Two Saturdays ago, my wife, Martha, and I found our son sitting cross-legged on the grass on the side of a busy street. A police officer stood above him. We had been planning on taking him to see a doctor. Our son disappeared before we could.
Within a short period of time, he had crossed a significant distance between our home and where we found him.
He had been going through some mental health challenges that week, which is why we planned to take him to see a doctor that morning. His mental illness propelled him into a state where he would be taken by ambulance to the hospital rather than by us.
Martha and I have worried about this kind of thing happening for years. Since both of us, and many others in our families, deal with mental health challenges, we knew there was a high likelihood that our children would face similar challenges.
Knowing challenges are inevitable and experiencing challenges are two different things, though. Expectations provide a form of buffer. Experience removes the buffer and places you directly in the action.
The pain we felt as our son fought the thoughts in his head on the side of the road left both Martha and I feeling empty inside. It’s one thing to experience a bout of mental illness yourself, I told her, and another thing to watch our son experience it.
From personal experience, I know how difficult it can be to confront a part of yourself that seems determined to muck things up.
We stand on one side of the dark forest, through which we must travel, wondering what dark things we will encounter.
One thing that gives me hope in all of this is knowing that I have made it to the other side of the dark forest. It’s not a trip I want to repeat, and yet I am grateful to serve as a guide for my son’s journey.
I expect the journey ahead will reveal things that we haven’t faced before. I expect, like everyone’s journey, our son’s journey will be unique to him.
Another thing that gives me hope is an insight I gained a couple weeks ago when I was going through my own battle with pain. I had the thought that maybe if I reframed the way I was looking at pain I might be able to handle the pain better.
I used the way others have reframed FEAR as inspiration.
- • False Evidence Appearing Real
• Face Everything and Rise
• For Everything a Reason
What could I do with PAIN? As I pondered possible acronyms, I came up with Promises Appearing in Negative. Along with the words, I envisioned a photographer’s dark room. Film looks dark and very different before processing than it does after the process is complete.
Perhaps, that is the way pain works as well. In the beginning, it looks dark and murky. It’s a little difficult to see the value in the film. Only after the film is processed does it look more promising.
As we face the challenges ahead with our son, we are hoping that the pain all of us are feeling is developed into something more promising.
As authors and speakers, we have the opportunity to help our audience find the light on the other side of the dark room. We have the opportunity to transform pain into healing.
Golden Word: perceive Latin per- (thoroughly) + capere (to grasp, take). When we perceive the healing in pain, we transform the pain into something meaningful.
Golden Quote: Sometimes you must hurt in order to know, fall in order to grow, lose in order to gain, because life’s greatest lessons are learnt through pain.
– Nagato
Golden Speech: Why we need pain to feel happiness In this TED talk, social psychologist, Brock Bastian, urges us to reconsider what really makes us happy, and tells us why we need pain to experience any happiness in life at all.
Golden Question: What is the pain you help your audience transform into something promising?
This post is from the Golden Nuggets newsletter sent out each Tuesday morning to authors and speakers who want to deliver a richer story.