Life is a bitch…

And then you die.

I recall the first time I ever heard this saying and how ghastly I felt hearing it. I took it as a statement of how hopeless this person felt about her life. It struck me so hard that after 25 plus years I still remember it loud and clear.

It really is however a powerful message about life pain which is as inevitable as the fact that we do die one day.

Whether we like it or not life is full of pain and we do in fact die.

Life is full of pain, it just is and the sooner we understand this reality and learn to accept and cope with the pain that life brings the healthier and happier our lives can be. Please read that sentence again…it’s a bit ironic isn’t it that to live a ‘freer’ life one needs to accept pain as a part of the experience of living!

In our culture however we like to fantasize that life “should” be carefree, painless and easy and just as wonderful as the lives of all the ‘friends’ we have on Facebook and as complete as the ads show us if we purchase and use a certain product and work out as a happy ending just as Hollywood has it scripted. But it isn’t.

So, we pop a pill or down some liquor or drink some wine or snort a line or eat more ice cream or go to the casino or buy a lottery ticket or go shopping once again or…. in search of a quick easy fix to drown out the pain, the inevitable pain that just plain old living life brings to us and wonder why me? Why can’t I…? Why did…have to happen?

We do have a choice about what we do with the pain life brings our way.

And it doesn’t matter who we are, what we do, how much money we make, what clothes we wear, what color our skin is, how old we are, what we do for a living, how big the house we live is, what make and model the car is we drive…I could go on and on…but the point it we all have pain in our lives. We just do…period.

When we look at the outside we can easily pretend and fantasize that others live life without much pain. In truth no one’s life is a piece of cake. We delude ourselves when we think otherwise. This delusional thinking is in fact simply a way to avoid dealing with our own pain.

This is that time of year when magical thinking is easy to get lost in and that time of year when that very real pain of life and loss hits us smack between the eyes. We can make a choice to use healthy coping tools to heal and grow as we acknowledge and walk through the pain life brings. This is a gift we can give to ourselves this season that will serve us well into our future!

What choice will you make today to cope with and walk through the pain in your life?
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