When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?

Almost everything is multisided – including the occurrences that give us pain. So, we asked some of the most enlightened folks in the community to share how they have harnessed their pain to help rather than hurt them.

HALEY MAHANNA

I stopped hiding my pain when I realized it’s part of the human experience—inevitable, layered, and sometimes lingering. Some pain arrives quietly, and some hits so deafeningly it shifts your entire being. But every kind of pain builds character. It invites a choice: to become bitter, or to push against the negativity and grow through it. Read more>>

Michelle Goss

I recently stopped hiding my pain and started using it as power when I found myself in a relationship that had turned toxic and I knew I needed to get out of that relationship. During the process of ending the relationship, I became the victim of domestic violence. Read more>>

Aria Rai

I don’t know if I’ve ever fully stopped hiding my pain, but I’ve definitely made a lot of progress in learning how to not be ashamed of my emotions and experiences. I think a defining moment for me was when I released my first single, ‘Numb’. Read more>>

Christy Miller Howard

It happened the moment my illusion shattered. I had spent 21 years loving someone I thought I knew. We lived together for a decade, married for just under four years, and then—everything unraveled. I discovered he was a functioning alcoholic and that much of what he’d told me about his past, his life, and who he was… wasn’t real. Read more>>

Kayla Windsor

I actually just recently stopped hiding my pain and made a podcast called Therapy Session which focuses on mental health issues coming from those that suffer from it rather than the POV of doctors that have only studied it rather than suffer from it themselves. Read more>>

Erica Leone

It wasn’t one moment—it was a series of quiet, breaking points. There came a time when hiding my pain became heavier than the pain itself. I realized I was shape-shifting to be digestible, dimming myself so I wouldn’t make others uncomfortable. But the truth was screaming in my bones. I couldn’t keep compartmentalizing what had shaped me. My pain wasn’t weakness. It was wisdom. Read more>>