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."

There is wisdom in this approach without a doubt.

There's real benefit in not letting pain pull you under, in finding ways to keep moving forward. But when I hear you repeat this refrain with a smile, I know how much it costs. May I offer you something else to consider, something tender and revolutionary?

Dismissal is learned early

You've become an expert at minimizing what's hard. Physical challenges, chronic conditions, ongoing pain—you've learned to make these experiences smaller with your words, to 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. It's a survival strategy, and it has served you so well over the years. But I ask: what would it look like to turn toward what hurts instead of away from it?

Not to get stuck there. Not to get looped into it, or over-identify with it, or get pulled under by it—I know that's the fear. But to engage with what is true with curiosity and tenderness?

Turning toward the pain

When we turn toward what hurts, what is confusing, what is painful — something extraordinary becomes available. As we hold it with tenderness, we make room at the proverbial table. In creating that room, the irony is that we can more clearly experience the vast blessing, goodness, and ease that exists alongside the pain. Here's what's remarkable: when we stop fighting our experience, when we cease the exhausting work of pushing it away, that resistance itself often dissolves—and with it, much of the suffering that comes not from the pain itself, but from our battle against it.

Both things can be completely true in our system at the same time: the pain and the ease, the difficulty and the resilience, the exhaustion and the strength that keeps us moving.

The politics of diminishing our experience

Here's what I've noticed about those of you in my world: you are deeply committed to an equitable and just world. You believe in power with rather than power over. You work to dismantle oppressive structures wherever you encounter them - but it's more challenging when that structure is within you.

The same systems that teach us to dismiss others' pain, to minimize suffering that doesn't serve productivity, to treat bodies as machines that should just keep running—these are the voices we've internalized. When you speak of your pain in that dismissive, diminishing way—when you treat your own body and experience as something to be minimized or ignored—you are embodying the very power-over structures you want to dismantle.

How can we expect to dismantle the external structures if we don’t know what it feels like in our own body? By learning a new way of moving through the world with ourselves, we find more ease, yes, but we become the future we seek to create. We embody power-with through our approach to our own bodies, our own pain, our own experience.

Having a different conversation

Let's be honest - there is very little room for pain or illness in our culture. To do it "right" you have to fight, to keep going, to overcome the pain or illness. Let me be clear: what I'm suggesting isn't about getting mired in what's hard or letting pain take over your life. It's about moving from dismissal to acknowledgment, from ignoring to engaging in dialogue.

Instead of "it is what it is," what if we said: "There is pain, and it is hard - can I do a little less today?" or "There is exhaustion, and it matters - can I make room for some rest in my day?" Yes, we're going to keep going (because that is who you are)—not by pushing away from what's difficult, but in conversation with it.

This is power with the body. This is listening without drowning, acknowledging without surrendering, holding space for what hurts while also leaning into what is good, where there is ease.

The both/and of living in a body

You don't have to choose between acknowledging your pain and living your life fully. You don't have to minimize your experience to prove your strength. You can hold both: the reality of what's challenging and the truth of your resilience.

This is what becomes possible when we turn toward ourselves with the same compassion we offer others, when we extend the same grace to our own bodies that we believe every body deserves. And ironically, this softening to our own experience often decreases pain and puts us in touch with a greater wisdom and knowing about ourselves and how to move forward.

The Invitation

So here's my invitation: What if you tried speaking to yourself the way you would speak to a beloved friend? What if you let both your pain and your strength be real, acknowledged, and honored?

What if the path forward isn't around your challenges, but through them—not drowning in them, but walking alongside them with wisdom, with grace, with the revolutionary act of treating yourself with tenderness?

This is how we change the world: one conversation with ourselves at a time, one moment of turning toward instead of away, one acknowledgment that we can be both hurting and whole, struggling and strong, tired and still beautifully, powerfully here.

With love and recognition of all that you are,

Nona

Partner with your body’s wisdom

Do you recognize yourself in the pattern of minimizing what hurts while longing for a different way? I'd love to support you in learning to turn toward yourself with the same tenderness you offer others to reduce pain and create more ease.

Working together, we decode what your body is trying to communicate, moving beyond the exhausting cycle of pushing through pain to discovering the profound healing that becomes possible when you listen deeply. Discover how to transform patterns of limitation into pathways of wholeness by remembering how to partner with your body’s innate wisdom.

Let’s create the sacred space where both your pain and your resilience can be honored, where healing accelerates through witnessed, attuned connection.

Schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation to explore whether this work might be the missing piece in your healing journey. Let's discover what becomes possible when you stop fighting your experience and start listening to what your beautiful, wise body is trying to tell you.