The Holy Pain of Becoming

From the outside, you may not look changed—or maybe you do. But inside, oof, it’s been intense: inspiration and frustration in nearly equal measures, flares of self-doubt on the heels of big breakthroughs, leaps forward followed by lulls of inertia and bewilderment…

Many of us feel like we’ve been in a cosmic birth canal for months: pushed and pulled by a force both inside and beyond us, intuitively aware of a light at the end of the tunnel, but unable to rush the arrival…

Can you relate?

We are, individually and as a species, at a pivotal moment: in the hot center of creative process, of expansion, experiencing a transition that heralds not only horizontal change but vertical transformation: profound shifts in perspective, the shedding of outgrown ideas and patterns, old wounds flaring as greater capacity calls for healing, and, threading it all, the call of authentic desire, of inspiration urging us out of status quo into our vital becoming.   

As we emerge from the pandemic, I, like you, have taken stock: returning to “normal” isn’t what I want, because normal was insufficient.

Intensified closeness and separation illuminated fissures in our personal habits and ways of thinking, in our relationships and local communities, and in our national and global collectives that we don’t want and ought not continue to endure, overlook, or accommodate. Grief, immediate and pungent, tenderized us, quickened our compassion, and piqued our hunger for authenticity as well as our impatience with rote performance.

Equally significant—though often lacking from heartfelt laments that focus on what we’ve lost and what we should fear—is that while routines were upended and seeming certainties thwarted, we humans responded more often than not with ingenuity and imagination, not to mention compassion and care, reminding ourselves of our creative and collaborative nature, of our natural inclination to innovate and solve, to grow and evolve, even—especially—in the face of formidable challenge.

We’re at a crossroads, and we feel it: we’ve been both profoundly rattled andreminded of our innate capacity—our intrinsic need—for purposeful growth.

These are precisely the conditions that make way for inspired change, for new life. But here’s the thing:

All too often we mistake the labor pains of transformation for symptoms of something gone wrong—in us, in our decisions, in others, or all three.

So, we retract. We confuse the hot center of creative process—a place stippled with uncertainty, queasiness, self-doubt, second-guessing, and fear, as well as emotions such as sadness, sorrow, grief, and even anger—with death instead of life, and we swerve. Not only do we delay or abandon our goals and dreams, but we slide into the trance-like malaise of “fine” that siphons our vitality by corroding trust in not only what lights us up but also what turns us off.

Sound familiar?

I’ve done this plenty.

I’ll initiate change in my life, and then, when fear flares—as it inevitably will—I’ll make it mean that I’ve made the wrong choice: I’ll doubt myself and second-guess; I’ll analyze ad nauseum and spin in my head; I’ll conjure well-worn stories about being too much or not enough; I’ll self-shame and internally blame; I’ll believe I’m confused; I’ll be preoccupied but unable to focus; my sleep will suffer, then I’ll cinch the cycle by distracting myself from this whorl of discomfort in any number of unhelpful ways—my favorite being dating men who don’t quite fit then fixating on the fallout of my choices.

How about you?

Each of us has our version of this cycle, of reactive patterning that we default to when we don’t know how to parse the clean pain of growth from the dirty pain of fearful thinking. Instead of dating drama, maybe your favorite distraction is overeating or overdrinking or Netflixing, picking fights with your partner or family, overworking or overporning or overexplaining, or simply underdelivering.

Whatever your spin, I want you to know that your pattern does not define you, and that breaking the cycle is less mysterious and complicated than you might think:

It begins when we shift from resisting our pain to feeling it.

Growth is creation, which means that all transformation, however subtle or symphonic, involves contraction.

We must remember that when the pain of becoming is most acute, we are opening, dilating, making way for new life.

This is what I call holy pain.

Holy pain is productive, not prohibitive. It softens us, teaches us to dig deep, sharpens self-awareness, ignites self-compassion and courage, engenders confidence—which, in toto, exponentially extends our bandwidth, our capacity for both receiving and creating.

When we resist (make wrong or try to avoid) the holy pain of becoming—fear, self-doubt, shame, guilt, grief, sorrow, anger—we close, energetically, emotionally, and physically: inspiration wanes and motivation drains. We arrest our momentum and return to feeling muddled, out of sync. We slip into victim mentality, feeling helpless or resentful. We long for rescue. We bargain with the part of ourselves that said yes! as we try to make peace with settling. 

But we live in a culture that often treats pain, particularly emotional pain, and especially the pain of leaders and healers, as a liability, a problem to be hidden and solved, rather than a portal to radical presence, deep healing, and inspired action—the trifecta of unbridled potential.

Even personal development rhetoric reinforces this mainstream messaging when it insists on creating a “positive” vibrational state without also teaching that unprocessed emotion not only cannibalizes vibrational frequency, but accumulates as opportunity ignored, the bloated absence of “almost.”  

Feeling lost, scared, uncertain, grief-stricken, heartbroken, guilty, unsure—these emotions are core to the experience of conscious growth: of becoming more authentic, of saying yes to our truest longings, of saying no to what we've outgrown or what didn't fit to begin with, of risking heartache in honor of love, of risking failure in pursuit of our passions, of taking the leap, of having faith. 

But when we profane the holy pain of growth by treating it as dangerous, inappropriate, weak, needy, excessive, indulgent, or just plain distracting, we don’t just muzzle self-actualization and cap our impact and potential for success, we become complicit with conformity at its worst: we abandon imagination, the fuel of courageous inquiry and inspired creation, without which innovation sputters, fear becomes status quo, and self-protection trumps co-creation.

So, what can we do?

How do we accept the very feelings that we’ve been taught to avoid, and conditioned to fear?

How we do overcome the belief that our suffering is best kept hidden, lest it out us as a fraud?

How do we become present to pain that we fear will overwhelm us, especially if those feelings are born of trauma, as often they are?

The first and most important step is to shift from resistance to acceptance.

This means being willing to consider that your pain is working for you, not against you. It means shifting, on purpose, from being critical—of the pain and of ourselves for having it—to being curious about it.

It means lifting our attention out of our thoughts and into our bodies.

It means laying down these questions: How can I fix this? or What’s wrong with me?

 … and asking these instead: What am I feeling? and Where and how is this emotion showing up in my body?

When I was in labor for first time I’d never felt a pain more intense or all-consuming. What kept me steady was my knowing that this pain was good. It was helping me birth my baby. I knew that when I was experiencing a “contraction” my cervix was opening. This knowing was essential: it’s what kept me present to my pain instead of panicked by it. It’s what allowed me to regulate my nervous system through breath and movement. It’s what enabled me to stay in my body, to dance with sensation as it intensified and waned. It’s what helped me move past the name “pain” into an experience of pure sensation, not good or bad, just more and less intense.

This knowing gave me courage to keep going when I wanted to quit and gave me confidence to dig deeper than I’d ever done to source the strength to do so. If I’d been afraid of the pain, or more precisely, afraid of my fear, I’d have automatically resisted the process of labor. I’d have closed, not opened; tensed, pulled in. My baby’s birth would have been prolonged, made harder and even more painful. By feeling my fear and being curious about my pain I could let them guide me.

When I surrendered to what is instead of fighting against it, I learned, paradoxically, how to lead myself. I learned that pain isn’t the problem, nor is fear. The problem is our fear of feeling either of these things.

During the birth of my second child, I encountered a different kind of pain. After a dizzyingly fast labor—90 minutes from start to finish—I lay exhausted, my baby boy at my breast. I’d sourced every ounce of focus to meet the intensity of this birth: all crescendo, no diminuendo. Even the skilled assistance of my then-husband and midwives felt more distracting than helpful. You can imagine, then, the luxury of those minutes following his arrival… suspended in a bubble of no-time, every cell unfurling into a field of formless peace…

At first, the pain was hard to place: pressure from the inside out, a low, mounting ache. My midwife smiled, assured me it was the afterbirth, that it would pass in no time. I relaxed, breathed into it, consciously softened. But the pain didn’t wane. Regardless of my efforts, the ache in my abdomen became more acute. The more I leaned in, the louder it got; as if annoyed, the ache grew more insistent.

This pain felt different than the pain of giving birth, more Warning! than Welcome!. Whereas the pain of birth responded to being felt and endured, this pain sounded my body’s alarms: quickened heartbeat, narrowed focus, adrenaline surging.

When my midwife inserted her fingers, still assuring me I was okay, she found a hematoma the size of a cantaloupe rapidly swelling inside me. The next several minutes blurred as a nurse swept my baby away and I was wheeled at top speed down a blinding-bright hallway, an epidural was injected, an I.V. was inserted, oxygen was administered, and I slipped into a half-awake state, here-but-not. I yearned for my baby. I felt nothing below my waist. The surgeon was brusque and efficient. He drained the hematoma, lanced my entire birth canal, then sewed it up: 12 inches of stitches. Had we waited much longer, my vaginal tissue would have burst and I’d have lost a dangerous amount of blood. Not long ago, I’d have likely died in childbirth.

All pain is purposeful; it always has something to tell us.

But when we habitually resist our pain—when we repress it, distract ourselves from it, blame someone else for it, or rush to “fix” it—we not only abort or delay the birth of our deepest desires and dreams; we dull our ability to discern between the kind of pain that says This way! You’re headed in the right direction!, and the kind that says Danger Ahead! Turn back!.

That is, when we live in fear of pain, and in fear of feeling our fear, we literally lose our way: stress hormones flood our neural pathways; regions of the brain responsible for connection, imagination, creativity, and problem solving shut down, and default thinking and action take over.

Actualizing our true potential requires that we shift our resistance to pain.

The reward, and the paradox, is that when we learn to feel our uncomfortable (painful) emotions, including the fear of pain itself, we become far more successful at identifying and healing its source and spend much more time in peace, flow, inspiration, and creation.

Learning to feel instead of “fix” your pain is the path to presence, and presence is the key that unlocks your true potential. 

I see this over and over in my own life and in the lives of the thousands of students and clients I’ve mentored.

I’m passionate about this lesson right now because we have so much to gain: deep healing, interception of intergenerational trauma, liberation from addictive habits, increased intimacy in all relationships, unleashed self-expression, inspired collaboration, radically improved health and quality of life, interdependent thriving with each other and the planet. In short, a collective transition from surviving to thriving.

If you have a dream you’re stalled out on, are struggling to move beyond “almost,” have lost touch with what lights you up, feel disconnected and distracted with those you love and with yourself, or just haven’t hit that sweet spot as the creator or leader you know you can be, I want to help.

Here’s a short video I made you that will get you started.

Here’s one of my favorite books on the subject.

Here’s another.

If podcasts are your thing, this one is excellent.

And here’s an inspiring and educational TEDx talk.

If you want next-level, personalized support, sign up here for a free 60-min Breakthrough Session with me. We’re not meant to do it alone.

Love,

Kirstin