Everything in nature has a rhythm; it's part of the design, and the time processes take is not arbitrary, it's functional. This entry, for example, I started writing in May, and it began like this:

 

A few weeks ago, I started assimilating the sudden death of a friend. Today I heard myself say - during a call with my dad - "I'm fine. Yes, I'm fine but I feel tired, but I have a nice energy, but little of it, I'm eating well but I don't feel like doing much."

 

Then I hung up, went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror: "Ah, I'm sad, what I have is sadness."

 

Reflected there were dull eyes looking back at me that didn't understand much; tears started to run down my cheeks, my knees buckled, and I squatted, feeling the void take over.

A month later, Luna, my dog, died.

And all around I heard of many deaths of acquaintances. Of course, I couldn't write anything else about "hurting" for months; everything seemed brief, dry, and even inhumane.

I looked up the meaning of the word literally to see if I could pick it up again:

Hurt.

From Latin dolēre.

Conjug. like mover.

1. intr. Said of a part of the body: To suffer pain, by an internal or external cause. To have a headache, sore eyes, sore hands.

2. intr. Said of a thing: To cause sorrow or aversion. The incomprehension of people hurt her.

3. prnl. To regret having done something and feel sorrow for it.

4. prnl. Said of a person: To feel sorrow for not being able to do what one wishes, or for a natural defect, even if it is not one's fault or within one's power to remedy it.

5. prnl. To feel compassion for someone else's suffering.

6. prnl. To complain and explain the pain.

I swear I already know - experientially and cognitively - that death brings tearing, anger, sadness, memories, existential questions, a lot of tears, and also, strangely, some laughter followed by more tears. That is, I know that life hurts, and it is quite sensible not to want to feel pain; however, pain is necessary, it honors the loss and updates us to the present.

"To hurt is part of healing"

Looking into my own eyes went deeper than the "I have little energy" I mentioned to my dad; it was a: "I'm hurting."

Regarding human sensations, we have many prejudices that categorize them as good, bad, pretty, ugly, etc., and as we judge them, we create a plan to avoid, control, distract, justify, or mock them, among other things. My feeling with social networks and digital hyperconnectivity is that we - myself included - want to quickly move to the next phase where "we will feel more comfortable and fulfilled"; this feeling comes from the fact that usually what is seen in a 15-second video, in a well-thought-out post, is a result or the conclusion of the process but not the during. Here I go again, from a less painful place/time. I continue this article with the intention that we can consider some points to: first, not run over our pain, nor that of other living beings, and second, to be fairer with the experience of hurting, since just as there are situations for which we have no immediate solution, or no solution at all, it is better to accompany ourselves compassionately, until we can breathe again.

How to give pain permission?

1. Consider its context.

Absolutely nothing exists in a vacuum. Broadening our perspective to integrate the place, time, history, and tools we have is not only fair, but objective and coherent. The same situation can cause opposite experiences in different people, and different people can solve the same situation in various ways.

Considering the context not only allows us to rehumanize the process but also to accompany ourselves with dignity.

2. Give it enough time and space.

At this point, I'd like to invite you to imagine building a safe space for pain to exist. A nurtured space, free of judgments, of seeking solutions, comparisons, retroflection behaviors (putting energy on ourselves), habits that deteriorate and harm our health and end up hurting us, doubling our organism's work.

It is necessary that we make conscious space to listen to ourselves; I believe that healing begins from this place. We can practice free expression in writing, catharsis, it can be movements of our body, however creativity manifests itself. This is a great place to rely on a support network; the truth is that we need each other.

It will take the time it will take, and what we do in that time also matters.

Like an ultra-honest friend who lovingly shares their perception and forces us to review our own. The function of pain is to adjust us, helping us to fit the before with the now. Several stages have been described in the grieving process; none occur in a particular order, they come and go, moving us towards acceptance.

4. Free it from guilt.

We make it even heavier when we fall into the totalization or polarization of life, which leads to erroneous thoughts that might sound like: "if this ends, EVERYTHING ends," and we overload it with other conditions of our lives. Observe the other dimensions of our lives as crutches while we recover: sleeping, conscious eating, moving, having a support network, something that amuses us are some of the clamps that help us sustain and care for our sentient organism.

Guilt usually appears when we compare what we feel with "what we should feel"; we invade pain with introjects: "I shouldn't," "I should be strong," "I can't show weakness," "I can't feel this because there are worse situations," and finally we invalidate ourselves by disconnecting from the experience of navigating emotional demands and adding a useless feeling: guilt. Eventually, we will begin to consider responsibility, understanding it as: "how I choose to respond to this situation," and move from paralyzing guilt to more active responsibility where we begin to take care of ourselves again, and of others.

5. Try to find the lesson in it.

This one strikes me as very absurd - yes, that's a judgment. When we look for a lesson before the process, we underestimate the experience and try to cover up or justify its reason for being with a lesson. Life is a great mystery that we don't have to solve, just live. Later, further on - further than you're thinking - one unexpected day, as we continue living, we connect some dots and can realize that that loss, challenge, or farewell invited us - not to say forced us - to do something different, to deal with our frustration, and ultimately to mature emotionally, existentially, and spiritually.

Again, I ask you, don't try to look for the lesson before the experience.

In short, I suppose what I'm trying to express is that pain hurts more when we try to cage it, hide it, jump over it, or punish it. We need to let pain do its work so that it doesn't turn into suffering, to let it pierce us, traverse us, crush us, cleanse us, and finally regulate us.

I have heard - and tried so many ways to avoid it - that in the end, we don't heed what it is advising us. For me, particularly, it helps to surrender to it, to stop trying to box it as if we were opponents, and to let the very force of the pain get me back on my feet.

Two final questions if you are going through this right now:

• • What could you do to avoid making the pain worse?
  • What would bring you closer to love again?