Duh.

In massage therapy school I learned that large muscle mass grows from damage, also called micro-tears (think of barrel chested body builders). That bulkiness comes from the formation of all these micro-tears, producing an increase in size (and strength and endurance).

A thought occurred to me recently after responding to an email from a mama who recently lost her child to suicide. I was trying to tactfully explain how the pain does not shrink over time. At all. But the heart adapts, enlarges, to accommodate & tend to the increase in pain.

The heart is a muscle.

Through damage, it grows.

I have spent so much of the last three years trying to understand & find the words to explain what has happened inside of me, this ‘mechanism of survival’, and it was right here all along. Biology. Hardwired into my DNA. Resiliency, explained.

The wisdom of the body never fails to fascinate and humble me. My own pain and everyone who allows me to work with theirs continue to ground me into the wonder of it all. I have always told my clients “pain is a messenger”— I just had no idea how profound the memorandum could be.