There’s a difference between struggle and suffering
Hear me out.
By 20, I was working full-time, had a 20+ credit course load at school, and was supporting myself and my boyfriend who had recently had the first of a series of surgeries that would take him in and out of work and school for the next decade.
By 23, I had moved the two of us from Ohio to Chicago to pursue a career in marketing.
Living in a tiny studio apartment, I rode the bus almost every morning to open my Starbucks store at 5:30am until I found a job as a marketing coordinator.
By 24, I experienced getting laid off as the economy tanked in 2008. It hit me hard and I took it very personally, despite the collective circumstances.
I doubled down in my full-time graduate program at DePaul while I picked up work as a social media consultant and taught knitting classes, among other things.
Again, I found myself going to school full-time while working multiple jobs.
By 26, I had graduated with my Master's degree and was working as a marketing manager, still supporting myself and my boyfriend as he had the surgery that would finally bring his health issues to conclusion.
By 27, I found myself screaming and crying in front of a colleague in a hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland.
On top of our marketing work, we were hosting a first-of-its-kind international conference designed to help connect non-governmental organizations who dealt in intellectual property (like the World Trade Organization) with non-profits who brought last-mile appropriate technologies to developing countries.
Despite having created a successful event, I had such a lack of purpose, fulfillment and self-worth, that I was in a rage state about not being recognized for the extraordinary amount of work I had done.
That same year, I began working as a brand strategist for a company that prized hours spent at your desk and staying late for client deadlines while its leaders flitted about, coming in late and leading meetings while preoccupied by texts from their children.
By 29, I had ventured out and founded my own company, Kindred Labs. I was convinced that I could do things differently. I landed clients, opened an office, and brought in over six figures in the first year.
At the same time, my boyfriend and I adopted two rescue pit bulls that required a lot of time, exercise and training. I remember many nights where, after coming home from working all day at my office, I would fall asleep on my laptop in an armchair trying to eke out just a bit more work. I also remember many fights where things like, "I didn't sign up for this", were said.
By 30, I was bored with the business that I had created, so I took a well-paying job full of ambiguity that required me to commute outside of the city (at times more than 2 hours one way, depending on traffic).
Our team was brought in to merge with an existing business unit and we were charged with restructuring and reviving it. The existing employees had seen this song and dance one too many times; they were very resigned and skeptical. It was beyond stressful and it felt like a war at times between the old and the new.
At the same time, I was running down and transitioning out of my own business, which still had multiple clients that I continued to serve while working my new full-time job.
By 32, I had married my boyfriend (yes, still the same one!) and we purchased our first home 90 minutes outside of Chicago. It needed a lot of work and came with 3 acres of land that we had to reclaim from the wild.
On top of working full-time and servicing freelance clients, we moved away from the support of the city for a new adventure -- one that would require a ton of money and manual labor. Oh, and we adopted a third pit bull puppy.
Over the next few years, the company I was working for would emerge as a separate entity and reinvent and evolve itself many times.
I had been actively burning myself out for 15 years.
I had a knack for making everything harder than it needed to be.
And then, at 35, the pandemic hit.
And we pivoted our business again to be 100% virtual in a matter of weeks.
Thankfully, we were successful. Virtual training was desperately needed in 2020 and our business grew quite rapidly.
With that growth, I dug my heels in even further.
I found myself working around the clock in our growing business while my husband dealt with the stress of being a high school teacher in the midst of the pandemic.
There were no office hours. There was no time to clock in or clock out.
There was no separation between work and life, and so my life became 100% work.
We were sitting on the porch one day. I must have been urged to go outside by the dogs for a brief respite.
My husband said to me, "when do you think you'll have time for me?"
The emotion swelled up in my throat and I croaked out, "I don't even have 5 minutes for myself."
I felt the despair so acutely. I was stuck.
I was in such a bottomed-out form of burnout that I had painstakingly constructed for myself for over a decade and a half.
The pandemic was just the straw on the proverbial camel's back.
While I watched other people create space for themselves to take up new hobbies -- baking sourdough! -- I resentfully worked around the clock.
But, I couldn't complain, could I?
MANY people had it worse.
Many people had lost their livelihoods.
Many people were sick and dying, or losing people they loved.
Who was I to complain?
Who was I to wish things were different when they appeared to be going so well from the outside-in?
For 15 years, I had pushed onward, fueled by a limiting story so deeply held at the core of my being: I can do it all on my own.
I had achieved extreme burnout.
Through constantly striving, fixing, enduring, toiling, sacrificing, forcing and pushing to make myself indispensable.
To prove my value as a human -- that I was worthy of love and recognition -- I endured 15 years of suffering and self-neglect.
Now, I see that it was all of my own creation.
But, back then, it felt like I had no control or agency over my situation.
I was so stuck that even thinking about a solution or potential way OUT of this feeling was too much for my tattered nervous system.
I was not only on the struggle bus, I was driving it and being dragged behind it at the same time.
I desperately wanted to DO less and BE more.
I knew that my body and mind and spirit were all exhausted.
I had to heal myself from my burnout, but how?
No amount of rest or self-care or baths or yoga or meditation seemed to make a dent in the problem that I had created.
It wasn't until I came upon an underlying core belief that was keeping me stuck that I found a pathway to heal myself.
I had been consciously aware for a few years that I had a tendency to prove my work through my work: how much I could produce, how many hours I worked, how full my calendar was.
This constant busyness, hustling and DOING seemed to prove that I was needed, worthy, and indispensable.
But knowing this wasn't enough.
Then, a healer helped me recognize that I wasn't proving my worth through my work, I was proving my worth through my SUFFERING.
Hearing this cracked me open instantaneously.
It was the single piece of truth that I needed to receive to see how I had shaped my sense of self and my life.
I was proving myself to others through how much I could take on and do for them.
And I was also proving my worth to MYSELF through the weight of the burden that I could take on -- and through how much I could do for others while neglecting myself in the process.
I had neglected myself purposefully to prove to myself that I could take it all on. All in support of that original coping mechanism of a story: I can do it all on my own.
Then, in true "me" fashion, I took on healing myself.
Not because I had to carry this work on my own. Not because I needed to prove to myself or others that I could do it. Not because I didn't trust anyone else to help.
I took on healing myself because I am the only one that actually can do this work.
We are our own healers, after all.
By 37, I have:
Established a supportive and loving relationship with my body
Begun to understand and heal my nervous system
Let go of control and proving my worth through my work
Built a healthier relationship with work by detaching it from my identity
Gave my system gentleness and deep rest
Gained a deep level of self-love and self-worth
Got in touch with my divine feminine
Stopped having to do everything on my own
Started to trust others to do things
Dropped my need for perfection
Reconnected to my purpose and refined my values
Totally transformed my way of being from the inside out
All of this comes with understanding the difference between suffering and struggle.
SUFFERING keeps us having to endure and toil, and it takes away our agency and sovereignty. Suffering is an external force that saps our power and life force. It's like everything is BEING DONE TO US. Suffering makes us feel like we are stuck.
STRUGGLE is a force that all humans need to evolve, change and grow.
Struggle is the challenge. It's the opportunity that takes us to our growth edge. It pushes us out of our comfort zone and creates uncertainty and ambiguity. Struggle asks us to rise to the occasion. It's like everything is BEING DONE FOR US.
You see, humans are designed to change and grow.
When we keep ourselves stuck, we create dis-ease and disintegration and disassociation.
Human life is a beautiful struggle.
Consider:
Where are you stuck in your suffering?
Where are you confusing suffering for struggle or vice versa?
All I know is, the less I hold myself in suffering and embrace the beautiful flow and cycle of struggle with gratitude and grace, the freer I feel, the bigger I feel, the purer I feel.
All on my own.
