Passing

When I was preparing for childbirth the first time I did a fair bit of reflecting on pain. I read about it, journaled about it, and even practiced coping with it. (Did anyone do that thing where you hold an ice cube against your skin for 90 seconds as a pretend contraction?)

My reading said that fear of pain increases pain, and pain increases fear. We will get caught in a cycle of intensifying negative feelings unless we interrupt the feedback loop and confront the pain with the assurance that *we can handle it.*

As a birthing woman that meant something like “This labor cannot be too much for my body because this labor IS my body.” I was made for this. I can do this. I am strong. One contraction at a time. One breath. This too is passing.

Sensations—feelings—come and go. They are always packing up to go just as they arrive. They never last forever, nor usually for very long from moment to moment. (Even in the throes of grief our despair will be surprised and momentarily evaporate when we smell a honeysuckle flower along the sidewalk.) But our thoughts and stories about our feelings linger.

I have come to see that our fear of some feelings and pursuit of others is what rules much of our lives.

And I know exactly what I want: to slip into a sea of pleasantness and, in the non-striving motion of the jellyfish, evade unpleasantness and pain. But there is no such sea. I have to take the world as it is, the warmth of the fire with the pungent sting of smoke. I have to confront the pain with the assurance that *I can handle this*—not without help, but without despair. This too is passing. I still exist.