When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?

Almost everything is multisided – including the occurrences that give us pain. So, we asked some of the most enlightened folks in the community to share how they have harnessed their pain to help rather than hurt them.

DeAnna Chartt

After ten years in the Air Force, I transitioned into the Army Reserves and moved to Baton Rouge to help my mom and figure out civilian life. What I didn’t expect was how hard it would be to lose that sense of structure and purpose I’d always known. Read more>>

Tom Willner

When I was diagnosed with testicular cancer at thirty, I wrote songs to make sense of it. Those songs became a musical, Turning Thirty. That’s when the pain turned into power—when I realized story and music could help others, too. Read more>>

Brrash

I stopped hiding my pain back in 2017. By then, it had simply become too heavy to carry in silence. I wasn’t thinking about how others would take it or what the aftermath might look like — I just knew I wanted to live for me, not for them. What I didn’t realize at the time was the kind of power that choice would unlock. Read more>>