Today, I am thinking about the inherent loneliness of pain.

Pain often drives us inward. People generally don& #39;t understand how to hold space for folks who are in pain. And if we don& #39;t know the source of that pain (or even if we do), it can feel like we are the only ones experiencing it. It& #39;s lonely.

If you throw in shame, the loneliness of pain feels magnified somehow. You& #39;re constrained by shame to keep your pain to yourself, to not burden anyone else with it. Some pain can& #39;t be cured, only managed, but people will still try to fix you when you try to feel less alone.

I am a cishet woman who often writes about motherhood and pregnancy. And no matter how often I hear women& #39;s stories, I am always tender to the ways new mothers are so lonely with pain. They tell me, like I told myself, "I thought I was the only one going through this."

This moment is a lonely void stretching indeterminately. I& #39;m reminding myself to hold space for the multiple areas people are in pain right now, how that pain manifests or doesn& #39;t. Not not to fix the pain with a rhetorical band-aid, but sit with their loneliness.

I see ya& #39;ll.