Category: Healing Not Healed

After the death of her mom, Cheryl Strayed turned devastation and grief into self-sabotage.

She blew up her young marriage, estranged herself from her family, and started doing hard drugs—including heroin.

“I tried to wreck my life as a weird way to honor the death of my mom…” she admitted as she reflected back on that delicate time many years later at a live talk here in Buffalo, NY.

…Which I think is a very natural, knee-jerk kind of reaction to such overwhelming pain due to loss or grief in general.

We want to show how much we cared for a person—how much we loved them—by showing how deep our pain goes. And so we make this perverse decision to self-sabotage and wreck ourselves and our lives to display this deep love and care.

…But—and this is such an important but to consider when dealing with a blinding and unrelenting force like grief…

“…What we really need to do,” Cheryl said from the clarity of her further healed and more deeply considerate mind, “…is thrive.”

This is how we really honor the ones we love.

Not by causing further depths of pain and hate.

…But by embodying the depth of that love and becoming the living legacy of the absolute best version of that person. Spreading not more pain into the world—but, joy. Spreading not more hate into the lives of those around us—but, love.

…Leaving us not nearly dead and alone with a needle sticking out of our arm—but alive and thriving and accomplishing unimaginatively impressive feats that’ll inspire not only those around us today… but those in many generations to come.

After dancing almost nonstop for seven hours this past weekend… I looked at a friend I was with and said, “I can’t believe there used to be a time when I was too self-conscious to dance.”

The inner work I did to overcome that first hurtle of hesitation—and dance as uncaringly as I was able to on that first night (linked above)—was like a bud sprouting from the shell of its seed.

But, like the growth of any plant (and where a lot of people get inner work wrong)… sprouting isn’t the end… it’s only a beginning.

And since that sprouting, I’ve done my best to grow away from that shell of self-consciousness that was holding me back oh so tightly before… and strengthen the root and body of that flowering thought with as much uncaring dancing as I’ve been able to add to my lifestyle.

And this past weekend, it was as though I had a potent moment of realization that… damn… I think the pedals are starting to show.

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P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

I went to swat the ball out of another player’s hands while playing basketball the other day and I either bent my pointer finger in a way it shouldn’t have or jammed it real good (or both)… because it was immediately very painful after that swat.

After finishing the game (and when the adrenaline was wearing off and it started to swell), I quickly got it on ice and rotated back and forth between that and movement for about an hour… and then just kept moving it as much as I could after that.

The idea was simple: ice constricts blood vessels which reduces swelling. Movement keeps things, well, moving in the area so that, again, there’s less swelling (pooling) and fresh cells can continue to make their way in to heal and repair (no traffic jams).

When you get hit with emotional type pain in life (or do the hitting which results in pain) following a similar type of response can be helpful.

We ice emotions (cool off) to constrict overwhelmingly unnecessary responses… so we can choose other than a regretful, knee-jerk response… so we can prevent any unnecessary life swelling that might happen when we allow ourselves to act when fully heated up.

We then keep the emotions moving so that we can prevent pooling which can turn suppressed emotions toxic… so that we can create space for other emotions to arrive (healing and repairing type emotions)… so that we can fully feel (and eventually fully release) what’s meant to be felt.

And we do this with space… with journaling… with meditation… with walks… with inner work…

And when we don’t… we get badly swollen and bruised instead.

My dad once remarked that I was as “focused as a laser” when I was around 17. And he commented on how remarkable it was for someone at that age to be like that…

• I was excelling in school.
• I was in a serious relationship with an amazing girl.
• I was three years into a job I loved and knew I wanted to make into a career.
• I was competing at high level martial arts tournaments—and succeeding.
• I had an incredible group of friends who knew how to have a good time.
• And I had the most supportive and loving family throughout.

In hindsight, when I think back to this time and everything that would soon unfold over the next several years, I would probably tell myself to relax that laser a little and enjoy being a 17-year-old more.

…Because while being focused like a laser is a gift, so is wandering, exploring, and spending time experimenting while life is simpler and you’re living on somebody else’s dime.

Do I regret living how I did at 17? No. I know it’s precisely what made me into who I am today and I know that if I changed myself back then, the butterfly effect would probably have me in an upside down life that I actually did regret.

But, what’s important to remember is that my 17-year-old self is still inside me somewhere. As is every other version of who I’ve been in the past. And inner work conversations like this, with them, is precisely how my today self grows into the evolved version of that 17 year old…

…So I can live with that hindsight wisdom—today.

After getting divorced when I was around 11 years old and both having gotten remarried, my mom and my dad announced this week that they’re playing together in a band, at what’s going to be their official public debut, on my birthday, this month.

To add a little more context, my parents were in a folk band with several other friends when I was a child, that slowly fell apart as life happened to the band mates. Fast forward to around two decades after their divorce, and my dad reached out to my mom to see if she wanted to join a little band practice thing he started in his basement with a few other friends. She eventually agreed. The band grew. The practices continued and the sound kept improving. And now, today, they’re ready to share what they’ve created with the public and jam again.

The reason I share this with you is to remind you that when you can confront your pains, learn to forgive and find common ground, evolve/grow, and lead with compassion and understanding… you get to move on and do other things with your life. Things that don’t revolve around the ruins of the past, but feature new growth that sprouts into the future.

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P.s. This is their announcement poster and band name (lol).

In reply to my recent post on pain, a reader asked, “I think you were talking more about metaphorical pain, but in regards to physical pain I’m curious what your thoughts are. If I play basketball and my feet hurt, as long as it’s within reason, the solution is to play more basketball. What do you think? Is the pain the solution?”

My response: It might not always be as simple as keep playing basketball—although it could be.

I look at physical pain as a signal. A signal that’s trying to show me something about either my body or the thing I exposed my body to.

When I would run, I would often get spasms in my neck/shoulder area. That was a signal that my neck/shoulders needed more stretching—both before the run and as an ongoing preventive measure.

If I would workout and it caused excessive soreness… it was a signal that the muscle was intensely challenged and needed more attention/reps to be built up.

If an exercise caused injury, however, then a deeper exploration was needed. Deadlift, for example, is an exercise I had to remove from my routine altogether. I would repeatedly throw out my back regardless of how clean my technique was. This was a signal that I just had an injury-prone lower back and deadlift wasn’t appropriate for me. So, I opted for bodyweight and light/moderate resistance exercises instead.

And so, yes, I would still say the cure for the pain is in the pain—not to say we keep doing the same things blindly—but because it’s only by exploring and interpreting the signal of the pain that we can determine the appropriate path forward.

I shared a quote the other day to MoveMe Quotes that said, “The cure for pain is in the pain” by Rumi and commented, “Lean into it.”

To which someone replied, “What a load o shite. Lean into it? Really? Pain ain’t a Tug o war team. For some, it’s unbearable. Don’t lean into it. Get help!”

To which I replied, “Getting help nicely aligns with leaning into it. The point is simply not to avoid it/ suppress it/ run from it/ drown it in distractions, drugs, desires, etc.”

“Lean into it” is an expression I’m quite fond of in regards to this topic.

It implies a humble and aligned confrontation with the uncomfortable that isn’t forced, rash, or too intense.

It implies a calm courage that’s ready deal with whatever has been causing the pain… without haste—which further implies a willingness to persevere for the long haul (not being in a hurry is an excellent sign that you’re committed to the process).

…Because pain isn’t something that’s just cured and then gone from your life. Pain is something you have to keep leaning into. Something you keep confronting. Something you keep displaying a calm courage towards… not with the expectation of curing or solving it… but, with the expectation of understanding it, better managing it, and not exasperating it.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

…But maybe not all at once. Maybe by just a little bit after each session.

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