How long are you going to live in Fear?
Fear of using your body, moving your muscles?
How long are you going to hide behind your Mask of Pain? – the mask that is really a straitjacket around your mind.
That mask which has become your identity: – I am someone who lives with Pain and that is why I can’t carry the shopping / hang out the wet laundry / go for a long walk / swing from the chandeliers!
A challenging question! And one I have earned the right to ask – because I have been that person.
I have lived that small life of darkness, where the shadows seemed so real…
Fear of yet more pain shrank my life until I reached a crisis and knew that I needed to start digging deeper in my soul, and turn towards the light.
For arthritic me, it was finding a personal trainer willing to work with someone as weak and protective as I had become.
And now? I can walk for miles!
Sometimes what my patients need to hear is reassurance that yes, they can do this, they can reclaim a life of movement and joy.
But this can be tough when your whole identity has become one with your pain, when you feel that your pain defines who you are – to yourself and to the world, when your pain limits how you think you can live your life.
Dig deep, my pain-riddled friend, you can do this – you too can turn towards the light. You can learn to slough off that old skin of your stiff shrunken life that no longer fits you, no longer serves you, that is no longer You.
New You can learn to stand tall, to respect yourself, to love yourself, even to love your body with all its aching imperfections.
Do you want your pain to beat you, to win at the game of life?
Make peace with your pain, thank it for the lessons you have learned from limping side by side for so long, and turn your face to a brighter future.
Yes you may still have pain, yet you can learn to be at ease with it, not frightened of it, not kow-towing to its every whim.
Let it know that you are the Boss!
Photograph by Lady A Studios in St Albans