I’ve been thinking about babies lately. Not for the reasons you might think, but because they’ve helped me understand something about being human. Babies experience discomfort. They get hungry. They get cold. They get tired. Their bellies hurt. They want to be held. And when they’re uncomfortable, they let you know it—loudly. But a baby doesn’t lie awake thinking: Why does this always happen to me? What if this never gets better? What if something is wrong with me? Why can everyone else handle this when I can’t? What if I’m always going to feel this way? They experience the discomfort. We experience the discomfort and then tell ourselves a story about it. And I think somewhere in that space between what is happening and the story we create about what is happening, discomfort can become suffering. Discomfort and Suffering Are Not the Same Thing This distinction has been explored in Buddhist philosophy for thousands of years. Buddhism doesn’t teach that we’re somehow supposed to avoid pain. Quite the opposite. Life contains pain. Bodies hurt. People die. Relationships end. People disappoint us. We lose things we love. We don’t always get what we want. We age. We get sick. Things change when we desperately want them to remain the same. That’s part of being alive. There is a well-known saying that captures an idea often associated with Buddhist philosophy: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I think that can sound almost harsh when you first hear it. Because if you’ve experienced heartbreak, grief, trauma, illness, betrayal, or loss, suffering certainly doesn’t feel optional. And I don’t think the point is that we can simply decide not to hurt. Pain is part of the human experience. Buddhist philosophy doesn’t ask us to pretend otherwise. In fact, the recognition of dukkha—often translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, or unease—is at the very heart of Buddhist teaching. Life changes. We lose people. Bodies age. Relationships change. Things don’t always go according to plan. We experience things we don’t want, and we lose things we desperately want to keep. That’s the pain of being human. But Buddhist philosophy also asks us to look at what happens after the pain arrives. We resist it. We cling to what we wish were happening instead. We desperately want reality to be different from what it is. We replay what happened. We predict what will happen next. We judge ourselves for feeling the way we feel. We attach stories to the experience: This shouldn’t be happening. I can’t handle this. I’ll never be okay again. Why does this always happen to me? Something must be wrong with me. And now we’re no longer experiencing only the original pain. We’re experiencing the pain plus everything our mind has built around it. What Does “Suffering Is Optional” Really Mean? Pain is inevitable. We are human. We are going to experience loss, heartbreak, disappointment, illness, fear, grief, change, and moments that simply hurt. We cannot control everything that happens to us, and no amount of healing or spiritual growth will give us a life completely free from pain. But suffering? That’s where things get more complicated. Maybe optional doesn’t mean we consciously choose whether or not to suffer. Most of us aren’t consciously choosing it at all. Maybe it means that some of our suffering is created subconsciously through our resistance, attachment, fear, judgment, and the stories we continue telling ourselves about what happened. And if some of our suffering is created there, then perhaps some of it can also be released there. There is another Buddhist teaching that illustrates this beautifully: the two arrows. The first arrow is the pain life gives us. The second arrow is the suffering we add ourselves. And I keep thinking about that. Because I shoot myself with the second arrow all the time. I think most of us do. We Don’t Consciously Choose Suffering I want to be really clear about this. When I say that we sometimes participate in our own suffering, I don’t mean that someone wakes up in the morning and thinks: You know what sounds great today? Misery. And I certainly don’t mean that someone caused their trauma, abuse, illness, loss, or whatever painful thing happened to them. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the subconscious ways we participate in our own suffering after something painful happens. Someone says something hurtful to me. That’s the first arrow. Then I replay the conversation for three days. I imagine what I should have said. I wonder what they think about me. I tell myself they don’t respect me. Then I remember another time they hurt me. Then another. Then I imagine what they’ll say the next time I see them. The original conversation lasted five minutes. I’ve now lived it for three days. That’s the second arrow. And I know that pattern because I’ve lived it—repeatedly. Sometimes Suffering Sounds Like Resistance This shouldn’t be happening. They shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t feel this way. My life should look different by now. Sometimes it sounds like fear: What if this never changes? Sometimes it sounds like shame: Why am I like this? Sometimes it sounds like comparison: Everyone else seems to have figured this out. Sometimes it sounds like attachment: I cannot be okay unless this person stays. I cannot be happy unless I have this amount of money. I cannot feel successful unless my life looks this particular way. And sometimes suffering looks like trying desperately to control something that was never ours to control. The discomfort may be real. The grief may be real. The fear may be real. The heartbreak may be very, very real. But then the human mind gets involved. And we can turn one painful moment into a thousand painful moments. This Doesn’t Mean We Should Stop Feeling Actually, I think it’s the opposite. Avoiding discomfort can create its own kind of suffering. We numb. We distract ourselves. We stay busy. We scroll. We overwork. We overthink. We pretend we’re fine. We spiritually bypass what hurts by trying to turn everything into a lesson before we’ve even allowed ourselves to feel it. But maybe the answer isn’t escaping discomfort. Maybe it’s learning how to experience discomfort without immediately building a home inside it. Feel the sadness. Feel the anger. Feel the disappointment. Feel the fear. Let your body experience what is actually here. Then notice what your mind begins adding. That’s the practice I’m becoming interested in. Not: How do I make sure nothing uncomfortable ever happens to me? Because that’s impossible. But: How do I stop turning every uncomfortable experience into a story about who I am, what my life means, or what will happen next? That’s different. Maybe Babies Know Something We’ve Forgotten A baby can be absolutely devastated because they’re hungry. Then you feed them. And five minutes later, they’re staring at the ceiling fan like it’s the greatest thing humanity has ever invented. There’s something beautiful about that. The discomfort came. They experienced it fully. Their need was met. And the moment passed. They haven’t learned to carry yesterday into today yet. We have. Obviously, adult life is infinitely more complicated than a baby’s hunger. Some experiences leave real wounds. Trauma can change the nervous system. Grief doesn’t disappear because we decide to “let it go.” There are experiences that take years to process. There are things we may carry with us for the rest of our lives. But carrying something isn’t necessarily the same thing as suffering inside of it forever. And I still wonder if there’s something we can learn from the distinction. Pain asks to be felt. Suffering often asks to be believed. Maybe that’s part of healing: learning to recognize the difference. Learning to ask: What is actually happening right now? And then: What am I adding to it? Because perhaps freedom isn’t a life without discomfort. Maybe freedom is learning that discomfort can move through us without becoming the story of our lives. The first arrow may not always be ours to choose. But maybe, with awareness and practice, we can slowly learn to stop firing the second one. And maybe that’s what “suffering is optional” is really asking us to consider.

how we learn to disconnect from ourselves — and what healing might really mean

the gentle practice of caring less about everything else so you can care more about you

why we postpone happiness in the hopes of more later.

there is a particular kind of grief that comes from watching the land you love turn to smoke. for over a week now, our foothills have been burning. the Aspen Acres fire has moved through precious communities — places that have felt safe to us. they are where we hiked, where we knew the shape of the ridgeline against the sky, where some of us built our whole lives. thousands of our neighbors have been evacuated. many still don't know if their homes are standing. some already know they are not. if you are reading this from inside that experience, or from just outside it watching people you love go through it, i want to say the thing that trauma work has taught me above almost everything else: there is no wrong way to be feeling right now. numbness is not weakness. tears are not an overreaction. rage at the sky is not dramatic. your nervous system is doing exactly what it was built to do when the ground itself stops feeling safe. for those of you living it directly if you evacuated, if you're waiting for word on your house, if you've already lost it — your body has been in survival mode for days, maybe longer than you've let yourself notice. that matters more than it might seem. the nervous system doesn't clock the difference between "the fire is still burning six miles away" and "the fire is in my living room." it just knows danger, and it stays braced for it. so the first thing i want to offer you isn't advice. it's permission. permission to not be okay yet. permission to feel oddly calm one hour and shattered the next — that's not you failing to cope, that's what regulation actually looks like when the threat isn't fully over. permission to grieve things that feel "smaller" than a house — a garden, a view, the quiet of a place, a version of normal you can't get back to yet. a few things that can genuinely help while your body is still in this state, not as a fix but as an anchor: your breath is one of the only parts of your nervous system you can reach directly. when you notice your chest is tight or your thoughts are racing, try making your exhale longer than your inhale — in for four, out for six or seven. this isn't about calming down on command. it's about giving your body evidence, slowly, that it's allowed to come down out of the high alert it's been living in. let your hands do something. fold laundry, dig in dirt, hold a warm mug, press your palms flat against a table. trauma lives in the body, and the body often finds its way back before the mind does. you don't have to think your way out of this. you can feel your way out of it too. be careful with the news cycle and the acreage updates. staying informed matters, but there's a difference between checking in and marinating. give yourself windows where you put it down, even for twenty minutes. and please, let people help you. i know how hard that is for those of us who are used to being the strong ones, the ones who hold space for everyone else. this is not the week to prove you don't need anything. accepting a meal, a couch, a hand with paperwork — that is not weakness. that is community doing what it's for. for those of you holding space for someone else maybe your home is fine and someone you love's isn't. maybe you're a practitioner, a neighbor, a friend who wants to help and doesn't know how, or worries anything you say will land wrong. i see you too, and i want to gently say — you are allowed to be affected by this even if you didn't lose anything. holding space for grief you're not the center of is its own kind of weight, and it's real. when you're supporting someone who is displaced or grieving a home, the most healing thing you can offer usually isn't a solution. it's your steadiness. you don't need the right words. you need to be a nervous system that isn't in crisis, sitting next to one that is — because our bodies borrow calm from each other. that's not a metaphor, it's physiology. your presence alone is doing work. resist the urge to rush them toward silver linings. "at least everyone's safe" is true and it can still land as dismissive when someone is standing in the ash of their kitchen. let people be devastated in front of you without trying to fix the devastation. ask what they need instead of guessing — sometimes it's practical, sometimes it's just someone to sit with them while they don't talk at all. and take care of your own capacity. you cannot pour from a nervous system that's also running on empty. it's okay to help and also need to step away and refill. what tragedy also reveals there is something else true alongside the grief, and it deserves its own space here, because it's part of the healing too. tragedy has a way of showing us exactly who we are as a community, and this week it's shown us something beautiful. people who lost almost everything have still shown up to help set up donation centers for their neighbors. volunteers who have no personal stake in these mountains have been driving in from surrounding towns just to serve meals and set up water slides for evacuated kids, because a child deserves a moment of joy even in the middle of losing their home. strangers have opened their homes, their trucks, their wallets, their weekends. shelters filled almost as fast as the evacuation orders went out. this is what happens when a community remembers it's a community — not because the danger disappears, but because no one has to face it alone. this is the part of trauma that doesn't get talked about enough: it isn't only rupture. it can also be the thing that softens the walls between us. the person who wouldn't normally ask for help learns to receive it. the person who's never volunteered a day in their life shows up with a truck bed full of water bottles. we are reminded, sometimes at great cost, how much we actually need each other — and how willing we are to show up when it counts. that thread of connection is its own kind of medicine. it won't undo what's been lost. but it is proof, in real time, that this community knows how to hold itself together even while it's breaking. a word on collective grief this fire isn't just individual loss stacked eleven thousand times over. it's a collective wound. our community is going to be metabolizing this together for a long time — longer than the containment percentage will suggest, longer than the news will stay interested. healing from something like this isn't linear and it isn't quick, and it doesn't happen alone. it happens in kitchens and donation centers and circles like the ones we hold at the studio, in the small acts of people showing up for each other again and again. if you need a place to simply be with what you're carrying — not to perform okay-ness, not to have it fixed, just to be held in it — our doors are open. whatever you're feeling this week, it belongs here. we will rebuild what can be rebuilt. and what can't be rebuilt, we will grieve together, for as long as it takes.

the soul-deep connection your heart has been quietly waiting for

remembering what this practice was always meant to be

the quiet truth that we were never meant to do this alone

remembering the part of you that was never meant to be tamed