Pain Isn't Polite

Pain isn't polite conversation. I'm new to blogging but am willing to bet it's not politely correct to speak of it here either. People are uncomfortable with pain, their own and others. If you talk about pain in mixed company people begin to squirm a little. It's even worse than talking about politics or religion. Actually for me, pain was a religion, for awhile.

I needed it to be in order to move through it. I needed to look at it, dissect it, yes even wallow in it at first. As a victim of spousal abuse trying to get to freedom with two young children twenty years ago, I needed to feel the pain enough to leave. To be uncomfortable enough not to make excuses to stay. Yet I had to move through it quickly enough to find a way to escape, survive and raise my children. I did.

That was twenty years ago and unlike the battered wife syndome movies on Lifetime, I didn't walk happily off into the sunset, but I lived, quite an accomplishment at the time and even for a long time after.

But this isn't about the circumstances of pain but of pain itself. I mention the circumstances so that I can better explain my position on pain. After a very short period of time I was expected by most people to just "get over it", oh he won't come after you, he's forgotten by now" and on and on. Just for the record, it's been twenty yrs. and detectives employed by him contacted my adult daughter just three years ago. Again, off point, what is the point is that I never felt I was allowed to feel the pain and so completely work through it. It was discounted.

Yes, I went through lots and lots of counseling, which did help, when post traumatic stress syndrome can last for up to seven years and you still jump at loud noises behind you, it's a necessity. Yet it wasn' t enough to be validated for the pain I experienced if I was paying for that validation. So at some point in very close support groups and with close friends, or those I thought were, at the time, I have shared my pain. Much of the time to be shut down and told a variety of things. "Just get over it", that was so long ago, you need to heal, you enjoy being a victim" etc. Mostly it boiled down to, "just don't talk about it to me". In a particular spiritual support group one "spiritual" healer even became angry and very accusatory. I supposed her version of "tough healing". All of that is okay, as long as your pain isn't discounted. Whether it's past pain or present, each of us should be allowed to honor the experience we've encountered with pain. Not hold onto it, not embrace it, but honor that it happened, it was horrible and you've learned from it. Not, you will never ever speak of it to anyone again or you're not healed.

What's funny to me is that I've found several sites by women who have made a career of pain in one form or another, they just don't call it that. Whether it's art or discussion it's pain disguised and so more appropriate because it's couched in language that is indirect of their particular unique experience and so I suppose isn't as offensive. There's nothing wrong with this, in fact I believe it provides wonderful options for many, but let's be honest and call it what it is. This person took their "pain" and now utilize it creatively, but it's still their pain. If you read between the lines or the paint drops, it' still there pain bleeding through and that's okay.

I have no problem with it, it helps others without offending them but what offends me is our general inability to face what we're really talking about and the dishonoring of other's pain because we don't understand it. There are many particularities to pain; disease, divorce, death, abuse. But to the person experiencing it, it hurts, there's no heirarchy of pain worthiness. There's just no way to say, that pain you feel just isn't so bad, there's worse out there. Yep there is, but do you think you just helped alleviate theirs by pointing that out?

So I guess what I'm saying is this, I don't believe we should wallow in our pain, I also don't believe we need to "heal" it. It's a part of our experience, not something to be hidden away and shunned, as though our pain is dirty. We don't need to heal our experiences, they were what they were, they are what they are. We don't even need to heal ourselves so much as we need to honor who we are, what we've experienced and do the same for everyone, really everyone!

Pain isn't polite but it is real, it happens here on the planet, frequently. Yet pain may lead us to learn to navigate with less pain as we learn to traverse our path more steadily with trust. Trust in ourselves and others that we can and will honor everyone's experience with pain without a rating system and without falsity caused by fear. Now I'm not saying we should bring up our pain as cocktail party banter ( does anyone still have these?) I'm speaking of what would be intimate conversation with those close to us. It's not polite to speak of pain because it reminds others of their own, something they may have steadily worked at denying or hidden deep within their depths. Don't dig up yours or theirs.

So at the risk of being severely impolite, I simply propose that we honor one another's pain without inflicting judgment or canned aphorisms. We just listen, fully. We hold the space of honoring the other and their pain, knowing that in doing so we're helping to transform it.