Few people truly enjoy being in pain. Even fewer learn to appreciate it.

Pain is generally unwanted and, when it becomes chronic, it is often regarded as an unwelcome guest who refuses to take the hint and leave. After chronic pain took hold of my body in 2017, the vast majority of my thoughts were driven by a single idea: I wanted to get rid of it.

I did everything I could think of to heal it, cure it, fix it and banish it. A few years later, after most of my attempts had completely failed, I tried a different approach: I surrendered.

Instead of fighting the pain, I started to learn from it. In truth, this transition from fighting to surrender didn’t happen overnight.

Even before I got fibromyalgia, I had already considered the possibility that having an illness could be an opportunity for personal growth. But when it came to the reality of living with pain and fatigue on a daily basis, I couldn’t stop my mind from wanting to be free of it.

Until I was able to let go of this idea, I see-sawed back and forth between those two states of fighting and surrender. Gradually, something began to dawn on me: fighting didn’t yield any positive results, whereas the process of surrender did - it was teaching me something.

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