When I was a child, I suffered from migraines and chronic headaches. I can still remember my first migraine. I was about 7 and we had had hamburgers for dinner. McDonalds, back when all they had to offered were hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries. Then, the same as now, I preferred hamburgers to cheeseburgers. I had a hamburger with ketchup and a some french fries.

I was watching TV and I felt an odd twitch on the side of my head. Not on the outside. On the inside. The twitch became a very centralized headache. I knew about headaches. I had been getting them for years by this point. This was at a time before children’s aspirin had been developed. My mom just gave us regular aspirin dissolved in a teaspoon of water. I don’t think I have ever tasted anything quite like that since.

The migraine developed so much quicker than a standard headache. It seemed to only take a matter of minutes between the first twitch and the throbbing, head splitting ache that had attack the right side of my head. I can clearly remember gripping my head as wave after wave of stabbing pain shot through my brain. Rolling on the floor, writhing in pain, I began to cry that only made the pain worse.

I was given an aspirin in a teaspoon of water and after a time that helped to ease the pain. That was the beginning of years of experiencing debilitating head pain until I learned how to push the pain aside. The onset of a migraine was the most critical time to minimize the severity.

I learned how to pick up the signs and what to do make them livable. If I had stopped every time a migraine struck, life would have come to a complete stop. I learned that pain doesn’t have to be a definer so much as it has to be an outer boundary. I can be fully functional up to a certain point and with practice, that point got pushed further and further away from the center.

I thought I was doing myself a favor. I thought I was investing my energy into living a full life, trying to reach for the things that would make me a whole, well rounded person. But what I was actually doing was pushing myself further from the center. Pain is not at the center of my being, but it informs the direction. I learned that the hard way.

In my 65th year of life, I was felled by a workplace accident, which resulted in multiple pelvis fractures and twisted hips. Recovery took nearly a year. In that year, I learned the most important lesson about pain that any body can learn. Pain is a definer. And to ignore the definition is to lose a part of yourself. Pain is the universes way of leading to a pull back of energy. A refocusing of direction and desire.

Pain does not represent limitations. Pain restores one to their own humanity. To hurt is to be reminded that our physicality is a part of who we are and the messages from that part are in equal value to the ones from the heart. Perhaps the wisest words for all of this came from a doctor, “Do not push through the pain. Listen to it and act accordingly”