Unbearable, Photo Credit: Yamakov, Dreamstime.com
Our normal impulse is to avoid pain. However many of us unknowingly chase after the very thing that causes it. Not only that, but when pain comes, we rarely blame the source. Instead, we blame ourselves, believing that we must have done something to deserve it. That’s a dangerous road, fraught with slippery slopes. No one deserves pain.
As an author, I find that experiencing pain is an opportunity of sorts. I examine it, open my heart to it; envelope myself in the spiritual and emotional devastation of it. Not because I’m a sadist, but so that I am able to fully express suffering in my stories. It’s not enough for readers to understand that my heroine is in pain. I want you to burn from it as she burns. When she curls into a fetal position overcome by blows that strike too fast for her to defend herself, I want her anguish to be your anguish; her tears to be your tears.
Then just when you think she’s finished, she finds the strength to fight back and defeat the pain. I want her triumph to be your triumph.
Pain. Unbearable. Then beaten.
