a victim and you become one. Identify as a victim and you give your tormentor power over you, the very power to define who you are.

Statements like this have become commonly accepted wisdom today because they are undoubtedly true. If you see yourself as a victim, you will be one. You will be someone who has been defeated, someone who is at the mercy of another, and that is no way to live.

And yet, the …

What If There’s Beauty on the Other Side of Your Pain?

By

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~Albert Einstein

“I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to be here. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. It’s too hard.”

I’m curious how many times I’ve heard these words over my lifetime. From different people, ages, genders, ethnicities, and walks of life. The words the same, the heaviness no different from one to the next. Hopelessness has a specific tone attached to it. Flat, low, and empty.

Being the child of a parent who committed suicide, there is a …