I was losing blood faster than they could track it. I didn’t know that at the time. What I knew was that I was drifting—in and out of consciousness, in and out of the room—and somewhere in that drifting, a voice reached me.
I’m here. And you’re going to be okay.
She was a nurse. A complete stranger. She didn’t know my name an hour before. She didn’t know what I loved or what I feared or what I had been carrying into that hospital. But she was there in the dark with me, and she said the only thing that needed to be said.
“I felt seen in my suffering. Held in it.”
I remember not wanting to take her hand at first. I know. Even then. Even in that moment when my body was failing and the room was spinning and this could have been it—I wanted to stay strong. Accepting her care felt like weakness. Like admitting something I wasn’t ready to admit. But I did take her hand. Eventually. And when I did, relief entered my entire body in a way I had never felt before. I felt seen in my suffering. Held in it. That moment asked something of me I didn’t know I was capable of. Humility. And I don’t mean humility as smallness or self-deprecation. I mean humility as honesty. The radical, terrifying act of letting someone see exactly where you are. Of saying, without words: I am suffering. I cannot do this alone. I am letting you in.
Years later, I was lying in bed after taking my progesterone pill—one of the glamorous rituals of perimenopause—in that soft, drowsy, half-here place between waking and sleep. And then, very clearly, like someone leaning down to whisper directly into my ear, I heard: Ease the suffering of one another. I grabbed onto it before it could slip away. Because that is the other glamorous gift of perimenopause: Thoughts that feel enormous one moment are completely gone the next. But I think my body already knew this. It learned it in that hospital room, from a stranger who showed up and stayed.
I started running every profession through this lens. Teachers. Doctors. First responders. It all fit. And then I got to the arts—and that’s where it got complicated for me. I grew up as a dancer. And for years—too many years—I carried a quiet shame about it. Dance felt selfish. Indulgent. Like I wasn’t doing anything that actually mattered. I decided to go into nursing so I could tangibly feel like I was giving back. But with time I have come to realize it is actually the arts that have eased my suffering the most.
I have stood in concert halls and watched lead singers pour themselves completely out onto a stage. I have watched a bassist play with the full-body joy of an eight-year-old on Christmas morning, like that guitar was the only thing that existed in the entire world. I could not look away. My breath slowed. My chest opened. Sometimes I would find myself moving without deciding to. Sometimes I would find myself crying—deep, surprised cries that I didn’t even know were waiting inside me. That is not nothing. That is everything. That bassist was easing my suffering. Without knowing my name. Without knowing what I was carrying. Just by being completely, unapologetically present in their gift. And so is the dancer I am, even when I forget it.
What if we reoriented ourselves around this idea? What if we asked of our precious moments on earth: Does this ease suffering? Not in a heavy, obligatory way. But as a kind of compass. A gentle returning. Because I think about my work as a nurse and it feels obvious there. But what about in my relationship with my partner? My children? The person who is driving me a little bit crazy right now? And what if the suffering I ease is also mine?
Self-compassion is not a detour from the mission. It is the beginning of it. The patience I offer so freely to others is something I am also allowed to give myself—the gentleness, the care, the hand on the heart instead of the voice that says you should have done better. When we allow our pain to stay unchanged in us, it finds its way out anyway and it causes more pain. But when we tend to it, when we witness ourselves with the same grace that nurse offered me, it has somewhere to go. It changes instead of spreads.
We are all grieving something. We are all finding pockets of joy and beauty and gratitude alongside it. That is not a contradiction. That is being human together.
Maybe that’s where we start—in our humanity, not with answers but one question: Whose suffering might I ease today? And don’t forget to put your own name on that list.
