TRANSFORMATIONAL PAIN & THE PAIN THAT KEEPS US STUCK
we can't avoid pain but we can choose which kind we experience + winter grief ritual
over the holidays, my cat’s spiritual life has really taken off: please enjoy this photo of her on our house altar.
In My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem introduces the concept of clean pain and dirty pain.
I never love a binary (and feel free to come up with your own terms for these: I like the idea of necessary or transformational pain for clean pain and unnecessary or stuck pain for dirty pain, although all feel like imperfect terms), but this idea does feel true to my own experience.
Clean/transformational pain, Resmaa says, is the pain of healing.
“By walking into that pain, experiencing it fully, and moving through it, you metabolize it and put an end to it. In the process, you also grow, create more room in your nervous system for flow and coherence, and build your capacity for further growth.”
It’s the pain of greeting what’s present, of feeling the feelings so big you’re scared you’ll die but you don’t. It’s the pain you experience in a present and alive life, the pain you experience on the way to more of yourself, the at times excruciating pain you feel when actively moving towards healing.
It’s the pain I felt coming out to my parents, it’s the pain I feel working through my attachment trauma in relationships, it’s the pain I feel when I tell the truth even when I don’t want to.
Dirty/stuck pain, Resmaa says, is about “avoidance, blame and denial.”
When people choose dirty pain, he shares, “they only create more of it, both for themselves and for other people.”
Stuck pain is the pain of avoiding: who you are, what you need to do, your feelings, what is true. It’s the pain of living out of integrity with yourself.
It’s the pain I felt for years in past relationships denying my sexuality and what I really wanted. It’s the pain I feel when I stay small and scared instead of telling the truth about how I feel and what I need. It’s the pain I experience when I suppress my feelings and numb, distract, try to forget instead.
Only when we move through stuck pain can we move into transformational pain, can our real lives begin, can we grow, can we heal.
Either way, we don’t avoid pain — but we do get to choose which kind we experience.
Grief, I think, is transformational pain.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to joy notes to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.