On Pain, Stillness and the Gift of Allowing

I’ve been carrying something heavy lately. Not a crisis, not a single dramatic event - just a deep, persistent flatness. A kind of quiet exhaustion that no amount of busyness will fix. And I’ve been trying to figure out what it means.

The truth is, I’ve been living with significant physical pain while simultaneously navigating several serious health challenges. Nothing terminal, but the kind that occupies your mind and body completely. The kind that most people around you can’t see.

I’ve been pushing through anyway. Because that’s what I was trained to do. You see, I was raised to believe I always need to be doing something. That stillness is laziness. That rest must be earned. That productivity is proof of worth. I’m beginning to understand that is a lie. And one that is costly.

The “should” voice is often the loudest voice in the room. But when your body is asking for something else entirely, ignoring it isn’t strength. It’s a slow accumulation of exhaustion.The danger, for me, isn’t a single event. It’s years of override. Years of pushing past signals. The pain tolerated, the rest refused, the stillness sacrificed on the altar of productivity.

Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score that our physical experience is never separate from our emotional and psychological one. The body, he argues, holds everything we try to push past - every unprocessed feeling, every ignored signal, every moment we white-knuckled our way through.

“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our i inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”

Befriend. What a radical word when you’ve been at war with your own body, pushing through pain, overriding its signals, telling yourself you’ll rest later. Physical pain is exhausting in ways that go beyond the physical. It drains the color from everything. It takes a toll that accumulates quietly, invisibly, until one day the weight of it is simply undeniable.

I also realized I’ve been carrying the weight of the world – a constant barrage of outside noise. Our nervous systems were not built for this. The constant volume of the world is cumulative. When you’re already depleted, already managing pain, already absorbing more than your share, it doesn’t just feel like too much. It feels like an assault.

Simple disagreements feel violent. Headlines feel like emergencies. The world is loud.Tuning it out, I’m learning, is not avoidance. It’s discernment. It’s survival.

I am I finally giving myself permission to just be still. Not as a reward for finishing my to-do list, not after one more errand or phone call. Simply permission to nourish my mind, body and spirit. A deep, much needed and longed-for breath. That breath is loosening sixty-nine years of something. It’s cleansing, refreshing and healing. I'm choosing to fill space that could be mine without the noise. I’m all in.

If you are living with pain - physical, emotional, or the quiet grinding kind that has no name - and you’re still pushing through, still producing, still performing: I see you. And I want you to know that the pushing itself has a cost. The body is keeping score.

I ask you: What would it feel like to give yourself full permission to be still – not because you’ve “earned” it, but simply because your nervous system is begging for it? It's a question I'm asking myself daily. And, I encourage you to take some time to simply be still and quiet. Ask the Holy Spirit dwelling within you to fill your mind, heart and soul with the peace that passes all understanding and brings the gift of healing.

Have a Sacred Sunday, filled with peace, healing and stillness.

Namaste.