The Cure for the Pain Is In the Pain (No One is Coming to Save You)

I am ten years old, perched at the edge of a faded wooden dock on the shore of Keuka Lake, peering anxiously into the water below.

I have been here for some time. 

“Al, just jump!” my dad coaxes, and though he’s trying very hard to be patient, I can hear his frustration. 

It isn’t that I won’t; I can’t. I am frozen in place, wanting to leap and stay put in equal measure.

Please let me just jump. 

I am NOT jumping. 

Back home I am a fish. I head straight for the pool each morning when I wake up and I stay there until the mosquitos chase me out at night. But this…this is something entirely new. 

I don’t care for new. 

I remain motionless, contemplating the risks - real and imaginary - as the hot July sun moves across the sky, the other kids skirting around me like I am a dock ornament. 

What if there’s something alive in there? 

What if I touch a fish? 

Is there seaweed in there? 

What if I cut myself on a rock? 

What if I get water up my nose*?

My father eventually abandons his loving but ineffective strategy of reassurance and logic (“This is shallower than the pool at home!”) and in desperation, resorts to bribery: Ice cream. A new bike. A trip to Disney World. At one point I think we were up to a small RV.  

And then I finally do it and my feet are leaving the dock ohmygodIamterrified and then…I am not. This is nice. This was fun. 

From that point on, the weekend is wonderful. 

What I could not explain - not to my dad, not even to myself - is that I was not really afraid of the fish or the rocks or the water up my nose (well…maybe a little.) What kept me glued to the dock was the fear of the unknown. I want certainty: to know exactly what will happen and when and how, and how it will feel (and how I’ll feel about it), and for all their reassurance, that’s the one thing no one can give me. 

The only thing to do is jump. 

——————————————————————————-

Divorce is not a short leap into a clear lake on a hot summer’s day. It is a high dive for which you have not trained; it is skydiving while blindfolded; it is a bungee jump where Gary Busey attaches your harness. I have never - not once - regretted my decision to jump. But before I could jump, I stood on the dock for a long, long time. 

For codependent people** — even when they are fierce and smart and brave and strong and have great hair - leaving a marriage, in particular leaving a narcissist, is particularly hard: the relationship equivalent of gum in your hair (or for all of my parents out there, slime in your carpet.) In codependency, your sense of self is totally tied to your partner and to being a partner, which is both the reason people pleasers and fixers get into a relationship with a narcissist to begin with - and also the unfortunate result. 

I got married during a period where my life felt dangerously uncertain. I was desperate for a sense of control; something predictable and stable I could count on. Marriage gave me that, along with an identity (wife, one half of a couple) and a path forward (buy a house, support his dreams) not to mention an emergency contact and someplace to go for Christmas. If I jumped off this particular dock, I would face not only all expected pains of divorce and the crushing loss of the only family I knew; everything that needed healing in me was going to rush to the surface. 

Maybe we could just take a second honeymoon or get a dog instead.  

I am watching someone I love stand on the dock right now. Of course, she doesn’t feel like she’s on a dock; she feels like she’s being tossed into a volcano. She is brave and smart and strong, and more resilient than a Twinkie. But right now she’d give just about anything for an emergency exit; a loophole.

It’s what we all want.

Since my divorce first hit the rumor mill four years ago, I have been flooded with DMs, texts and emails from women who are facing a Big, Scary Unknown of their own. 

Some want to connect and share wisdom with someone who has been through it (and is willing to tell the truth); others are caught somewhere between trying to find the courage to face the pain and hoping for a loophole out of the whole mess. 

It’s a testament to how desperate we all are for community, for judgment-free spaces, that despite being blackballed as the Hester Prynne of Hilton, nearly every message I have received in the last four years has been from women looking for connection and support (incidentally, all of these women, many of them near strangers, have no problem stepping forward in their full truth and vulnerability; the only time I ever get a nasty call it’s always from a blocked Caller ID. I may have stood in some morally gray areas but one thing I’m not is a coward.)

No one seemed to care that I was “fallen”; instead of separating me from others, women saw themselves in me and reached out in droves, wanting to know how I’d learned to trust myself - and how I’d gotten back up again. 

And so with great kindness, as gently as I can, tell them not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear (even if Rumi said it first): 

The only cure for the pain is in the pain.

Whether they decide to stay or to go, whether it’s divorce or some other dark night of the soul, the answer is the same: the only way out is through. 

In her Dear Sugar advice column, Cheryl Strayed wrote a memorable and moving response to a man desperate to live the life he’d been dreaming of but terrified to take the risk:

“Walk without a stick into the darkest woods. Believe the fairytale is possible.” 

There is no other way. Any attempt to avoid or outrun the pain will only multiply it in the long run; every betrayal of self builds on those that came before it, like interest on a bad debt. Trust me, I speak from experience. 

I’m not saying it’s easy.

As my marriage dissolved my now ex-husband would often find me curled into a ball on the floor of our closet, weeping, something I hadn’t done since the days after my mother’s death when I would hide among the racks of her clothes, clutching her sweaters to my face and sobbing.

When I think back on those nights on the closet floor, wracked with grief, watching my family collapse before my eyes - again - I remember the pain, can literally feel it in my body. But I also feel a sense of pride and power that have never come from any other accomplishment. I remember just how terrified I was, how ferocious my grief was, and I think to myself, “But you did it anyway.” 

It takes extraordinary courage to knowingly and intentionally break your own heart, and the hearts of people you love, because you believe that in the long run, the pain is good and right and necessary.

In the beginning, there were times when I wondered if I was crazy; when it hurt so badly that I thought to myself, “What am I doing? Is it really all worth it? Will this ever get better?” I didn’t have the answers; all I had was a calm, clear voice inside of me that insisted there was no going back; we could only go forward. 

On the nights when I felt hopeless and afraid, I would lie in bed with my heated neck wrap - the kind full of beans that you stick in the microwave - draped across my sternum, its warmth helping to soothe a heartache so 

fierce I could actually feel it in my chest.

There were also days when healing felt magical, almost like flying: freeing and amazing. There were moments of breathtaking clarity and grace, breakthroughs that changed everything - like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when the tornado vanishes and suddenly the whole world is calm and in color.  

That first time you laugh again - really laugh, the belly kind - after experiencing grief and devastation is one of life’s greatest gifts: a wink from the Universe (or God, or whatever you believe loves us and gave us puppies and pizza) to remind us that joy endures and that, while life is short, it is so, so wide. 

I have felt this many times. 

Standing in Stacy’s kitchen with all my girls right after the fire, the room heavy with pain one moment, exploding with laughter the next. 

Sitting in my mother’s kitchen after her funeral when the crowd had finally gone, just me and my little family of four - Scott, my brother, my sister-in-law - doubled over at the absurdity of the 150 bookmarks the funeral home had given us: my mother’s obituary, crookedly cut from the newspaper, glued to a pink, floral background and laminated to a glossy, water-tight finish (“My mom died. Here, have a bookmark.”) 

But laughter through tears requires tears. 

Facing the pain does not mean stewing in it or letting it define your life; pain is not an identity. The goal is to surrender to it, learn what it came to teach you and walk back into the arena a better, stronger version of yourself - so you can get your ass kicked by love and life all over again. As you should. Because that’s the good stuff; that’s being alive.

I may have been walking without a stick through the very darkest parts of the forest, but I had my own personal St. Christopher: my therapist, who started as my marriage counselor. I could count on her to appear every two weeks to guide me, and I am not sure I would have gotten out of the woods without her; it would have taken a hell of a lot longer, anyway. I was a practicing mental health professional, emotionally intelligent, and born resilient; I did not believe I needed therapy. But it has been one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. If reaching out for help is your dock, consider this your sign to jump.

In that room, I learned to trust myself and my instincts again. I was given the language for what was happening to me, and to my kids, and made to understand that it was not - and had never been - my fault; that I was not responsible for fixing it - that I could not fix it, and that my only responsibility was to protect myself and my kids as much as I could. I would learn truths that would alter the course of my life and make my heart ache - for myself and for my kids - but also make me brave and whole. I would dig deep into my childhood and correct bullshit narratives and heal old wounds I hadn’t even realized were still showing up in my life every day. 

These realizations, all this healing, all of the true and real friends who appeared in droves to love me and to let me love them - it was only available to me because I showed up, willing to stand in the muck and do the work.

There’s no way through to the best version of yourself that doesn’t require confronting the worst. 

Or you can do what so many people do and resist; hide. 

“It isn’t fair.”

“This shouldn’t have happened to me.”  

But it did happen; it is happening. I don’t know much, but I know that if you spend your entire life wishing things were different or believing that you’re entitled to a different story or a different outcome - and people do it all the time - the only thing that will change is that you will eventually face the end of your life without ever having truly lived it. Let go of what was and start asking, “What now?”

Pain pushes until vision pulls. 

I learned this from the brilliant Michael Bernard Beckwith. We stay stuck in the pain until we have a vision for how we’ll use it: what we will create from the broken pieces; what we want for the next chapter of our lives. 

There are some kinds of pain you can’t make sense of, that never really heal. I will grieve for my parents all of my life. I lost two pregnancies and though I’ve made my peace with that pain, if you are to stop me on the street and ask me how old my babies would be today, I’ll know. I am deeply grateful for my divorce but I’ll always wish that it could have been different. And if you’ve lost a child - if you have endured the ultimate human suffering and survived, then in my estimation you are facing the pain simply by continuing to draw breath and show up in the world. You don’t have to jump today; you’re doing enough. Go get an ice cream. 

I am not advocating for divorce (…I would though.) I am not telling you to be reckless with your life or take risks you don’t feel called to take. 

I am telling you is that no one is coming to save you - except you. And that the only way out - of any kind of pain, any difficult decision, any true transformation and expansion of your soul or your life, or true and lasting change - is through the worst and hardest parts. 

In the face of great hardship, you must choose whether you will shrink; or expand. 

“With every single decision you make, large and small, you are always - always - either walking toward love or walking toward fear. There are no neutral actions. “ - Caroline Myss

Walking toward love is realizing that we don’t know as much as we thought we did, that the world is bigger than we imagined, and that most of what we worry about doesn’t really matter. It’s accepting that we aren’t in control, that we never were, and surrendering.

OR 

Or we walk toward fear: tighten the reigns, reject challenges to our belief systems and personal narratives, shrink from discomfort, pain, and change (especially change), all to give ourselves the illusion of control: because control gives us the illusion of protection.

To walk in the direction of love is to face the pain, the fear, the unknown, whatever it is that’s keeping you stuck - so you can start living; really and truly living. 

Work on yourself so you won’t be an asshole (note: alternate title for this post.) 

Do the healing for your kids, so you can give them a better, healthier parent and show them what courage and healthy communication and healthy, loving relationships and boundaries and resilience and self-love look like.

Walking toward love - expansion - is doing the ferociously painful work of healing because when we heal ourselves, live our truth, we make it safe for everyone around us to do the same. 

“There is no such thing as one-sided liberation.” - Glennon Doyle

You cannot set yourself free without, by default, setting everyone around you free as well. 

Try it and and see. 

You do not have to be perfect or wise or sure. You do not even have to be good. 

You just have to jump.  

*I’m 45 and I still can’t comfortably swim underwater without holding my nose; for the love of God, what is the secret? Swim instructors, please DM.

** Not me! And I have a note from my therapist to prove it.