Turning Pain into Power

“When I think how sometimes people can be brave enough to overcome any fear, any hardship, it gives me a feeling I can hardly describe. To charge right at the things that are painful and difficult, break through to the other side, and take pleasure in that—don’t you think that’s truly fantastic? The greater the suffering, the greater the joy in overcoming it. I think that’s what a heroic spirit is all about.” - Genzaburo Yoshino

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life was to come to terms with evil. I don’t mean that in the “we’re just going to ignore it and stay positive” kind of way, but the core-shaking fear-facing of deciding to accept the universe for all that it is, not condoning it, but making peace with it. 

“Good” and “Bad” are not permanent qualitative states of being for any given experience. Yes, an action can cause harm or it can cause benefit, but those things which happen to us do not need always be “good” or “bad.” They can just be. What occurs may not always be in our power, but those events do not have power over us, we have the power to decide what those events will mean to our overarching intention of being, the story we write for our lives. 

Yes, we may grieve, we may go through harrowing journeys trying to find our way after traumatic experiences. Harm and pain will manifest itself no matter what we do, and to live a full life, we must accept all that life may bring. We can either live our lives in fear, rage, numbness, or despair, or we can be brave and choose to work on our abilities to cope, process, release, and transmute painful experiences into that which we want to create more of in this world. For me, that is joy, peace, love, safety, and abundance. 

What is it for you? 

I grew up in a context that made me wary of people and the world. My home was volatile and unsafe, I was neglected and manipulated. As the years passed, no one seemed to want to admit that anything wrong happened. It made me feel lonely and as though there was something wrong with me that made me deserve that kind of situation. No one wanted to face what happened, especially not the perpetrators. 

This sickness started to grow within me. The injustice, the ugliness, the evil of it all. The ignorance, the irresponsibility, the denial, it ate away at me. Often, survivors of similar situations are pathologized, seen and designated as the source of their own psychological problems, when in reality, they are likely being scapegoated for the harmful situations that caused the very understandable sickness in the first place. 

I was told I was a depression patient when I was actually an idealist. An incredible loving soul who wanted the world to be beautiful and kind, and what I saw instead devastated me to the point of near extinction, many times. When I unshamed my depression, I saw that there was this child underneath that so desperately wanted beauty, compassion, and respect to be omnipresent rather than the reality I was facing. 

It took me a long time, making mistakes of my own, causing harm in a vicious cycle of shame and trauma, doing extensive therapeutic, somatic, and neural reprogramming work to release energetic patterns I had learned as a child, and to begin to understand what evil, pain and confusion is here for. 

It’s bitter medicine, like burning ourselves by accident on a hot stove, teaching us what not to do. In its own twisted way, it is also in the service of love, showing us the horrible consequences of living out of harmony with the world around us. I see those who are trapped in this vicious cycle of pain (people who are hurt tend to hurt other people) quite like Lucifer Morningstar, the light bringer, burning in hell to illuminate what not to do. It must be so painful for them. 

One of the hardest ways that I show love to some people is not allowing people that I love to hurt me. I know they only do it because they don’t know how to treat someone with the respect and honor they deserve, because they weren’t treated correctly when they were growing up. The kindest thing I can do for them sometimes is not to let them hurt me. “Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends—they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies.” - Emily Bronte. It is just as painful to inflict harm as it is to receive it. 

At the cusp between elementary school and high school, I was fascinated by a 90’s television series following a teenage vampire slayer who was fighting against “demons and the forces of evil” which were really just metaphors for the obstacles in the way of growing up and doing the right thing. The main character of the series was an incredible inspiration for me. She said, “you always have a choice” and she always chose to take responsibility and to do what was right no matter what. However, righteousness like that only truly exists in fiction. 

When I see people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions and refuse to do what’s right, I’ve learned to stop judging and condemning them and I’ve learned to try to understand them. When we make the same mistakes over and over, when we lack the awareness to make kind choices, it’s often because of some serious trauma that has caused us to disconnect from ourselves, to resort to denial, blame, and repeated destructive or unconscious behavior, because to come fully back to presence, to the body, to clarity, to responsibility, seems unbearable to us. 

This disconnection occurs through dissociation in response to trauma. Escapism, bypassing, substance abuse, obsessive, habitual, destructive or controlling behaviors, even cruelty and volatility, can all be seen as coping or defense mechanisms to avoid dealing with or facing what initially happened. As these protective behaviors continue, the dissociation compounds as traumatic experiences continue to stack up, because these behaviors often create more trauma, making facing it all increasingly more difficult for us. 

Underneath all the chaos is a scared child running away from something painful. 

It all turned around for me when I stopped running and accepted it. 

The only thing that worked for me was to be held in compassionate attention and led through exercises in hypnotherapy, awareness practices, breath work sessions, meditations, and movement practices to find safety in my mind and body again, to rewire my neural pathways and practice regulating my nervous system. From there, rooting in my own sense of centeredness and groundedness, I felt as though I had the footing and the power to decide what my relationship and response to these painful experiences would be. 

In the end, they became energy, powerful lessons with strong energetic charge that I could use as fuel to make intentional decisions about how I chose to live my life, how I wanted to feel and show up in the world, what kind of impact I wanted to have. 

Life is the art of growing and evolving to become better and better at being love. Perfection isn’t possible and therefore all we have is the process, progress, practice. You could call that futility or you could call that limitless growth unfolding for higher and higher levels of the proper expression of love; a divine ideal we will never reach but are all bettered for reaching towards. 

Love is the healer. Compassionate witnessing, being held with empathy, understanding, and unshaming allows us to open up to face difficult things with a feeling of safety. Every part of you makes sense, and I promise that you have the power to face each and every trauma that has occurred in your lifetime, even if it takes some time, exploration, and mishaps along the way. We are messy, chaotic, and paradoxical. Nothing is black and white. 

Everything that we face, all of the obstacles, all of the struggles, those are invitations. It is pain calling out for love to shine a light on it, witness it and make things better. It’s what forces us to find solutions, to grow and learn and to create a better reality. 

Finding the beauty in and making peace with evil has allowed me to open up to life and truly be present, aware, intentional, and powerful in a way I’ve never experience before. My life is no longer dictated by fear of or resistance to the pains of life, instead I have faith in myself that I can overcome any of it, and with the knowledge of how it is created, I can make more informed decisions about how to create a kinder reality for those my actions influence. 

How could you begin to safely make peace with pain? 

How could that become a source of power in co-creating a better reality?