A few years back I attended a retreat that had a profound influence on me.  The leader posed a topic for us to reflect on that truly changed my life.  “Ask yourself,” he encouraged us, “for the wisdom to know when you’re ready to let go of your suffering.”

At first I was shocked.  “What did he mean, when I’m ready to let go of my suffering?  Now, of course.  I’m ready now.  Who chooses to suffer?”  But after I did as requested and sat with the question for a while, some profound insights came to mind about my happiness.  There are things in life that we suffer from that we have no control over, but there are also many things we suffer from that we indeed do have control over.  Our task is to do the work to know when we are ready to let go of the suffering we can.

Self inflicted pain tends to take the form of guilt, shame, and regret.  We can torture ourselves with these types of emotions that drain us of joy and eat away at our souls.  One example for me, personally, was survivor guilt.  Although my sister’s death had been nearly two decades earlier, I still carried a profound sense of guilt that she was gone and I was living on;  getting married, having children, buying a house, all things she never had the chance to do.  This guilt felt like a burden that weighed me down with a silent background of sadness and an empty feeling, especially when good things happened.  When I thought about it at the retreat, I recognized it, the survivor guilt, indeed was my own suffering.  It didn’t help me remember my sister, honor her life, or feel closer to her in any way.  In fact it only made it hard for me to think about her and our relationship.  Somehow, though, my survivor guilt made me feel connected to her, a continuation of a sibling comparison, perhaps, that was a natural between sisters.  It was at that point that I indeed had an “aha” experience of knowing when I would be ready to let go of that suffering.  It was when I could assure myself that I could remember my sister just as well without the feeling of guilt, instead allowing myself to have gratitude that I could live on and keep her memory alive.

The retreat reflection regarding “knowing when we are ready to let go of our suffering” is a powerful one.  I find it helpful because it implies a process that needs to be respected.  We suffer for real reasons.  Our pain is real pain, and has causes and effects.  But at the same time, it is liberating to recognize when we indeed, are the true source of our suffering and then are   in complete control of it.  We can ask ourselves, what purpose is my pain serving?  Who will I be if I let go if it?  What will it take for me to be ready?

I hope in sharing my experience, you, too, can have some new perspective on some old familiar pain.  What do you think you might be ready to let go of?