“You must hold something with purpose before you can truly let it go.”

My dad was a welder during the oil boom of the early 1980s. This was a feast or famine time for our family as my dad either had well-paid work and we lived like a middle-class family or my mom stalked the wall of postboxes at our trailer park office like a hungry mother lion, waiting for his unemployment check.

When I turned seven, it was a famine season and I received a used radio, a new battery, a nightgown, and a plastic comb for my birthday. The year before I had a big birthday party with all the kids from my kindergarten and gifts from all of them. 1980 was a bounty, 1981 was a bust.

First grade wasn’t my best year all-around. I’d gotten in trouble at school, was mean to a little girl at Sunday school, and was fairly bratty. So, when I complained about my paltry load of gifts my exhausted mother told me how the little girl across the way received only a cake for her birthday and nothing else. I also knew she slept on the sofa because there wasn’t space for her in the tiny room her three older sisters shared, and the largest room was for her brother because he was in a wheelchair and needed a hospital bed. At least I got the top bunk in the room I shared with my two sisters and didn’t have to sleep in the living room, and my brother was not in a wheelchair.

In that moment I received what my beleaguered and very young mother probably thought was a gift – the knowledge that someone else always had it worst. However, it was not the enlightening message she intended. Rather, I internalized this truth to my detriment. Someone always had it worse.

My son almost died, well her daughter died. My dad died when I was twenty-two, well my dad’s dad died when he was only ten. Someone always had it worse. This is a fact not a truth. Yes, someone always has it worse if we can quantify human suffering. Some people have more resilience and can handle more than others. Some people don’t know how much they can handle until they’re tested.

For decades I felt that I couldn’t feel sad, angry, disappointed, sad, scared, or anything negative about even the worst things that happened to me because someone else had it worse. Instead of feeling my feelings and getting on with life, I felt shame and guilt for feeling angry, disappointed, sad, scared, etc. I still felt those things, but I ladled heaps of steaming judgement on top.

So, the past five weeks of my life have been . . . the perfect topper for the year that was 2023. I had a “minor” surgery that yielded a severe allergic reaction in my skin at the incision site. The treatment of this infection was followed by the wound opening and not healing. That was followed by a horrible infection. An urgent care visit, an ER visit, two kinds of antibiotics and several doctor appointments later and my ankle hurts worse than it ever did, and I am angry, disappointed, sad, scared, and frustrated.

I am not, however, ashamed, or guilty for feeling these things. Yes, many, so many people (my own son included) have had postoperative infections that were clinically worse than mine. That doesn’t magically make my ankle stop hurting or heal my open flesh. Ruminating on the pain of others is a sick and ineffective method for minimizing our own pain. There is no comfort there.

Sometimes we need to just say “Ouch!” my ankle really hurts, it’s impacting me and keeping me from doing what I want, and I don’t like it. Then we can get on with the business of getting on with whatever we need to do to get through it. I’m not saying we should make every pain a precious thing we guard like a dragon protects its gold. What I’m saying is that when we try to minimize our own suffering and deflect our own pain in the house of mirrors that is comparing it to others, all we do is make it worse and get lost in the funhouse.

So, in the light of day, I can say, “This injury hurts. It stinks, it sucks, I don’t like it, I’m not happy about it, and this year has felt like one difficulty and grief after another.” Full Stop – now that I’ve said that I can take a few deep breaths, four ibuprofens (the ER doctor said I could) and say what I’m grateful for – hint – it’s not anyone else’s suffering. Rather when we take stock of our pains, then we can move on to taking stock of our blessings. The real balm is not in someone else’s losses but our bounties. We are misguided when we weight anyone else’s experience in the balance of our own lives.

I am grateful that the antibiotics are actually working regardless of my impatience for them to work faster. I am grateful I chose not to use opioids for this pain. I am grateful that this too shall pass. I’m grateful that I have learned enough in life to know that you must hold something with purpose before you can truly let it go.