Noticing Where There is No Pain

It is validating to recognize where there is pain, and where there is none.

Photo by Bas Peperzak on Unsplash

Several years ago, Gram, my maternal grandmother, asked how my leg was doing. She also had hypermobility and various health ailments that were a reliable source of bonding between us over the years.

At that time, I had been on a long journey with a hamstring tendon injury, thanks to running sprints in the military, just a couple days after a 10-mile race.

(Not a recommended recovery strategy.)

I had been through years of different treatments and therapies. But I was moving better and looking forward to sharing my weekly progress with her.

And then out of nowhere, I mysteriously developed a painful shoulder injury — a torn rotator cuff. Ugh.

So I filled her in, lamenting that just as my lower body healed, my upper developed a problem. After saying how sorry she was to hear it, she cracked,

“Well, half a loaf is better than none.”

I chuckled at the time as a mental image of a nicely toasted doughy body formed. She was never one to encourage focusing on the positive, but she did make frank observations.

And she was right.

I did have a functional lower body, even with a problematic shoulder. I could celebrate the working parts.

We can hold two opposing experiences at the same time — what hurts and what is well. It does not invalidate our pain to attend to the whole. It can help to ask, Where is there no pain?

Our brains are biased toward focusing on whatever the loudest signals are, yet outside of the noisy pain, there is often a lot of good. We don’t have to focus only on the worst stuff.

Acknowledging all of the things does not mean ignoring the painful parts — it means integrating them.

Gram passed away at 91 last year, and I regularly miss our discussions. I can almost hear her worry and wit, making spicy reflections on what is happening in our lives.

I feel sadness when I want to talk with Gram, and I am happy for the decades of conversations we did have. I am holding both emotions at once.

My upper body has been doing really well lately. My lower body… not so much. I wish I could give Gram an update. Yes, my right hip is uncooperative, and at the same time, my shoulders are really strong.

I smile and think of her, with gratitude for my half a loaf.

kek

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Note: This post was initially published on my Medium site.

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