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There’s an old story I’ve always loved. Maybe you’ve heard it.
A farmer’s donkey falls into a well. The animal cries for hours as the farmer wrestles with what to do. Finally, the farmer decides the donkey is old, and the well needs to be filled in anyway—so he calls his neighbors and starts shoveling dirt in.
At first, the donkey panics, realizing what’s happening. But then something shifts. With every shovel of dirt, the donkey shakes it off…and steps up.
Dirt. Shake. Step.
Dirt. Shake. Step.
Until eventually, the donkey climbs out of what was meant to bury him.
I think about that donkey a lot. Especially when I’m in pain. Especially when it feels like life is throwing dirt on me, one heavy shovel at a time.
As a therapist—and a woman who’s lived through her share of trauma—I’ve learned something that might sound strange at first: pain isn’t the enemy.
It isn’t a punishment, or a sign that you’re doing something wrong. It’s not a flaw in the system. It is the system—asking you to come closer. To feel. To tend. To stop running.
Pain is an invitation.
It shows up like a hard truth: unwanted, inconvenient, and often cruel in its timing. But when you sit with it, breathe into it, and listen to what it wants you to know—something begins to shift.
Pain becomes an alchemist.
It turns numbness into presence. Shame into tenderness. Avoidance into agency. It brings your focus inward—not as a retreat, but as a reckoning.
This doesn’t mean pain is pleasant. It’s not. It doesn’t mean we want it. But when it arrives (as it inevitably does), our relationship with it can shape everything.
You can fight it.
You can numb it.
Or you can ask it what it’s here to teach you.
The donkey didn’t want to be in the well. But the very thing meant to bury him became the ground he stood on to rise.
So if you’re hurting, grieving, overwhelmed—this is for you.
Shake it off. Step up. Feel it. Then move.
Not over it. Not around it. But with it.
Let pain be the teacher, not the punishment.
Let it be the portal.
And let your next breath be the beginning of the climb.
~
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