It’s difficult to admit this
But I became a coach years ago in part because I was avoiding the pain in my Life
I touched the Light offered through coaching and that’s all that I wanted to pursue
(I was being one-sided again 😊)
But I got a wake-up call immediately after I started working with clients as a health coach
I only wanted to help these people achieve their inspiring goals
But the truth is
Some of them were in deep pain
Pain that I now know was part of their journey towards greater health
But at the time this was pain that I didn’t want to acknowledge
That I wasn’t used to holding
That I couldn’t hold
And so I told myself that these were people I wasn’t supposed to work with
That only therapists worked with people in pain
And coaches worked with people who weren’t experiencing it
That you only brought your dreams and aspirations to a coach
Yet as I continued to grow and go deeper into the work
Getting another coaching certification
I finally began opening up to my own deep pain
I had denied it for years
Because I thought that there was something wrong with me because I had experienced so much of it in my short life
That I was different from most “normal” people
And it eventually dawned on me
Even if outwardly we look pulled together and perfect
We all have pain! Each one of us experiences some form of pain!
Because we are all Human
We’ve just been taught to avoid it
Hide it
Deny it
Repress it
Distract ourselves from it by
Over-eating
Over-drinking
Over-sexing
Over-working
Over-doing everything
We have creatively come up with infinite ways to avoid the pain of being human
The critical thing we were never taught is to
Meet the pain
Lean into it
Feel it
Penetrate it
Experience it
I always thought my most painful emotions would swallow me up
That I would never get out of them
I’d be stuck
And so I danced around them
Suppressed them
Cheered myself up by buying new shoes when I was in corporate
Or bought into new self-development programs when I was a coach
This thing is
The pain doesn’t shift if you ignore it
It gets pushed into the unconscious
But it’s still there
Affecting us anyway
Even if we’re not conscious of it
For a long time I denied an aspect of what I now see as my shadow—unacknowledged anger that festered in my unconscious as a consequence of unfelt pain and grief and frustration
Until it erupted one day and I physically got hurt as a result
Once we can go into the pain
—not with the purpose of getting rid of it—
But to Live it
Experience it
Integrate it
We can then move through and on
A scar might be there forever where it once was
Because we can’t erase our history
But because we open-heartedly held ourselves in the pain
Steadfastly held the pain itself
We can keep walking this path called Life
Wizened
Fortified
Tested
Emboldened
Strengthened
Empowered
While still holding the pain
And in doing so
We meet Life
In full consciousness
The biggest loving gesture we could ever do for ourselves ✨
We understandably resist pain because it feels safer
More comfortable
But like a dear coach of mine pointed out
If you don’t know what and where the pain is
There’s no possibility of healing
To heal and grow
We go into the pain
And find out we won’t be destroyed in the process
We won’t get stuck
But we can be reborn, transformed, reconfigured
Yes, it will be painful and most likely messy
And scars may very well be the result
But those scars are now fully part of us
Adding to our strength
And humanity and depth
And once we go into the pain
Feel it
Hold it
Not to become identified with it
The other sacred task is to
Direct our unique Life energy
By creating and holding intentions
Just as if we were constructing a container out of them
Within this container of intention we put
~What we want to create in Life
~What’s important to us
~What we want to stand for in this Life
~The kind of energy we want to infuse into our relationships, our purpose
~How we want to behave in relation to all of that, all of Life
These containers hold, charge and channel our Life energy in the direction we intentionally choose
They help us remember where we want to go and how we want to act
Because that energy is going to go somewhere
If we aren’t consciously moving it
Giving it intent and direction
It’ll go to other places
Even if it flows towards and perpetuates staying stuck in worry or pain
When we learn to hold ourselves
In pain, in pleasure
Amidst the vast and uncertain waves of Life
When we learn to lean into Life
We are empowered to direct our unique energy into what we humans long for at a deeply (conscious or unconscious) level—
A Meaningful Life ⚡️❤️