How do we take the pain in which we endure and let it be the soil in which we bloom?
By: Harper Hanson
Tags: Pain, Chronic Pain, Pain Management, Mental Health, Chronic Illness

How do we take the pain in which we endure and let it be the soil in which we bloom?

I think for a certain amount of time when our pain is fresh and new, it is almost as if it is a separate entity from us. We feel it, but it is almost as if it is a foreign body that enters us and makes us hurt. It is when our pain is no longer foreign, after it has been there for some time, that it becomes a part of our being. I believe only when you embrace your pain and accept it, can you truly begin to grow and heal. You have to feel the pain and let it orient inside you and you have to break in order to be put back together, for only when you are broken, can the light seep through your cracks.

We go through life with this notion that pain can not last forever, that ultimately the hurt will fade and we will move on, but what happens when this pain that is supposed to be temporary never leaves you?

I believe people who live with chronic pain are some of the strongest, but not because of the hand they were dealt, but because of the course of action they take to deal with the hurt they feel.

When I first started to struggle with chronic pain, I, like most, expected it to be temporary. It wasn’t until about a year of being in constant anguish that I began to fear that the pain I was in would never disappear. And that is truly a helpless feeling; the feeling and dread of being in misery for the rest of your life.

For nearly 6 years after this realization, I could not and did not want to accept the fact that I would be in pain for the rest of my life. This led me on a path to find a treatment and cure, that ultimately was severely damaging to the quality of my life. At age 15, I started treatments with physical therapy, narcotics, NSAIDs, braces, and spinal injections to try to ease some of my agony. After none of these treatments had helped, I went to more foreign treatments such as acupuncture, cupping, CBD oils, and more, but nothing seemed to work and my pain continued to grow.

It is a strange feeling to have spent all these years trying to help and take care of myself and watching them fail one after another. It had become not a judgment on my body, but my mind and sanity: although I was in pain and I knew that, I feared I was making it up, and even worse, I feared I was purposefully causing my pain or faking it.

At this point in time, I had been taken off Narcotics, the only thing that had seemed to bring me the tiniest bit of relief, and with this, I lost hope. Granted, there were other factors attributing to me feeling this way, but one of the main triggers of it was my pain being too much to endure.

I remember feeling as if my life had lost all its value. That I felt, as a person who was now severely disabled, I had nothing to give to the world, I believed my life was of no value.

I was 15 when I planned my suicide, it was at a time where I felt so alone and confused and broken that I didn’t want to have to live through what I was dealing with; I wanted my pain to end.

Thankfully my life was saved by my tenth grade English teacher before I had the chance to attempt. This was easily the darkest and hardest time of my life and I believe it was this way for many reasons, but mainly because I hadn’t processed all I had been through in my medical journey, I had suppressed it.

A little over a year after some of my darkest moments, I entered a pain rehabilitation clinic at The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL.

In this program, I had about 10 other patients in my group, and we were not allowed to speak about our pain and we were not allowed to share our diagnosis, and for me, this was a very strange concept because I had defined myself based on my diagnosis for so long, I had crushed Harper, my normal teenage self, and had become Harper the girl with pain. And for the longest time, I believed this definition of myself was a good thing because it allowed me to cope and deal with what I was facing, but ultimately after these three weeks, I learned it allowed me to worship my pain. What I mean by worship is that if I didn’t achieve anything great in my life, if I didn’t graduate high school, if I didn’t get a good job and contribute to the world, it’s okay because I dealt with chronic pain.

This program taught me to live life without the need for drugs to deal with my pain and taught me that I am still me even with these diagnoses, that I am still a person before an illness. And this change of mindset is what has gotten me here today. I still deal with 7/10 pain every day, and I still struggle, but there is so much I still want to do with my life besides struggle, and there is so much I still want to do with my life that I won’t let my pain dictate.

So I believe the cycle of chronic pain becomes a process of denial, anger and grief, identification, and ultimately acceptance, and only with acceptance can we move on with our lives and learn to lead with what we want to do, not what our pain wants to do. There is a great sense of power in having this pain and saying “No, you will not control my life;” it gives you the sense that your life is still yours and your battle is your choice to fight.