You know what I’ve realised over the last few years? The lessons that change us the most often come from pain.

It’s not something most of us want to hear. We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid it, distract ourselves from it, numb it, or move past it as quickly as possible. But pain is often where the most meaning in our lives is created.

You can’t protect someone from pain. No one can. Life doesn’t work like that. What you can do is help someone feel safe while they’re experiencing it. That’s the difference. Because painful events are inevitable. They’re part of being human. Loss, rejection, failure, heartbreak, uncertainty. Everyone will face them at some point. And while we might wish we could remove those experiences entirely, doing so would remove something else too. Growth.

If you ask someone about a moment in their life that truly changed them, something significant, something meaningful, they rarely talk about an easy time. They talk about something hard. They talk about the breakup that forced them to rediscover themselves. The failure that pushed them in a new direction. The loss that made them rethink what really matters.

Pain has a strange way of sharpening our perspective. It strips things back. It forces us to ask deeper questions about who we are and what matters most. In many ways, it becomes the greatest teacher of meaning in our lives.

So maybe the question isn’t how do I get rid of pain? Maybe the question is: What do I need to feel safe while I’m experiencing it? Because the goal isn’t to eliminate pain. The goal is to build the resilience and support that allow us to move through it. Not avoid it. Not numb it. But experience it, and learn from it.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, especially when it comes to emotions. I don’t drink as much anymore. Sometimes the urge still shows up. Not because I miss alcohol, but because drinking softened the edges of things. When you stop doing that, you start experiencing everything more directly. Sometimes that’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s amazing.

There are moments now where I feel really good. Genuinely happy, energised, present. And oddly enough, it can feel unfamiliar. Almost like my brain doesn’t quite know what to do with it. In the past, that might have been the moment I’d grab a drink to “take the edge off” or bring things back down. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes I still do.

And maybe that’s the truth about being human: the moments that stretch us, challenge us, and sometimes break us open are often the same moments that help us grow into who we’re meant to become. Pain changes us, but it also reveals us. It shows us what we care about, what we’re capable of, and how deeply we can feel. And if we allow ourselves to move through it rather than run from it, we often find that the very experiences we once wished had never happened become the ones that taught us the most about who we are. 🩷