Going through hardships gives us strength in the places we’d never thought to develop, spaces we didn’t know we’d occupy, room to reach beyond ourselves, toward others who are where we had been.
suffering
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Suffering is universal. It’s time I grew wiser about how to sit alongside it.
The pain and gift of the end of life, and the truths that dying reveals at the heart of being human.
Asking for help in hard times can be difficult, sometimes accompanied by shame. Our columnist offers practical tools for sharing and lifting the burdens of loved ones who have fallen on hard times.
President Trump called the mass shooting in Las Vegas "an act of pure evil." Courtney questions why we use the word "evil" to explain such violence. And, she argues, why we should stop making that moral bargain.
When it feels like our life has been turned upside-down, sometimes the greatest comfort isn't advice or a solution, but having someone to simply endure alongside us.
A reflection acknowledging that the injustice of suffering can't be wrapped up in a neat bow of closure. Instead, we the author looks to her culture’s understanding of ancestry — in the responsibility we have to the loved ones we’ve lost.
After reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel “A Little Life,” our columnist grapples with the reality of suffering that doesn't make us stronger.
Instead of denying frightening realities, sometimes the best path forward is a courageous acknowledgement of the truth.
From soured relationships to dead bugs, it's a given: life can get disgusting. But sometimes we can step back and recognize that we're far from powerless in the face of things we fear.
Unwavering gratitude can be an intimidating ideal. Sharon Salzberg examines gentle attention to the positive as a generous alternative to our negativity bias.
One of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima, reflects on life after the bombing in frank words: to honor the lives destroyed, and hope that her experience with death imparts a lesson about the preciousness of life.
Loss and trauma can cast us into uncertainty. Parker Palmer finds solace in the words of William Stafford, and wonders if being lost is the first step on a path to something better.
Guided by Naomi Shihab Nye's beloved poem "Kindness," Parker Palmer reflects on our capacity to emerge from the depth of suffering, into the fullness of compassion.
Walk straight into your not-knowing. Exercise your heart. Live as variously as possible. In this season of graduations, Parker Palmer offers six suggestions for traversing the savage and beautiful terrain of life.
After a teacher stays on in Poland after a five-day bearing witness retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she offers a peripatetic meditation on beauty, suffering, and our capacity to comprehend what is incomprehensible.
The daughter of refugees pens an open letter to her mother. She reflects on the inheritance of suffering, offering this ode to the resilience of the human spirit and gratitude for the opportunity to flourish.
Our corrective actions can have radiating effects, placing a burden on those who don't deserve it. A moving revelation of the extended trauma of mass incarceration — farther reaching than we might imagine.
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