Sometimes I have trouble remembering this. I want to function to my standards before the onset of chronic pain, but that’s just not possible anymore. These are wise words that we need to keep reminding ourselves of. We have to be kind to ourselves. We face a lot of challenges with fibromyalgia and all we can do is our best.
“When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Pain upsets and destroys the nature of the person who feels it,” said Aristotle.
I am not the same person I was before the onset of my chronic pain. I’ve grown. I’ve changed. In some ways, pain has made me a better person, I think. I’ve learned who I really am because of my chronic pain. I’m a fighter. I’m a survivor. I’m stubborn. I want to get better and am willing to do the hard work required to get better. The more I learn about myself, the stronger I feel. Maybe one day knowing myself will lead to true wisdom.
Robert Frost is my favorite poet and I love this quote from him. No matter what we’re facing, no matter how hard a day gets, no matter how high the pain goes, one thing always remains the same: life goes on. The sun rises each morning and sets each night. We have a chance for a better day with each day that comes. We just have to hang in there.
” ‘I have done my best.’ That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.”
–Lyn Yutang
I hope everyone has as pain-free a day as possible!
Pain–Has an Element of Blank–
It cannot recollect
When it begun–or if it were
A day when it was not–
It has no Future–but itself–
Its Infinite contain
Its Past–enlightened to perceive
New Periods–of Pain.
–Emily Dickinson
I like Dickinson’s metaphor for pain as an “element of blank.” Pain isn’t anything we can quantify or point to and see “here is pain.” Pain is unlike any other state of being. It is not of or for anything. It just is. I like Dickinson’s description of the blankness that is pain. We want to wake from pain, to leave it behind us, but we can’t. Pain becomes a part of us. Pain changes us. Pain has no future but itself, like Dickinson writes.
Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary. –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I’m having trouble finding my inner strength today so I thought this was a good remember for me, maybe for all of us.
“Loneliness is a disease of the soul. Left untreated it can be fatal. A simple act of kindness can shatter the shell of loneliness.”
–Unknown
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished. Let the image of your success play on the giant screen in full color with surround sound so real you can smell and taste it.
–Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
–Og Mandino
“A feather is a delicate thing when removed from a bird yet it carries the bird anywhere in the world.”
– Sudanese proverb
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, I will try again tomorrow. –Mary Anne Radmacher
I know that my pain from fibromyalgia has changed me. In some ways I think it’s changed me for the better. I don’t know when those changes happened. But I do hope that one day this storm will pass and I will be pain free.
Fighting Fibromyalgia 