It’s not “just” pain.

Beloved you:

I see you. I see how you move through the world carrying what hurts, and I see how carefully you've learned to speak about it. "It's just pain," you say. "It is what it is. I can't do anything about it, so I'm just gonna ignore it."

I understand why, sister.

There is real benefit in not letting pain pull you under, in finding ways to keep moving forward even when your body feels exhausted, unpredictable, or overwhelmed. But when I hear you repeat this refrain with a smile, I also know how much the dismissal costs you.

We have been taught that acknowledging pain is unacceptable. That if we stop and admit how much something hurts — physically, emotionally, or spiritually — we will somehow collapse into it. We fear becoming consumed by our pain, or (perhaps worse) being seen as self-absorbed, weak, dramatic, incapable, or stuck. So we learn to minimize and ignore our pain. To make our experiences smaller with our language.

Eventually, many of us stop recognizing how deeply we have internalized the belief that quietly enduring pain is strength.

May I offer you something else to consider? Something tender, and perhaps a little revolutionary?

Dismissal Is Learned Early

You've become an expert at minimizing what's hard. To “reframe” and put a positive spin on things, all with a smile. Physical or emotional challenges, chronic conditions, ongoing pain — you have learned to make these experiences smaller with your words so you can push them to the edges of your awareness. “I'm fine,” you say when someone asks how you're feeling during a flare-up. “It's nothing I can't handle,” you respond when the fatigue feels overwhelming.

And to be fair, this is often a survival strategy long before it becomes a habit. Many of us learned early that there was little room for our needs, our exhaustion, our grief, our sensitivity, our pain, or our limitations. We learned that productivity was rewarded, that composure was rewarded, that being “low maintenance” was the ideal. We learned to override ourselves to remain lovable and safe.

Of course, there is so much wisdom in adaptation. But survival strategies are not always sustainable when it comes to our relationship with ourselves.

At some point, we have to ask: what would it look like to stop abandoning myself for other people’s approval? What would it look like to turn toward what hurts instead of reflexively moving away from it?

Not to over-identify with pain or make suffering our entire identity. I know that is the fear. But what if acknowledging what is true is actually what allows more spaciousness, more honesty, and even more ease to emerge?

The Fear of Turning Toward Ourselves

One of the deepest fears many women carry is that if we truly acknowledge our pain, we will disappear into it.

That if we really feel our exhaustion, we will never get off the couch again. If we fully admit how lonely we are, how overwhelmed we are, how much grief we carry, or how much our body hurts, we will somehow disappear into the pain.

But in my experience, the opposite is often true.

When we stop spending so much energy resisting what is true, when we stop minimizing it, spiritualizing it, bypassing it, or pretending it isn’t happening, the body (with relief) begins to soften and open. We create room at the proverbial table for what is already here, and strangely enough, in making room for the pain, we also become more capable of experiencing the very real goodness that exists alongside it.

This is what I have found over and over again in my own life and in my work with women: both things can be true at the same time.

The pain and the ease.

The exhaustion and the resilience.

The grief and the beauty.

The limitation and the aliveness.

When we stop fighting ourselves so relentlessly, we often discover that much of our suffering came not only from the pain itself, but from the exhausting labor of trying to ignore and control the very real experience of our suffering.

When We Internalize Power-Over

Here is what I’ve noticed about so many of the women in my world: you care deeply about justice, tenderness, equity, and creating a more humane world. You believe in collaboration over domination.

And yet, in this pattern of trying to control and silence the body, you are enacting power-over dynamics against yourself.

The same systems that teach us to dismiss the suffering of others, to minimize experiences that interfere with productivity, to treat bodies as machines that should simply keep performing no matter the cost — these systems live inside us too. Every time we override exhaustion, shame ourselves for needing rest, minimize pain in order to appear capable, or force ourselves into compliance rather than relationship, we reenact those structures internally.

How we approach our pain and heartache is not just personal. The relationship we cultivate with ourselves inevitably shapes the way we move through the world with others. If we do not know what power-with feels like in our own bodies, how can we fully create it in the world around us? If we only know how to dominate ourselves into functioning, if we only know how to override our humanity in order to remain productive or acceptable, then of course those same dynamics continue replicating themselves collectively.

Learning to listen to ourselves with tenderness is not self-indulgence. It is not weakness. It is not narcissism. It is sacred practice. Practice for the world we want to live in. Practice for relationships rooted in respect rather than domination. Practice for inhabiting our humanity instead of trying to conquer it.

As the Buddha said, “No one is more deserving of your kindness than you.” A new world begins with the relationship we cultivate with our own bodies.

Moving Into Relationship With Yourself

Let's be honest: there is very little room for pain or illness in our culture. To do it “correctly,” we are taught to fight, transcend, optimize, overcome, stay positive, and keep going no matter what.

And I want to be clear that I am not suggesting we collapse into helplessness or stop participating in our lives. I am not advocating hopelessness or passivity. What I am suggesting is something far more sustainable.

I am suggesting moving from dismissal into relationship.

What if instead of saying, “It is what it is,” we said, “This hurts, and it matters”?

What if instead of automatically overriding exhaustion, we asked ourselves whether we could soften something, make room for rest, ask for support, or move through the day differently?

What if we stopped treating the body like an obstacle to overcome and became curious about what it might be trying to communicate?

This is what power-with the body looks like. Not drowning in our experience, but not abandoning ourselves either. Not collapsing into pain, but not waging war against ourselves in the name of “health”.

But most importantly, you do not have to choose between acknowledging your pain and living your life fully.

You do not have to minimize your experience to prove your strength.

You can be hurting and whole. Exhausted and still beautiful. Struggling and still deeply alive.

A Different Conversation With the Body

There may still be pain in your body. There may still be grief, limitation, uncertainty, exhaustion, or fear. But there is also beauty, connection, pleasure, love, meaning, and ease.

The invitation is not to deny one in favor of the other. The invitation is to stop abandoning yourself in the midst of your own experience and grow your capacity for both.

Because strangely enough, when we soften toward ourselves, when we stop treating our humanity like an inconvenience or a problem to fix, our internal ecosystem begins to shift. Sometimes even physically. We experience less pain because we are no longer layering shame, resistance, dismissal, and self-abandonment on top of what already hurts.

We begin listening differently.

And in that listening, there is wisdom.

Your Invitation

If you recognize yourself in this pattern of minimizing pain while longing for a different relationship with yourself, I would love to support you.

This work is not about becoming hyper-focused on pain, nor is it about fixing yourself. It is about unlearning our conditioning around pain and learning how to listen to your body’s innate intelligence. How to create more space, more truth, and more ease inside your own life.

Schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation to explore whether this work is right for you. Together, we can begin listening to what your wise body may be asking for beneath the noise of conditioning, dismissal, and self-abandonment.