Even when our painful circumstances don’t move, our emotions around them do. My disability is permanent, but my emotional experience is fluid. You may have heard before that our emotions move like weather, and it’s our job not to attach ourselves to them. But, my character defects tell me that whatever hurts today will hurt like this forever. I don’t have to drag my pain through a hard season. I can acknowledge it without letting it run my life. The way I create that distance between me and the pain is getting honest about what’s happening, out loud, with safe people.

I tend to feel more comfortable in pain than I am in joy. Pain feels familiar and predictable. Joy requires vulnerability and needs me to participate. Almost ten years ago, someone threw me a life raft. It took several throws before I caught it. Life rafts come in a thousand forms: AA, support group, therapist, sponsor, friend, faith community, or rehab program. Anyone can throw you one, but it’s our job to reach for it, catch it, and keep holding on long enough for the rescue to unfold. We need each other to process pain, and together we learn how to float.

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Pain is a process: Catching the Liferaft