Your Pain Should Never Define Who You Are

Sometimes, you define yourself based on the wounds of the past and the pain you've experienced from them. However, you're much more than that. Just remember how resilient you are.

You’re so much more than what caused you so much pain. More than your wounds that still sometimes hurt because they aren’t completely healed. The same wounds that remain deeply embedded in your memory resurface from time to time and give you a really bad day.

You’re far more than anything that’s ever made you suffer and left you scarred. More than your bitter tears, more than the feeling of suffocation that sometimes still envelops you, and more than the pain caused by your efforts to keep fighting.

You can’t erase your suffering. It’s been a part of your journey. Furthermore, it’s your strength that defines you, although there were times when it seemed to falter and even disappear. As a matter of fact, you’re braver and more incredible than you can ever imagine. You just need to learn to take a look at yourself.

Resilience, moving away from your pain

Even if life hasn’t always been easy for you and your path has been full of potholes and obstacles, you can’t define yourself solely from your wounds and your pain.

Do you know why? Because you’re more than that. Just think of how you’ve recovered, the tremendous effort you’ve made to get out of that painful situation, and your ability to carry on and put your life back together, piece by piece, despite all the turbulence.

You’ve escaped the exhaustion, the apathy, and the pain you dragged around for so long. You carried on because you somehow knew eventually it would end and you’d find yourself on solid ground.

Of course, along the way, you went through all manner of emotions. Sometimes you were only a step away from giving up but your courage saw you through. The evidence of that is that you’re here today. This is because you were resilient. You knew that, despite all the difficulties, you’d eventually survive.

Maybe at the time you didn’t know why it hit you so hard. However, you didn’t allow yourself to get dragged under. You plucked up courage and moved on.

The wisdom behind suffering

Perhaps you haven’t yet been able to heal your wounds and you’re in the process of rebuilding your life. That’s okay. The walk along the path away from pain is never a brisk one. You have to take it slow and be both patient and mindful.

Eventually, you’ll find yourself on dry land, having navigated through all the storms. However, the important thing is for you to see beyond your experiences. To be able to examine them and learn from them.

You might flee from suffering because you know, or rather you’re afraid of, what it entails. However, nobody is immune to suffering. Everyone suffers to some extent. For this reason, instead of trying to escape your pain, try to learn how to experience it differently.

Moving on

This isn’t easy, even more so when it involves facing unpleasant circumstances and emotions. However, you must move on. You can rebuild your life. You simply need to learn how to integrate your suffering as just one more chapter in your life story. Only a part of your story, not its defining factor.

What do you need to do it?

• Acceptance. Recognizing your pain and giving it space will allow you to stop punishing yourself. Your day-to-day routine will no longer be haunted by those ghosts from the past. Furthermore, you can light up everything inside you that defines you. Your strength, your ability to fight, and your desire to live and keep hoping.
• You can also help yourself by establishing the whys and wherefores of your pain and suffering. In fact, you’ll learn more from these answers than you could ever imagine.

The main thing is to get below the surface of your suffering. You need to navigate through it, always remembering that you’re so much more than your pain. Your life is made up of chapters that only make sense when they’re put together. Your story is so much more than your wounds.