The Salvation in your Suffering
THE LOOK IN HER EYES WAS PURE CONTEMPT
"You're nothing, you stupid whore. You think you're better than me, you fucking cunt? You're nothing but trash. You are TRASH!” Time seemed to slow down as those words tumbled out of her mouth and dripped onto me like hot sticky tar. I could feel the life draining from my head down through my torso. I promised myself each time it happened that I wasn’t going to let her words get to me, but they did. Every time. Every time they sunk in a little deeper and stuck on a little longer. Every time I felt a little smaller. Every time I felt a little more unsafe. Every time I liked myself a little less. She had been bullying me from the 5th grade through my sophomore year in high school. Like any abusive relationship, there were days she was kind and even treated me like a friend— inviting me over for lunch and to parties at her house on the weekends. I never knew from one day to the next if we were friends or worst enemies.
Everyone knew she was being abused by her mother at home. For some reason she had chosen me to project her rage at her Mother’s abuse. Her hurled insults often felt borrowed. I imagined her mother said similar things to her.
SHE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE.
I seemed to be a target for bullies growing up. I’m still piecing together why I was singled out. Perhaps it was because I was the quiet, shy type. Or maybe it was because I was from the country, outside of town, and poor.
I carried the wounds of being bullied well into my adulthood. Some of them festered and transmuted into social phobia, anxiety and suicidal depression. Bullying confuses your sense of who you are and your inherent value. It's a big deal. After years of being told that I was the equivalent of puke, shit and trash, a part of me started to believe it.
Fortunately I met a man in my 20’s who deeply loved me: my wounds, my rage, all of me. For almost a decade I relaxed and healed in the safety and security of his love and I began to accept the truth of myself again— that I am a woman worthy of love and have much to offer the world.
Suffering, as initiation.
There are people who have suffered much more than I have. There is war, displacement, and starvation happening in Syria as I write this. The only way I've been able to reconcile the immense amount of suffering on this planet and not jump off the roller coaster is to believe there is a point to it all. For me, that point comes down to healing and growth: healing and growth for ourselves and healing and growth for humanity. I believe human evolution is more than just evolving stronger, more robust physical bodies or more advanced brain capacity. I believe as humans, we are also evolving emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. That evolution happens through the healing process of experiencing suffering, then finding your way out of the mire a better human being, or perhaps even a transformed human being with a commitment to serve others who are suffering.
I now see life as a series of initiations with powerful lessons that prepare us for who we are to become, and more importantly who we are meant to help. Our journeys are leading us to the greatest versions of ourselves and they are leading us to our most sacred work.
A number of years ago I interviewed dozens of women who all had stories of having gone through some major hardship. Those hardships later proved to be life-altering catalysts for them to go in a completely new direction in their lives. Every one of them emerged from their experiences inspired to either create art or go into a service profession to help others who had been through similar circumstances.
One woman who was a professional dancer with an eating disorder decided to leave that world, embrace and heal her body and now coaches women on how to love themselves and, rather than ignore their bodies, listen to their bodies' innate wisdom. Another woman, who was sexually abused as a child, now writes poetry to help other sexual abuse survivors. Another, a former lawyer, found herself stressed out, overweight and depressed. She quit her job, went to an integrative nutrition school, got healthy and started a health coaching practice.
OF COURSE WE CAN ALWAYS CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE BLESSING AND MESSAGE IN OUR MESS.
We can choose to remain the comfortable victim of our circumstances, stay angry and bitter and believe the world is a harsh place that wants to cut us down at every turn. I’ve made that choice many times. However, at some we get tired of our own self-induced suffering and misery and crawl out of our caves (or comfort zones), usually a little stronger, wiser and (hopefully) with a new lease on life. My wise friend Anastasia says suffering forces us to change. Without it, we wouldn’t have any motivation to change our circumstances or think about things differently.
If I've learned anything by living in the woods, it’s that suffering never lasts and death is never final. It all feeds something larger. There is a natural cycle that includes life, growth, decay, death and new life. We are nature and like nature, we move along this same cycle over our lifespan, but also in our day to day lives. We all experience joy, hardships, suffering, challenges, growth and small deaths every single day. Often the message and wisdom precedes the end of the cycle— right before we crawl out into the sunlight— we let something go. We let whatever words or actions that had hurt us cease to be a part of us anymore. We transform.
My suffering has made me better
It’s made me sensitive and empathic. I feel things deeply and easily feel compassion when I see people suffering. Because my bullying led to a social phobia where I was afraid to speak, I’ve become a deeper listener. My empathy and listening skills made me a natural interviewer and lover of people’s stories of overcoming hardship. Today, they inform my mentoring and healing practice with women. With every hardship my own capacity grows to hold the suffering of others.
WHAT SKILLS MIGHT have you DEVELOPED AS A RESULT OF YOUR PAST HARDSHIPS?
Our salvation often comes when we realize that through our healing, we bring healing to others. When we move out of our death cycles and transcend our suffering, we become healers simply by stopping the cycle of violence and abuse in our lineage, and through sharing our stories. We’ve all experienced listening to a story of someone’s liberation where afterward, we felt a little more free and inspired to change something in our lives. One thing I know is that when one goes through a personal transformation, it’s hard not to share that experience of liberation.
This blog, Whispers from the Wild is a part of my healing journey. My decision to move to nature has been such a profound experience, I can’t NOT share it. I want nothing more than for my life to be of good use, to be of service to others, and to let them know they are not alone. The salvation in our suffering lies in our stories of transformation. Embrace yourself as a modern-day healer and share your stories. Somebody is waiting to hear them.