Pondering Pain
I opened Facebook the other day and saw a question posed by a friend in her late 40’s. She asked something along the lines of “If you are over 40, do you hurt? How long have you had pain…?” Notably, I have been thinking a lot about pain lately. I tweaked my shoulder, moving something alone when I should have waited for assistance. I burned myself on the oven door last week and sincerely stopped to consider what an awful fate a burn victim lives after their encounter with flames. Then, there is the pain in my foot that does not fit any particular diagnosis. It has persisted, although it shifts, comes, and goes, and has done so for the better part of 6 months. I get relief after deep fascial release work and sometimes after exercise. But the nature of it had me wondering whether I would forever be affected by this and what the future might hold.
My brain fast-forwarded through the years, and I saw myself as a decrepit 70-year-old, chubby, immobile, and likely ornery. Why is it that you don’t foresee your 40-year-old self when you are 15, as that is beyond a lifetime away, but you can so clearly visualize that 70-year-old self from this 46-year-old seat? As my literal vision is apparently blurring, my figurative vision becomes increasingly clear. I realize we can’t predict the future, but somehow it seems more possible to forecast now than it did in my youth. I do not want to imagine or foresee myself in the second half of life making decisions based on pain. That said, if I do not take care of these patterns now, they will create a life-matrix intricately woven with pain.
I am no stranger to pain, as I experienced my first major physical setback at age 16 when I injured my back during field hockey season. The pain was not just physical but also ego pain. I can still remember giving up the fight and acquiescing to the pain as I excruciatingly laid down my body on the grass at the far end of the field (I played Sweeper). I pushed through it for a couple of months, denying anything was wrong until it was too much, and I could no longer push past it. I think Gwen, our goalkeeper, went to alert our coach, but I really don’t remember because I was overtaken with the peculiar, nondescript, immobilizing pain of a back injury. Every episode since that day has subdued me into full surrender, usually involving tears and a silencing of all extraneous thoughts. It is an excellent way to bring this busy-body to a full stop!
Back in 1994, I had to retire from field hockey (and soccer and lacrosse). I missed an Outing Club camping trip. Sitting through chemistry class was a whole new version of misery. As a mere 16-year-old, I was humbled into deeply respecting these human bodies in which we live; I had to figure out how to put myself back together. The primary solution of giant painkillers offered by the conventional medical system would only take me so far; I had to resolve this situation somehow on my own. By some stroke of magic, I found a petite Tibetan nun practicing acupuncture in a serene clinic above “The Health Concern,” a local health food store I frequented in my teens in search of cute hippie boys. This Tibetan nun-angel literally got me moving again and changed my entire life trajectory. Every year seems to offer me a new angle on how to tend to this pattern in my body, but the bottom line is that I, Jeannie, have to do it; just me, my responsibility only. Otherwise, I don’t have the life I want to live.
That was physical pain. There are other kinds of pain: mental-emotional pain, spiritual pain, and probably other categories. In my late 20’s, I was introduced to the phrase used by Richard Rohr: “Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” Another, more crude way to say this would be, “Deal with your shit so you don’t hurt others.” We bring other people into the mess if we don’t suffer our own wounds,. And so are the ingredients for relational pain, generational pain, and so on. We will affect those around us. Ironically, the person who introduced me to this phrase delivered what will hopefully be the most substantial bolus of pain into my life I will ever know. I could have easily let it destroy me, which would have only perpetuated the pain cycle into my son’s life.
As I desperately tried to transform this massive infusion of pain, I began to understand some of the ways we can metabolize it. I was graced with an introduction to a community in Berkeley that very likely saved my life. I witnessed that many people are doing the work so that the pain stops with them. As I emerged from my own pain body, I began to observe that some people are doing the work, but only partially, which has brought us into a very interesting cultural chapter.
I have noticed an increased cultural phenomenon of asking others to carry and accommodate our pain. It is as though we have become aware enough in the West that we do not want our pain (i.e., trauma) to be transmitted, but instead of working to transform it, we have asked the classroom, workspace, social media space, and even government to adjust itself so that we always feel “safe” and do not get “triggered.” This is not an empowered way to approach life; it keeps a person in a victim stance where the words or actions of someone else have the power to hurt or damage us. To put the responsibility of our okay-ness into the hands of anyone but ourselves is inherently disempowering.
At times, I feel like I am kind of a hard-ass or that I am not understanding enough of the plight of others. And, to be fair, for all intents and purposes, my life has given me many graces and privileges. But I have also dealt with deeply difficult situations at young ages when I did not have peers or others around me who truly understood what I was dealing with. Even in the victimhood of those situations, at the end of the day, it was my responsibility to change my circumstance, as brutally difficult and mystifying as the solution may have been. No one was going to save me from my back pain. No one was going to turn around the reign of pain in my separation and divorce from a person who was flinging his unhealed pain at me 24 hours a day for years- except for me.
At the moment when I looked over the precipice toward a psychotic break, I had to choose if I was going to be a victim of it all or use the last ounce of strength I had to own this life and stop giving my power away. It still brings tears to my eyes to remember how close I was but I did it and I am here now. If I did that, and people like Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl could do what he did, so many other people could call back their power as well.
My friend’s Facebook post ended with, “I feel like somehow there is this idea that life is supposed to be pain-free, and we each feel like we are the only ones or like, if we have pain, there is something wrong with us, but I’m guessing that most of us have experienced physical pain regularly?” And I would delete the word “physical” just to say “most of us have experienced pain regularly.” Yes, most of us have and do- all kinds of pain. And whether we decide to try and carry it for someone, or create a “safe space,” the ultimate onus is on ourselves to face and transform our own pain. I am currently training in Ontological Coaching where I received a fantastic document this month with the statement “people who operate in the context of responsibility… are oriented to action and correction rather than explanation and self-protection.”
These days, I don’t find much of an interest in “processing” what has happened as much as I find inspiration in forward motion and asking, “So what are we going to do about it?” Pain has threatened to shut down my life on more occasions than I can count. It does indeed seem to be a condition of being human: thou shalt know pain. Life hurts. I may not be laid out on my living room floor in severe pain the way I was seven years ago or wondering if I would make it through the divorce with any of my sanity intact, but the pain has not stopped. In fact, the more I love, the more pain I feel. It all seems to go together, doesn’t it?
So, yes. I am over 40, and I hurt. Isn’t it beautiful?