Almost everything is multisided – including the occurrences that give us pain. So, we asked some of the most enlightened folks in the community to share how they have harnessed their pain to help rather than hurt them.
Brandilyn Hallcroft
I was never the type to hide my pain. I’ve always been someone who wears my heart on my sleeve, sometimes to a fault. But even though the world could see it, I didn’t understand it. For a long time, my pain controlled me quietly in the background. It shaped my reactions, my fears, my patterns, and the way I navigated relationships. Read more>>
Trevon
Great question. It seems to be a common phenomena for people to hide their issues, not to ask for help, to keep things hidden while they work on it and I too fell suite to the same. Paying attention to the reality I was able to see that the people who lived like that were stressed out, faking it or lost. Read more>>
Rebecca Langweber
In becoming the leader of the Nassau County chapter of Babes in Business Long Island, I realized how many people responded to real life stories. In this world where social media paints shiny pictures of everything being rainbows and butterflies, I found people around me craved stories of failure, loss and other trials and tribulations because it was relatable and real. Read more>>
P.J. Starks
Prior to writing the script for New Fears Eve, a lot of life changing events took place. I lost my grandmother, the person who first ignited my deep love for the horror genre. This was eventually followed by a long and nasty divorce that changed the landscape of my everyday, This was followed by mom being diagnosed with double lung cancer. Read more>>
Lindsey Nilsen
I think I stopped hiding my pain and started turning it into power when I became a mom. I’m very Type A — an overachiever to my core — and for most of my life, I felt like my worth came from how much I could accomplish. I thrived on checking boxes, staying ahead, and doing everything “right.” But motherhood doesn’t work like that. Read more>>
Shira Adler
For most of my life, I was taught — directly and indirectly — to make myself smaller. To be agreeable, palatable, “easy.” To carry the weight quietly and transmute it in private, then come back out smiling. I became fluent in holding everything for everyone else while keeping my own ache and vulnerability tucked behind competence and compassion. Read more>>
Alicka
Pain should never be hidden; at least for me, it is a fundamental stage of my growth. Pain needs time, like everything else. you have to feel it deeply, and when you reach the bottom, you understand that it is a lesson. It is very difficult to control, especially because we as human beings are very instinctive. It is not easy. Read more>>
Shaikh Afraaz
I stopped hiding my pain the day I realized that struggles don’t break you — they build you. There was a time when things didn’t go my way, when people doubted me, when numbers were low, and the journey felt too heavy. But instead of letting that pain silence me, I decided to turn it into fuel. Read more>>
Adriana Baer
I used to feel like I needed to know all the answers and ‘have it all together.’ I thought that showing any weakness would make people like and trust me less. So I never shared anything personal publicly. Read more>>
Devorah Brinckerhoff
I didn’t make that choice once. I made it in baby steps, over decades, often without realizing what I was doing. It became notable during a challenging time in my life when I started incorporating materials associated with my life falling apart – into the foundation of my work (love/hate letters, journal entries, legal documents and photos). Read more>>
Paulina Ophelia Sophie
I think I truly stopped hiding my pain when I realized that healing doesn’t mean erasing everything that ever hurt me. For a long time, I thought “working through it” meant eliminating the pain completely, as if that were the only way to move forward. Read more>>
Yvonne Heath
In 2014, when I was a chemotherapy nurse and our son was spiraling into drugs and addiction. And people avoided us, not because they didn’t care-because they didn’t know what to do or say. This compounded my suffering and feelings of isolation. Somebody had to address this. Apparently that somebody was me! Sharing my story, being a hot mess unapologetically become one of my Superpowers! Read more>>
Peter S. Baron
For a long time, I was hiding my pain from myself, without being conscious of the extent to which I was doing so. Since I start writing poetry a little over a year ago, I have realized how freeing it is to express both the beauty and the pain I find in my engagement with life’s challenges. Read more>>
Yuh Okano
In my early twenties, I had someone I promised to marry. I believed marriage meant never parting ways, as if that were how the whole world worked. Yet before we could marry, I parted ways with that person all too easily. Was it my own pain, or the stares of others that hurt? I was too young to understand. Read more>>
Karin Freeland
For a long time, I carried my pain quietly. I spent four years suffering in silence, feeling stuck, frustrated, and unsure of how to break free from the life I had built. In my book Grab Life by the Dreams, I open up about that season and how deeply it affected me. Read more>>
