Pain is a portal

An offering with Dr. Hillary McBride

Pain has for sure been the biggest teacher in my life. It has invited me to do DEEP inner work. I, like most of us, have known emotional pain since a young age. I believed that something was inherently wrong with me from as early as I can remember. Then physical pain moved in a few weeks after turning seventeen when an ambulance hit me on my car door and I broke many things including the top two vertebrae in my neck. A few years later the wire from my original fusion broke and pierced my brain stem (I am apparently the only person that has ever had that or at least lived to tell the tail).

I then went on to live the majority of my life in bed in a freeze state dependent on heavy narcotics, bingeing food and tv every day. I hated my life, my pain, and especially my body. I believed I was “trapped” in a body that hated me and I would be “trapped” in a bed living in hell for the rest of my day. I prayed I would just fall asleep and never wake up. I did not want to be alive. I didn't feel alive. I felt numb and dead inside. To be honest, the medical system really failed me in so many ways. No one ever tried to take me off the crazy amount of narcotics I was on. They just gave me more. I was told so many limiting stories about my body. I am sure they were all very well-meaning but the system is very broken. 

After a few small breakdowns, one massive one, and my ex-husband leaving, I began an entirely new journey. I would say the past 12 years have been a deep unlearning. A deep exploration of unlearning so many untrue stories we are taught about pain and our bodies. Our bodies get louder and louder because:

There was so much deep emotional pain and trauma living in my body and until my 30s I had zero clue on what to do with it besides trying my damndest to numb it. (update: of course it didn't go away, it only got louder). 

That is why Dr. Hillary McBride and I created the Invitation Of Pain online event. We both have known intense physical pain in our bodies and it has sent us on such deep journeys of creating new and truer relationships with our loving bodies. 

When we experience pain, we are instructed to medicalize our pain to make it go away. We learn to see our bodies as the enemy and forget the identity outside of the pain. But we can learn to experience and understand pain differently, even coming to see pain as the route back home to who we really are. In this way, the pain becomes the invitation back to our bodily selves - reminding us how to love ourselves more fully, teaching us that we can heal regardless of whether the pain goes away or not.

Hillary is one of my favorite humans on this planet. She has been one of my greatest teachers of embodiment that I have ever known. Creating this event with her a few years ago has been one of my favorite events of the year. I feel like I do it for my little girl self, who only heard people talking about bodies in terms of being skinny or fat, pretty or ugly and those things were talked about a LOT in my home. I learned skinny and pretty were the only acceptable bodies. So it is to no surprise that I took on major body dysmorphia and massive disordered eating for most of the first half of my life. Then a church told me my body was sinful and evil. I am doing this program for Ruthie who lived in her bed, believed her body hated her, and was her worst enemy. Wow, there has been so much unlearning to do between me and my wonderful body that is carrying me through this version of Earth school. 

We would love to mirror to you how your loud body is loving you and calling you back in. The virtual event will be Wednesday, August 21st from 6-8 pm Central. It will be recorded for any of you unable to make the event live. You will also be the first to know about the live event we are having in Nashville in November. We would be so honored to share this time with you and hopefully mirror to you new ways of seeing and experiencing the pain in your body.  See below for more details.

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Invitation of Pain Virtual Event

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The Invitation of Pain Virtual Event

When we experience pain, we are instructed to medicalize our pain to make it go away. We learn to see our bodies as the enemy and forget the identity outside of the pain. But we can learn to experience and understand pain differently, even coming to see pain as the route back home to who we really are. In this way, the pain becomes the invitation back to our bodily selves - reminding us how to love ourselves more fully, teaching us that we can heal regardless of whether the pain goes away or not.

In this event, join Ruthie Lindsey and Hillary McBride in a conversation about pain and a new way of thinking about how we relate to it and ourselves. Ruthie and Hillary will share their stories of journeying through chronic pain and recovery, the lessons they learned along the way, current research findings about healing from pain, and engage attendees in practices to begin to experience ourselves and our pain differently. Click the link below to learn more about this event and purchase your ticket.