Finding Strength and Grace Through Suffering

Recently I've had a number of clients speak with me about serious emotional issues in their lives around loss, separation and different kinds of traumatic change.  For most of us, dealing with the loss of a loved one, the pain of divorce or separation or other sudden traumatic disruptions to our lives leaves us feeling alone, isolated and in a seemingly hopeless  place.  It is during these times we often feel helpless with limited options for help and support, and even less energy and motivation to think and act resourcefully for ourselves.  Through my work with my coaching clients, my past experience as a grief and trauma counsellor and my own life experience, I have learned that sometimes our darkest and most painful experiences can not only strengthen and make us more resilient, but can also provide us with unique and unexpected opportunities for growth, learning and positive self transformation. 

I invite you to consider that pain, sadness and grief don't exist in isolation but silently coexist with pathways to higher levels of personal development and consciousness.  If you think about it, when we are drifting along happily with no upsetting issues or concerns, we tend to coast and enjoy the ride and it is not typically a time when we actively engage in self reflection or ways to improve ourselves.  In other words, for most, when things are good, there is often lower motivation to initiate positive change. However, when things are terribly wrong, our attention becomes forcibly drawn to the areas in our lives that need change, healing and repair.  Negative emotional states can have positive side effects for us that we can't immediately see or be conscious of, but they are there nonetheless.  Sometimes going through difficult times can show us our qualities,skills or sources of strength we didn't know we had or needed.  Sometimes an emotionally vulnerable state can bring out softer aspects of our personalities such as inner grace or compassion that in turn, deepens our connection to others. 

The process of grief or suffering can highlight or draw your focus to things in your life that might be requiring your attention such as relationship issues that have been ignored or unresolved parts of our self we have been neglecting.  As well, through pain, a deeper level of consciousness can be achieved, through which one can explore their darker or shadow self, or the aspects of the self that produce anger, fear, jealousy, sadness and shame, and then channel and transform those energies into something more adaptive.  Throughout history we have seen how great works of creative expression such as art, music and literature have often come through loss, pain and suffering, as emotional despair becomes a vehicle for producing something of beauty and inspiration.  More recently, we have seen how when horrible tragedies occur such as the fall of the World Trade Centre Towers or the very recent Newtown shootings, a new connection forms between groups of people who would normally never come together or a new culture of support and good will develops out of shared sadness. 

I have had the fortune to see some examples in my own work, of the way in which grief and sadness has transformed itself into more positive states of grace and connection to the self and others.  Recently I worked with a client dealing the sudden death of a parent, who had been abusive to her throughout her childhood.  The death of this parent brought up many painful past memories as well as a substantial amount of present day family fallout and separation.  Throughout this ordeal, my client was able to focus on what the possible meaning of this experience was for her in terms of moving forward in her current life and the lives of her young family.  In confronting the painful and conflicted emotions she was experiencing, she consciously chose to channel the energy of her suffering into healing other areas of life.  In our last session, she reported that not only had a creative outlet opened for her in terms of her writing and music, but that upon reflecting on her past abuse, she had started to ask herself who her identity was now within her own family and about the kind of parent she wanted to be versus remaining focused on the grief she felt about kind of parent she had never had.  As a result of her transforming her pain into personal growth, she found that almost instantly her relationship with her own children was starting to noticeably improve, strengthen and develop, and that as a result, her children's self expression and behaviour were positively changing as well.  In other words, her pain and loss became the gateway to a deeper connection with the people most important in her life.
Another client of mine recently suffered the loss of a close friend while at the same time dealing with her own physical recovery after a serious accident.  In dealing with her grief and feelings of isolation, she began to reflect on the concept of "Gratitude" and lost opportunities to express it to certain people who had touched her life.  Her reflection inspired her to action and she used her recovery time to begin writing individual letters of thanks to people in her lifetime who had supported and helped her in some way.  Through her act of good will, expecting nothing in return, she told me that she had experienced a renewed sense of growth and connection to herself and had become aware of her own inner sources of personal power and ability to find peace and grace in painful times of loss. 

In my own life, I experienced the transformation of pain into personal growth during a very difficult time around the arrival of my youngest child.  Prior to her birth, we learned of my daughter's extremely serious heart defect and the worst case possibility that she would not survive her birth or that if she did, she could potentially be severely disabled with a very poor quality of life.  With this news, I found myself in a very hopeless place of self pity, asking why this had happened to me and my family, and thinking only of how any of the described outcomes would negatively impact myself, my husband and our other two children.  I remember that from somewhere, a thought came to me that shifted my perspective in a more resourceful direction, in that perhaps there was some purpose and meaning to this as a life lesson in strength, and that as painful as the experience was, the challenges for this child could be seen as a gift to our family in terms of teaching us the value of life versus taking it for granted.  Thinking from this perspective gave me a sense of peace and acceptance and helped me to cope with the difficult times that followed.  I am happy to say that my daughter is 5 years old now and thankfully, is doing very well all things considered, and she continues to inspire and teach us daily in terms of her strength and spirit.  In looking back, I also see that while I was initially concerned about the negative effects of having a special needs child and sibling for my sons, through their experience of supporting her through her hospital stays, open heart surgery and physical challenges early on, they have themselves learned great personal lessons around empathy, caring, strength and hope. 

I want to be clear that I'm not saying that when we suffer a trauma, lose someone or go through major problems in our lives it is wrong to feel badly and that we just need to "stay positive", it's not about being positive - these things hurt and rock our world and there's no denying that.  However, we need to remember that sometimes a tower needs to be broken or come crashing down before something new and beautiful can be rebuilt, and I do believe that we always, at the very least, have choice in terms of bringing something positive out from pain.   We are all capable of transformative work within ourselves, the key is to remind ourselves to see dark times as part of our strengthening life lessons and at some point, when it makes sense in the process of coping, to encourage ourselves to act in alignment with that thought versus staying stuck and hopeless in negative states.   

Some questions that are helpful to ask one's self during painful and challenging times are as follows:

• What is the life lesson or message for me right now?
• What am I learning from this?
• What is my attention being drawn to that requires change?
• How might this situation be helping me to grow and develop?
• How is this situation transforming the way I see things and perceive the world?
• How will what I am going through now help me and others around me later?
• How can this situation help to deepen my connection to others in my life?
• What darker aspects of my own self are being expressed right now and how can I transform them into something positive and meaningful?
• What is a healthy outlet of expression I can use to channel my feelings?

On a closing note, a client with whom I was recently speaking about the concept of "Grace" drew my attention to a quote from WM Paul Young's book The Shack that seems fitting here.
 
"Grace doesn't depend of suffering to exist but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors"