Surrending to Chronic Pain

I began having migraine attacks at such a young age that I can’t actually remember life without them. Attacks during childhood felt more like an inconvenience than a burden at the time. My mom would put me to bed with a nice, cool washcloth on my head and a fan blowing in my darkened bedroom. I’d awaken the next day, ready to rejoin life as I’d left it. Dreams of the future, untainted by migraine.

My father always told me that hard work led to success. My mind perseverated on those words during my college years at one of the top engineering schools in the country. Long hours. High stress. Lack of sleep. And as my goals became clearer and closer to my grasp, my migraine condition began to show me the depths of pain that I hadn’t seen before. Pain that lasted for days. Recovery that took even longer. Dreams of the future became a little blurrier.

And this is where my fight began.The fight between what I wanted for my life and what was possible. As an overachieving Gen X-er, I had the determination to shove my way through the doors that were closed to the women who came before. We were told to fight for what we wanted. We were told to not give up when things got hard. We were told to push ourselves to the limit. I had fought through the challenges of receiving a degree in a male-dominated field and there were so many doors out there just waiting to be knocked down.

Holding onto these mantras, I wasted years of my life ignoring what my body was telling me. Ignoring my own self care. Clinging to a dream of a life that wasn’t mine to live.

Something about adulthood empowers the migraine attacks to dig its teeth in a little deeper each time. Wounds that require recovery. Recovery that requires patience. You don’t have to push yourself to the limits because migraine will do it for you. Every attack that came forced me to make changes in my life that carried me further away from the dreams I had for myself. The further away I got, the more anger and shame consumed me. I was angry at my migraine. I was ashamed that I had let it keep me from living the life I had planned.

I’d like to say that I had some big epiphany that allowed me to overcome my migraine condition and become the feminist success story of my generation. But the reality is that I have surrendered. Surrendered to the fact that I was born with migraine and I will die with migraine. Surrendered to the limitations that it brings with it.

Make no mistake. Surrendering is not giving up. Surrendering is simply letting go of resistance. Migraine is not my enemy. It is part of me. And with that acceptance, I created the space in my life to better manage it. I am not a doctor. I am not a CEO. I am not a marathon runner. I have no awards. This is not the life that I had planned. My motivation and drive had to shift towards learning the arts of self-love and recovery and sleep and nutrition and healing. My achievements are marked by the moments. I have endured immeasurable pain and not let it take me down. I strive to show the caregivers in my life how immensely grateful I am. And by sharing my story, I hope to help others like me learn to find peace in a life with chronic pain.