"The Cure for The Pain is in The Pain"

On fear of pain as one of the big reasons we turn away from ourselves and deny our "Bigger Yes."

Last week, I wrote about something I call “The Bigger Yes.” Otherwise termed vocation, purpose, calling, dharma, or self-actualization, it’s basically the unique potential or blueprint inside each person. And as far as I can tell, it’s pursuing and living into this “Bigger Yes” that gives our life meaning, and it’s meaning that feeds us more than anything; it’s meaning that humans really desire.

To be clear, because it tends to be the assumption, your “Bigger Yes” doesn’t have to equal a job or how you earn a living. Nor does it need to be publicly notable or deemed extraordinary and remarkable by others. Sometimes, yes, it is made visible to others through an achievement, creation, or career, but it’s the invisible, inner experience of alignment and meaning that defines it.

When I say alignment, I mean that your insides match your outsides, more or less. You’re not staying in a relationship with a man when you know you love women, or staying in a marriage that’s not right because you’re too afraid to leave; you're not hiding in what Steven Pressfield calls a “shadow career,” like being a literary agent instead of becoming an author yourself; you’re not living a half-life and pretending it’s enough. You know it when you’re living a “Bigger Yes” because even when you’re in the shit, struggling, and nowhere near where you want to be, your actions are pointed in the right direction, which is the direction of your deeper longings. Even when I was still working in advertising and hating it, finally writing regularly on my blog that only twelve people would read felt incredible because I was actually doing the thing. The direction itself is everything.

I’ve been obsessed with this topic since I got sober nine years ago and read The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope; I’ve written about it in both of my books and taught a course about it for years. What I want to talk about today and for the next few weeks is why we don’t pursue our “Bigger Yes” even when we could (and to be clear, not everyone has the privilege). Last week, I defined the five main reasons I can see, the first being the age-old human fear of pain.

---

Pain is the necessary initiation.

In July of 2012, a few days after my husband had moved out of our home, I drove to Salem one Saturday morning and got the words ‘beauty and terror’ tattooed on my forearm. It wasn’t my first tattoo, but it was my first highly visible one. The words come from a poem by Rilke:

let everything happen to you
beauty and terror
just keep going
no feeling is final

At the time, I think I wanted a physical marker of my bravery because I did feel it was brave to end our marriage. We’d chosen to end it together, but it was me who gave the final shove in a conversation a month prior in our bedroom; it was me who wanted the ending to be over with instead of looming ahead, still a question mark. It seemed brave to me because he was a good man and a great father, and because our marriage was still so new and our daughter so young; it was brave to me because there was no guarantee that I’d be any better off without him, no cheering section telling me I was doing the right thing. I don’t know. I needed to put those words on my arm permanently, and I welcomed the physical pain of the needle. I wanted something to mark the moment in time because it was significant. But I was impulsive and drunk a lot of the time then, too, so whenever I think about getting that tattoo and why, I wonder if I’m overstating my intention. Either way, it was prescient. I was about to go through actual hell, and not because my marriage was over.

In a podcast episode I listened to recently, author and Enneagram teacher Suzanne Stabile, in describing Enneagram Sevens (which I am), said they intuitively reframe every problem or situation into a positive, an opportunity. They automatically move forward and move on, not even as a choice, really, but on instinct. This makes it possible for them to live for a long time without grieving or dealing with loss. They reframe, and reframe, and reframe in order to keep moving forward—until they come upon the first thing that they cannot reframe. “And when that happens for Sevens,” she says, “all the dominoes fall.”

The first thing in my life I couldn’t reframe was not my divorce, it was sobriety. It came in 2013, one year after the tattoo. In flooded the terror, so fell the dominoes.

I had to let everything happen to me for real then, not just hold it up as an idea or put it on my forearm as a faux-brave tattoo. And when I say I had to, I mean the alternative to sobriety was dying or losing my daughter, and I wanted those things only slightly less than I wanted to stop drinking. In other words, I was desperate; I wouldn’t have surrendered otherwise.

But a strange thing happens when you surrender to emotional pain: it moves. Not quickly, not pleasantly, but it does move. It’s like being pulled underwater by a wave. If you fight the wave, your situation gets worse, and if you fight long enough, you might not resurface. But if you surrender to the energy of the wave, you’ve got a better shot of coming back up. Sure, you’ll be banged up, but you’ll make it out. And when you realize you’ve survived—when you realize the pain itself hasn’t killed you like you thought it would—you gain the humility and wisdom that only survivors know.

Those first months of sobriety taught me that. They were so brutally painful, so raw and full of terror, that it felt near-impossible to move through the world some days. But as I did, day after day, I began to discover new parts of myself. The pain was terrible, but it also burned away so many illusions: I saw glimpses of my sober mind; I felt the simple dignity of waking up without regret; I was visited by possibilities bigger than the possibility of finding a way to drink normally.

Around that time, I stumbled upon Rumi’s words, “The cure for the pain is in the pain,” and thought, Yes, because I’d felt enough of that to know it was true. I put it in a cheap picture frame and hung it in my bedroom. I wanted the reminder to keep going, to keep letting everything happen to me. I sensed I was at the beginning of a long process, and I was right.

I share this because going through that kind of pain was the necessary initiation to awaken me to my “Bigger Yes,” and I don’t think anyone gets there without going through something similar. Without epic trial and loss (and the attendant pain), there’s no Hero’s Journey.

I thought my addiction was the big stop to everything I wanted, but it was the opening, and it often looks that way: We have to lose something we really, really, really don’t want to lose—an identity, a relationship, a belief system, a way of living—in order for the world to open up to us and reveal the greater possibilities.¹ As Goethe wrote, “And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled stranger on the dark earth.”

I didn’t know that’s what was happening, of course. We never do. I mean, I thought I’d weathered a lot of pain up until that point already, but the drinking and Sevenness and momentum of my life had only masked it. I’d never really processed anything.

The illusion of a pain-free option.

Hard as we try to pretend otherwise, there’s no pain-free option in life. It’s more like, what kind of pain do you want to experience? We spend so much time worrying about the pain we might endure if we take the risk, leave the job, finally get to therapy, have the conversation, face the truth that’s right in front of us, that we don’t consider the pain we’re already in—or what it’ll be like to die with that pain, knowing we could have, but didn’t.

It makes sense; it’s human. The pain we know, even if excruciating, is at least familiar. No surprises. As Parker Palmer said, “I had failed to understand the perverse comfort we sometimes get from choosing death in life, exempting ourselves from the challenge of using our gifts, of living our lives in authentic relationship with others.”

Not all pain is created equal.

To that end, not all pain is created equal. There’s the kind of pain that’s just more of the same: more destruction, more trauma, more suppression, more denial—the kind of pain that keeps things the same or makes them worse. I’ve heard Glennon Doyle (I think?) refer to it as “hot potato” pain that we pass off as quickly as we can, to be carried by our family or friends, right into the next generation.

And then there’s pain with a purpose because it’s in service of healing. Like the pain of recovering. The pain of telling a hard truth. The pain of breaking the cycle. The pain that comes from moving toward our “Bigger Yes” because it means we disrupt plans, fail expectations, and must leave certain people, places and things behind.

---

I guess this is all one big argument for being less afraid of the good kind of pain, and not because it won’t hurt, but because the will be an anesthetic. Maybe you’re back is against the wall like mine was, but maybe it’s not, and you’re just…waiting. For a better time, for the circumstances to be right, for it to seem less scary, and…there it is…less painful. I guess what I’m telling you is that that time will not come because it does not exist.

Rumi knew. “The cure for the pain is in the pain.”

Next up, fear of uncertainty and disapproval as reasons we deny our “Bigger Yes.”

Love,
Laura

You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing from Laura McKowen. I’m also on Instagram, and have written two books. I love engaging with you in the comments, which are open to paid subscribers, and you can subscribe here or give a gift subscription here.

---

Announcements and Offerings

Let’s Talk Book Publishing: A Live Subscriber Call on Sept. 7

On Thursday, Sept. 7th, from 12 - 1:15 pm ET, I’m hosting a live call for paid subscribers to talk about all things book publishing. I get so many questions about the process: how to find an agent, what model of publishing is best (self, hybrid, traditional), how book deals work, what my book deals look like, what it’s like to work with an editor, etc. that I figured it would be great just to do a big call. It’s an excuse to hang out, too!

I put this in our chat and asked for folks to submit questions/topics they’d like to hear about, and got some excellent ones. If you have your own questions, drop them in the comments.

I will record the call and make it available to paid subscribers for 30 days.

This call will be for paid subscribers, so if you’d like to be there, become one! You’ll get access to all my posts + the ability to comment + invitations to these live calls now and then + you help make this work sustainable for me.

Zoom details will be sent to paid subscribers prior to the event.

Join me for a writing retreat in Santa Fe, Sept. 22-24

Join me and other authors like Anne Lamott, Julia Cameron, Alle Elle, and others for an incredible weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The program is carefully designed to help you name your fears, overcome your blocks, heal the connection to your creative self, and move beyond your limitations like never before.

Join me and Anne Lamott, Julia Cameron, Alex Elle, and other authors for a transformative writing retreat in Santa Fe from Sept. 22-24. In-person and virtual options are available. Learn more. Get 10% off ticket prices with the code LUCKIEST1.

Kripalu “Push Off from Here” Retreat Oct. 20-22: Livestream Option Now Available

The in-person option for my Kripalu retreat October 20-22 is sold out, but you can now sign up for a digital pass to experience the whole weekend virtually for $99.

Learn more and register.

1. Please don’t read this as every cloud has a silver lining or some other bullshit because, dear God, no. Not all pain has a purpose or is a gift in disguise. Some pain is just pain.