My Burden Long Tossed
Those Who Carry, Those Who Suffer
Do the strongest really carry the biggest load? Are the kindest people the ones who suffer the most?
Mum joined me on one of my lunch walks, where I took the dogs into the nearby woods. She was firing off a thousand questions about my two weeks in “therapist-to-be training”. What did I learn, what will I do with it, when will I start, what will be my way of doing things and how much money can I earn being a therapist? I shut down. First of all, because it is way too complex to pour into a quick and dirty reply. Secondly, because fuck, can you give me a minute?
It had been just 3 days since I got back from what has felt like an advanced course in psycho-social counselling. I have a booklist of 344 books reduced to the bare minimum of the first 27. It’s also been less than 5 months since a silly doctor told me I am dying. Can I breathe for a few seconds before I roll out my therapy studies, marketing plan and practice set up in the space of a single dog walk?
It was meant to show her taking an interest, but I felt something else too. And that something else created great discomfort. Stop pushing me, I thought. Stop urging me and nudging and downright pushing me into a position that pretends I am OK.
It is so freaking ambiguous. No, I don’t want to curl up into a feotal position and give up. But I also don’t want to march on as if nothing happened. I do this my way. You can walk alongside me, or you can bugger off.
I am not the only one noticing this. One of my cousins went though a rather rough patch years ago. She is a naturally radiant person. You know the type, like a Kate Hudson, where they shine as if they have a secret light burning inside them. The thing is, even when she is having a panic attack, when it feels like her heart is literally about to give out, she will still look radiant in other people’s eyes. They don’t see what she feels. When you are on the verge of collapse, ad very much trying to avoid complete destruction, then maybe instead of going for full disclosure and rubbing people’s faces in your pain, it may become very tempting to just play along. Play pretend.
There’s a subtle, often unspoken tension in the world between strength and suffering. We are conditioned to admire strength, to look at those who bear heavy burdens with quiet resilience and call them heroes. We idolise the kind-hearted people, convinced that their compassion stems from suffering—those who know pain are often perceived as the ones who can best understand and heal others. But the more I reflect on these ideas, the more I wonder: Do the strongest really carry the biggest load? Are the kindest people the ones who suffer the most?
For much of my life, these questions have resonated with me, both in my personal experiences and in how I’ve observed the world around me. And yet, as I sit with them, I realize there’s a deeper, more nuanced truth that lies between these two extremes. To understand the true nature of strength and kindness, and the way we respond to it or draw conclusions from it, we must first explore the complexities of suffering and how we carry it.
Strength: Beyond the Burden
Strength is often seen as the ability to carry heavy burdens, as if the more pain you endure, the more resilient you become. This idea is deeply ingrained in our society. We admire the person who keeps going, who remains steadfast despite everything. And perhaps there is a certain nobility in that. I am all for Grace under fire, but I am also very much in favour of screaming, snotty cries and desperate pleas to God make it all stop.
I have always hated how life kept knocking me sideways, as if it was a constant, unrelenting test of my strength. My resilience knows no bounds, but come on, stop forcing me to cultivate it. The first time I had cancer I sobbed on my dad’s shoulder and said:
I want to be more than someone who handles crises extraordinarily well.
That statements rings true now more than ever. After the year I have had, I am in no mood to be tested any further. I would rather experience and spark some joy. Let me be blissfully ignorant for a while. Give me some carefree abandon. In fact, give me truckloads of it.
By the way, I also have no interest in being your personal poster child of unfathomable optimism. Even though I myself have now idea how I am even still standing, let alone enjoying stuff and looking ahead with excited anticipation, I do on occasion want to just crumble.
Can you let me? Can you let me crash in a safe space, can you hold space for me while I hide from the world, let life go a little, when I smash your illusion of me as some sort of hero in this insane personal “journey” (I got rid off journey already in another piece of writing).
I’ve faced more than a fair share of physical and emotional pain (what on earth is fair?), and there were times when I felt the weight of the world squashing me like a hippo. There were moments when I thought I couldn’t keep going, when the suffering seemed too much to bear. Sitting next to my then boyfriend in a coma in the ICU (near fatal car crash during high school), staring at the ashes of my burnt down belongings (house fire during university), waking up from a 9 hour surgery with terminal cancer and my epidural in the wrong place. Fuck it hurts.
But even in those moments, I found that my strength didn’t lie in how much I could carry. It lay in how I responded to it. I learned to set boundaries, and to honour my limitations. Strength is about knowing when to hold on and when to let go.
It’s about not pretending we are invincible but acknowledging that our vulnerability is part of what makes us strong.
Simply Myself
‘I am getting to a point in my life where everything is mine. I own it all. Nothing depends on others. Not my boundaries, not my expectations or what can be expected of me. It’s liberating. I know who I am, where I have been and how I have handled it.And the ones close enough to care will have their own feelings about it. Compassion and respect, I will take. Everything else will have to pass me by.’
I have become ruthless. In the best possible way. The humanist psychologist Carl Rogers suggested that true strength comes from being able to embrace our own humanity, warts and wounds and all. Strength is not about denying pain; it’s about how we choose to manage it, how we navigate it with grace, and how we learn to live with it. In short, pain shows you the path to growth, but also don’t enjoy being singled out my teacher “suffering”. You will have to be willing to face some of that pain with me.
Being introduced to the work by Carl Rogers reminded me of one of the favourite things I heard Gabor Mate say: Without compassion someone will never show you the whole truth about themselves. If you want to know me, I suggest you start there. If we are to truly heal, we must be allowed to reveal our pain without fear of judgment or rejection. This kind of compassion doesn’t diminish the pain. It embraces it all to carve out space for healing and growth.
Kindness: The Paradox of Suffering
The relationship between kindness and suffering feels equally complicated. I have a tendency to believe that the kindest people are those who have suffered the most. After all, how can someone truly empathise with others unless they have known pain? And yet, I’ve seen the kindest people extend compassion without any obvious personal suffering, while others who have endured much struggle with bitterness or indifference. So there is no clear, direct and linear relation between suffering and compassion.
Kindness, I believe, isn’t just the result of suffering: it is also a choice. Possibly, the ability to keep choosing kindness when life has been anything but, requires strength. Not just strength, wisdom too. I want to be kind. But sometimes I need to be a bit cruel.
While suffering can deepen our ability to empathise, it’s not the only source of kindness. Kindness stems from the ability to be present with others, to offer support without expecting anything in return. But kindness must also be rooted in self-compassion. For so long, I equated kindness with self-sacrifice, believing that to be truly kind, I had to give of myself endlessly. But over time, I’ve come to realise that kindness, when it is not balanced with self-respect, can become corrosive of my true self. And with that of any authentic relationship. True kindness involves giving to others while also honouring our own needs and boundaries.
The idea that kindness comes from suffering isn’t always accurate. It may be that the capacity to extend kindness is deepened by pain, but it is not defined by it. The real power of kindness comes from an inner peace, a well of empathy that allows us to extend compassion without depleting ourselves.
From Fear Or From Love?
One of the most striking things I’ve observed in my life is how others often shy away from acknowledging suffering. In my experience people happily embrace strength, the illusion of inspiration, with something that borders on relief. Is this disingenuous or a blessing in disguise?
Is it mirroring something we don’t want to see? It’s as if, by acknowledging someone’s pain, we are afraid it will become our own. We’re afraid that if we confront someone else’s vulnerability, we might see our own reflected back at us. Scary!
This avoidance often manifests in the way others respond to me when I speak about my chronic pain or personal struggles. Instead of offering compassion or understanding, people often affirm my strength, as if to avoid acknowledging the reality of my suffering. Why, though?
Perhaps this comes from fear. Are they, like me, afraid that if I do fall now, I may never get back up again? And so, they choose to focus on my strength, on what I’m doing right, because it feels safer. But in doing so, they overlook or dismiss the complexity of my experience.
I no longer feel called to set the record straight. it doesn’t serve me either, to over-emphasise my suffering. I can do that until I see blue in the face. The chances that people’s refusal to sit in that space with me, is somehow magically resolved, are pretty slim. Besides, it is not my job to make anyone understand. I would rather invest my time and energy in encouraging other people in a similar situation to do the same. Set yourself free from the need for validation. Your experience is yours. Own it. As anonymous once shared on social media (and boy it stuck!):
“Don’t whore yourself out for the cheap understanding of others.”
A Happy Sisyphus
The tension between strength, kindness, and suffering is not an either/or scenario. These elements do not exist in isolation. Strength is not about carrying more than others, nor is kindness simply the result of suffering. Both qualities are shaped by our ability to recognize and embrace the full spectrum of human experience—our pain, our joy, our vulnerability, and our resilience.
Existential philosophers like Albert Camus argue that life is absurd, filled with suffering, but that we can still find meaning through our response to it. Camus famously said that we must imagine Sisyphus happy—because even in his endless struggle, he chooses to face his fate with dignity. This idea resonates with me, although I suspect Sisyphus may be the first to tell me to fuck off. Strength isn’t about avoiding suffering, nor is kindness about denying it. It’s about finding meaning and purpose even in the struggle. But whatever you learned or got out of the struggle, is not a denial of the struggle itself. And if pain simply looks and feels like pain, and never morphs into anything “uplifting” for yourself or anyone else, then that is totally valid too. You don’t need to downplay or wrap it up in a bow for anyone’s sake.
Don’t rush it. Take your time to trip and topple over. Get buried under the burdens for a bit. You will dig your way out. Dwell on the past for a while. Lick your wounds. Turn into a hermit, go a tad numb, relish in denial. Break some plates, scream a little, or a lot, punch a pillow, throw eggs. Make it as neat or as wonky as you wish. Be kind to all sides of you that need to see the light again, before you are ready to move on. And, some things don’t pass, they get integrated into the whole, the new you, the authentic self that always was and that you will never stop evolving into.
In my own life, I’ve come to understand that strength and kindness are not qualities that come from enduring endless pain, but from learning how to live with it. They are not about constantly pushing forward, but about honoring the moments of stillness, rest, and reflection.
Being my own fat, happy, best Buddha buddy, lets nobody off the hook though. My resilience and sense of purpose are never a free pass for others to scathe over my pain, ignore my boundaries, question my limitations, pretend nothing happened, or freely project on me, whatever they need me to be. I am mine. I am me.