I was recently talking to a friend about the highs and lows that we experience on our path of growth and healing, and the desire to find (and stay) within in a middle ground that is absent of hurt and hardship. The idea of this middle ground that is absent of pain and struggle is a very attractive notion, and one that is easy to package and sell due to this intoxicating attraction. However, despite what social media influencers, coaches and marketing may allude to, there is no middle ground that exists that is absent of suffering.

There is a pervasive and seductive myth that exists in our culture; the myth that if we attain certain things in life, we can escape hardship, pain, struggle, and suffering. We see this myth often personified through marketing, political dogmas, and (influencer) lifestyles, and, over the past decade or so, we have seen this myth grow exponentially in the world of personal growth and healing.

We imagine that if we just work hard enough, meditate long enough, and process our trauma deeply enough, we will arrive at some promised land where pain no longer touches us. But this belief itself only creates more distress, dis-ease, and disillusion — more pain caused by false expectation, spiritual bypassing, or waiting for a life that will never come.

But when we look closely at the nature of growth and healing, the truth is both simpler and more profound: Healing does not make suffering disappear — it expands our capacity to be with it.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us,

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

The ocean of life continues its motion — storms still gather, losses still arrive, the body still ages and aches. What changes is not the presence of difficulty, but our relationship to it.

One of my favorite “mentors from afar”, Pema Chödrön, teaches that the fundamental ambiguity of being human never resolves. (I am always amazed by her ability to provide such depth and wisdom in her words. She has a way of conveying the human experience in a simple and approachable manner that is both digestible and inspiring.) Pema Chödrön writes,

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

Healing is not about transcending our humanness or eliminating vulnerability. It is about turning toward ourselves with honesty and compassion, again and again, even when — especially when — life brings us to our knees.

When we heal past traumas or expand our capacity to be with what is, we aren’t building walls to keep pain out. Instead, we develop what Jack Kornfield calls “a wise heart” — a heart that can hold both joy and sorrow, that understands suffering as part of the primordial texture of existence. We learn that we can be broken open rather than broken down, that our wounds can become sources of wisdom and connection rather than shame and isolation.

The healed (healing) person still grieves. They still feel fear, anger, loneliness. They still face illness, loss, and pain. They are still visited by stress, crash-outs, self-doubt, and craving. But there is a crucial difference between those who have accepted the true nature of healing and one who still fights against it. Those who have accepted the true nature of the path have learned to meet the experiences without adding layers of resistance; without exhausting themselves further by believing the narrative that something has gone terribly wrong simply because life is being life.

I like to remind myself that, even after attaining enlightenment, the Buddha was still visited by Mara, the malicious tempter that tries to steer us from awakening, and the Buddha still experienced pain in the body as the body aged.

Healing is not the absence of pain. It is the expansion of our capacity to be present with whatever arises. It is the cultivation of what Kabat-Zinn calls “bare attention” — the ability to witness our experience without immediately judging it, fixing it, or pushing it away. It is the radical acceptance that, as Kornfield says,

“the trouble is, you think you have time” to wait until everything is perfect before you fully show up for your life.

From this view, we remember that healing is a practice, not a destination. It is a daily choice to meet ourselves and our circumstances with tenderness rather than violence, with curiosity rather than condemnation. It is the understanding that being whole doesn’t mean being untouched by life, but being present for all of it, the bitter and the sweet alike.

For myself, I have found that my deepest healing was made possible when I finally stopped waiting for the hurt and hardship to end before I began truly living. Maybe you will find that, too.