Today I decided to start writing a narrative of my pain story that I hope to share on the blog. I have been putting this off because it is time-consuming and can be painful to look back at the difficult periods in my life. I am including information about periods of my life when I had physical and emotional pain and my thoughts around it.
I am surprised at how helpful this has been. I am able to see some links that I didn’t really think about before. Initially I was thinking I didn’t have much pain as a child, since I rarely missed school. As I started to write more, I can remember several situations where there was both pain and shame around the pain.
The thought of writing and sharing a personal story can be terrifying. I can feel the vulnerability of sharing such personal information. Even though I have been less specific in situations where it involves other people, I am sharing honestly my own thoughts and feelings. I do believe that the healing comes from looking at the truth of a situation, and being able to think and talk about it without shame. I hope that each of us can learn to honor and even love the parts of our stories that make us uniquely us.
Chronic Pain Journals 