Hurting Yet Whole: Liuan Huska on living with chronic pain
/
Liuan Huska, author of “Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness”
2020 finds us all living within circumstances that we can’t change. For some of us, this vulnerable posture is new and uncomfortable. Others are used to waiting.
Liuan Huska lives with chronic pain. She is a speaker, the author of a just-released book, Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness, and my guest on the Handle with Care podcast.
Our conversation is deeply textured, touching on the intersectionality (Liuan is Chinese-American), the dangers of productivity-first thinking, and why weakness invites us deeper into our shared humanity.
If you are living in the messy middle or know someone that is, this episode is for you.
You can find the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And you can listen to the episode here…
This conversation with Liuan sparked so many points of interest for me, and I hope that you do check out her book in the link below. And here are three key-takeaways to consider:
Do you consider someone who is living with pain, whether that is physical or psychological emotional pain, as a problem to be fixed? How does this Fix-It Frank mentality limit your interactions with them? What does it look like to consider them as individuals that actually have something deeply meaningful to contribute to the collective life of a community?
Physical presence, just being able to sit and be with someone in their hurt, is incredibly powerful. And this can be hard, because we live in a society prizes happiness and success AND we often feel the need to fix grief. Liuan spoke of the power of her husband just being with her, bearing witness to her emotions instead of moving away. How can you show up like this for people that are hurting in your own life? In your work setting?
Are you promoting a white-knuckle culture within your workplace or family? Liuan wrestled with this type-A drive. And if I am honest, this is a take-away point that is totally for me. I can really prize pushing through and doing hard things. How can this lead you (and others) to ignore the needs of the body as you constantly prioritize productivity over rest?
