Women, Pain & Faith

“The will to be the true self, the self that one truly is, is the opposite of despair.” - Soren Kierkegaard

When we are young, we often dim our authentic nature in order to accommodate our environment. If we have narcissistic or particularly temperamental parents, and we happen to be empathic, we will hide parts of ourself away as a way of meeting the needs of others.

It is, of course, a survival mechanism and a very intelligent one.

Women tend to do this more than men. As natural caregivers and empaths, it becomes second nature to the highly sensitive child to hide herself away in order to feel safe in her environment.

It is no coincidence that over 80% of autoimmune sufferers are women. This is the same for those who have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

I have lived with Crohn’s Disease, an autoimmune disease that effects the entire digestive system, since I was 7 years old.

Through working with both myself and many other women who suffer with chronic illness, I have come to see a very recognizable pattern.

The body begins to break down and come into chronic pain when it can no longer sustain the masks that she wears.

In these cases, the ‘true self’ begins to bump up against all of the conditioning and posturing that once created such safety for these women. Her body is telling her, “Enough.”

Soren Kierkegaard wrote about this in his most famous work, “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849). He asserted that each human being has one, central, existential problem.

That is that we are both body and spirit. Temporal and eternal. Freedom and necessity.

He speaks of human beings being the only thing on this planet that have self-consciousness. In other words, we are able to relate to ourself. We are able to observe and see ourselves.

He also asserts that this Consciousness that each of us possess must have been composed by something. He felt it was highly improbable and even illogical for “self-constitution” to occur (for us to constitute or ‘compose’ ourselves) and so we must have been created by something else.

Our human condition, he believes then, is one where the human being relates to herself AND the power that constituted the entire relationship - God. And that unless we are able to hold both, we are left incomplete.

Yowza.

So what does this, pray tell, have to do with women and illness?

Well, the illness is a DIRECT, DIVINE INVITATION.

It is the Original Self (your Divine Self) calling you back.

It is God calling you Home.

It is the greatest honour that could possibly be bestowed upon someone in human form.

The pain…the illness was never meant to punish you.

It was a doorway. A doorway back to The Sacred.

And it begins with faith.

Having faith that you are not alone. You have never been alone. And you are being sought by the one who made you.

You are being asked to complete the circle.

Close the gap.

You are being asked to BECOME WHO GOD MEANT YOU TO BE.

Okay…so now that we’ve gotten that sorted, how do you begin?

Prayer.

Communion with God.

Sitting in Silence and just BEING with Him.

Everything is downstream from that point.