When I was young I subjected myself to a lot of pain. So full of ego I would sooner suffer silently than surrender to complaining or pain-killing substances.

In time, if you’re open and paying attention, pain can go from being, well, a pain, to becoming more of a messenger. It is either threatening, indicating a weakness or sickness; or it is empowering, indicating strength or health.

When I started hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1997 I felt pain all over my body everyday. Knee pain, for example, came and went during the first few months of my hike. Thankfully I managed it well and over time my knee got stronger, and the periodic pain from weakness eventually just went away for good.

Pain was an important resource. More than a messenger. Almost like a friend, but not quite. More like a compass or a guide. More like an objective coach. It pushed me and resisted me and I did not always like what it had to say, but I knew it was grounded in a wisdom deeper than my experience.

I walked 2,160+ miles on purpose and pain kept me in check. It forced discipline upon me and helped me set good boundaries.

During my divorce, my experience with pain was very different. It was largely emotional and it didn’t feel like a messenger or a coach, it felt like a bully.

For a long time I was either in denial that my marriage was failing or I felt powerless to fix what was failing. I was convinced that I just had to hold on, that soon my wife would come around. That she would choose me again and surrender to my lead and THEN we could simplify and THEN everything would be okay and we could be happy again.

As I held on, I made concessions thinking that “giving” was the way. Giving felt like virtue to me. “Don’t be right,” came the voice, “do the right thing.” At the time, giving seemed like the right thing to do. And to give was to accommodate. I decided self-sacrifice was going to be my way. But over time self-sacrifice didn’t fulfill me, it emptied me. So when I accommodated I merely gave away my power. At the time I thought that giving everything was good and the right thing to do, but eventually I had sacrificed so much of myself that emptiness was all I had left to give.

And it wasn’t just in my marriage. My professional life suffered, I grew distant with friends, I didn’t feel like I was being the father I wanted to be, and it took a toll on my family who consistently provided so much support.

In these relationship scenarios I was trying to be something I wasn’t, something more than I was, and I ruined good opportunities and good relationships as a result. I also sacrificed many of my personal passions, like hiking and kayaking, and replaced them with supposed to be doings, like working for the all-mighty paycheck.

I literally set my creative work aside in boxes and placed it all into storage. Poems, children’s stories, screenplays, songs, and business plans. All things that woke me up in the morning and kept me energized into the night. I put it all away so I could focus on what I was supposed to be doing. I served others without serving myself. I relinquished control. I was no longer the master of my domain. The emotional pain only grew and I ached and hoped to be set free from it.

In a way I fell from grace, less because of what was happening to me than what I was not making happen. I was loaded down with bad energy. I was weakening. I was kicking my soul out of my body and my entire being was suffering.

That lasted for far longer than I am comfortable admitting and while, intellectually, I knew all along that I was the only one who could fix it, I had some emotional-awareness catching-up to do.

So I did what made the most sense to me, I started walking in the woods again…a lot.