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The Critical Role of Pain
Why me? Wrong Question.
This afternoon the sun is making its slow way towards sunset in Addis Ababa, where in a few hours I’ll be heading home through Frankfurt and Chicago. I had one more full day of rest, time to wash all my stuff to get the smell of African dust and dirt out of my hair, clothing and gear. Well, sort of. The smoke will linger in my sleeping bag and tent, adding to the mingling of scents gathered from all over the world.
Like pain. Like trauma. Like our experiences. They mingle and make us who we are. Who we ultimately can become.
I just read this article by Fearless She Wrote editor Jessica Lovejoy, which brought home one of the great truths that we sometimes stumble into after we’ve had a while to gather our wits about us. Like so many of us, Jessica experienced sexual trauma. I got gang raped at 23, while on active duty, then shortly after that was assaulted while drugged and on a gurney at Walter Reed, then repeatedly raped by the very Army psychiatrist to whom I was assigned for counseling about those rapes.
It happens. It took me more than forty years to pull that sewage out of the basement and air it out. It took me forty years of self-loathing and eating disorders before, finally, I was able to come to some sort of peace with those events. Those men are long dead. At very nearly 67…