“I don’t want to be sixty years old still talking about what happened to me when I was twelve.” I said this to my cousin, who though more than a decade younger than me, held traumas just as mature by the time she graduated high school. So did her mother. So did mine.
Pain is relative.
I don’t think it kind or fruitful to compare. So many factors go into how deeply we feel pain and what serves as a trigger. An event that leaves one wounded can’t ever be declared more or less significant than another’s, because my pain is mine. Your pain is yours. We can empathize with one another, but we cannot feel what someone else is feeling the exact way they are feeling it.
If you’ve had a fairly comfortable life, enduring anguish may be more challenging than it is for someone with more experience. Your world could seem like it’s crashing down while, if the same thing happened to them, the issue would just be tossed atop a pile of mounting misfortunes. That doesn’t mean either of your personal tragedies matter less. Each just hits different — and thus, hurts different.
I was listening to a podcast where a guest bemoaned the idea of removing children from abusive, unsafe, volatile home environments and placing them in the care of strangers indefinitely. The guest believed the best place for a child is…
