Have you ever told someone that you had a horrible evening, and that you cried yourself to sleep the night before; only to be answered with “That’s good!!!” Scratching your head right now? Yeah, most people would. We experience a lot in this life, and some of it is not pleasant. But what if we chose to look at unpleasant situations differently? What if we approached it with a new perspective? Instead of saying, “Don’t feel sad” say, “Grieve as long as you need to”? What if we welcomed pain instead of pushing it away?

The truth about pain is that it is a GOOD thing. Yeah, it never feels good. But without it, happiness would be unappreciated. All feelings exist for a reason and they need to be felt, or else the consequences are crushing. I have spent much of my life stuffing. Stuffing feelings and emotions, judgments and critiques, secrets and horrible struggles. I didn’t like pain; no one does, so I tried to run from it. I discovered that you couldn’t. Pain is something that demands to be felt. I came to a point in my life where I was so engulfed in all of my distress that I jumped to desperate places in a matter of weeks. The avoidance caused it to condense over time. Eventually I was so overwhelmed by all the pain I never felt that I could only come to one conclusion; I needed to end my life to end the pain.

Over a series of two years I lost all control of myself. As a child I was abused in many different forms, so I began self-harming, abusing substances, and engaging in extremely dangerous promiscuity. I attempted to take my life. I was destroyed. They were all feeble attempts to escape my pain. I couldn’t look it in the face anymore and I wasn’t willing to ask for help. By the time college rolled around I entered into a relationship that I also wasn’t equipped for. It drove a vicious eating disorder that destroyed my body within weeks.

This is my personal testament to what happens when we avoid our pain. But it is also a story of redemption. As I entered into treatment at the beginning of May, I allowed myself to feel everything I avoided as a young girl. It hurt more than anything I had ever experienced before in my life; but it changed me. Once I was able to feel it to it’s full capacity, I was able to let go of it. There was nothing left to be done.

Here’s a concept for you to consider: we need to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Pain seems to be at the top of our lists. Learning how to accept our own grief will also allow us to accept the grief of others and comfort them more efficiently. When someone cries in public many people become extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and this is a mistake society has accepted for thousands of years. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and approach the person who is hurting. Ask how you can help, see what they need in that moment. As CCM artist Jason Gray wrote, “If you want to love someone search their soul for where it’s broken, take your heart and fill the cracks in.” Which could not be more truthful. As we push past our feelings of awkwardness, it will eventually become more tolerable. This is the difference we need to embrace. I think we should all strive to love each other a little more openly today.