Pain & Suffering: What We Forgot

There’s a conversation I return to often—one that asks not why we hurt, but why we suffer.

Pain is the body’s wisdom.

It is the sharp sting when we’re burned, the heavy ache of heartbreak, the hollow silence after loss. Pain is presence. It roots us in the now. It’s how life tells us something matters.

Suffering, though, is something else.

Suffering is what happens when we make pain mean something about us—when we decide it shouldn’t have happened, when we fight it, when we tell ourselves the story over and over again. Suffering is the echo, the haunting, the cage.

Pain is the wound. Suffering is picking the scab with our thoughts.

A deer gets hit by a car and limps away. She licks her wounds and moves on.

A human gets hit by betrayal and spends a decade replaying the moment, rehearsing every “what if,” building walls around the heart.

Pain is part of life.

Suffering is part of forgetting.

The Separation That Hurts

If we trace suffering to its source, what we find isn’t just pain—it’s separation.

Separation from what is.

We resist reality. We bargain. We wish it were different, more fair, less cruel. But reality doesn’t flinch. And the more we resist what is, the more we suffer.

Separation from ourselves.

We believe the voice that says we are not enough. That says we have to do more, be more, prove ourselves worthy. We forget the truth of who we are beneath the noise.

Separation from others.

We believe the lie of individualism. That we are supposed to do life alone, pull ourselves up, stay strong. That needing others is weakness. But it’s not. It’s the most human thing about us.

Separation from the sacred.

From the Earth, from God, from spirit, from soul. In this forgetting, we become consumers of things instead of creators of meaning. We try to shop our way out of the ache, but it never works.

A Crisis of Definition

We live in a world where success is defined by achievement.

Where wellness is marketed, not lived.

Where belonging is sold to us in branded fragments.

Where “doing it all on your own” is praised, while quietly eroding our health, our spirit, our joy.

We suffer because we have forgotten how to be.

How to sit with grief without rushing it.

How to feel joy without numbing it.

How to rest without guilt.

How to ask for help.

How to belong.

And so we ache.

Not just for healing—but for remembering.

The Remembering Begins Here

We wrote recently about the epidemic of doing life alone, how it fractures our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. We wrote about the myths of success and the hunger beneath our consumption. This blog, like those, is an invitation to pause.

To wonder:

What am I making this pain mean?

Where am I resisting what is?

Where have I forgotten I belong?

You are not your suffering.

You are the one who can witness it.

You are the one who can choose again.

This is not about bypassing pain, or pretending everything is okay.

It’s about daring to believe that you are whole even when hurting.

That there is wisdom in your body, truth in your tears, and grace in your remembering.

Ritual, Writing, Reconnection

If this inquiry stirs something in you, you are not alone.

You might:

• Light a candle and speak your suffering aloud, releasing it to the flame.

• Write the story you’ve been telling yourself—and then write the one your soul remembers.

• Sit with another in silence, not to be fixed but to be held.

This is the path of return, love.

From suffering back to presence.

From separation back to wholeness.

From forgetting back to the sacred.

And every step you take home is a healing for us all.