Here’s something no one wants to hear:
Pain is not your enemy.
The real enemy is the belief that you shouldn’t feel it.
It’s not a punishment, or a glitch, or something to just “get through.”
It’s not the opposite of health.
Pain is the communication tool towards health.
It’s your body saying, “Hey, something’s out of alignment—physically, emotionally, structurally, maybe relationally. Pay attention.”
Pain is actually a sign that your system is still trying to protect you—which means your body’s still working. Still paying attention. Still fighting to preserve some version of health.
Pain is information.
It’s your body—or your heart, or your mind—saying,
“Hey… something here matters.”
“Something here needs your attention.”
“There’s still something worth fighting for.”
Sometimes pain is physical—your shoulder’s acting up, your knee’s barking, your back’s tight before you even get out of bed.
But sometimes pain shows up as avoidance.
As shutting down.
As thinking about literally anything else except what actually hurts.
That’s still pain.
That’s just fear in costume.
And here’s the thing: pain doesn’t show up unless something is trying to move.
Trying to shift.
Trying to heal.
Pain is not a wall.
It’s a knock.
A message.
A sign that something in you is still alive enough to care.
The problem isn’t pain—it’s how we relate to it.
We either try to dominate it or ignore it completely.
Both ways leave us stuck, guarded, or weirdly proud of how much we can “tolerate.”
But what if we actually listened to it?
That shoulder issue that flares up every time you reach overhead?
That might be your body asking for alignment, not ice and a guilt-ridden rest day.
That belief that says you’re not ready yet?
That might be fear disguised as logic.
That relationship that feels unfinished, but you’d rather “just move on”?
Yeah. You know.
Pain doesn’t always need fixing.
It needs decoding.
It’s not weakness—it’s a request.
To shift. To repair. To realign. To care again.
The people most at risk are the ones who no longer feel their pain—or who ignore it, suppress it, or normalize it for so long that it becomes invisible. That’s not health. That’s survival.
True health is the ability to feel fully—and respond honestly.
So in that sense, pain is a portal.
Not something to erase, but something to listen to and learn from.
It’s the flare in the sky that says: this part of you still wants to thrive.
You don’t have to run from it.
You don’t have to conquer it.
You just have to respond.
Jonny + Jessica Hinds
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