Maybe Suffering Isn’t Optional After All

There’s this phrase that floats around the wellness world like some kind of spiritual confetti:
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Tidy. Controlled. Something you could stitch onto a pillow or stamp on a meditation journal.

But here’s the thing: I’m calling bullshit.

Maybe suffering isn’t optional.
Maybe suffering is part of the deal—woven into the fabric of being alive.
Maybe it’s not something we’re supposed to bypass, overcome, or sidestep with a better mindset, a green juice, or a few rounds of breathwork.

Because have you met the human experience?
We don’t get out of this life without walking through fire.
We don’t die without some form of suffering.
And we sure as hell don’t live a full, embodied life without facing it either.

Suffering isn’t a glitch in the system. It is the system.
Not because life is cruel, but because it’s real. Messy. Honest. Soul-shaping.

We break. We bleed. We lose people we love. We fail ourselves. We fall apart and put ourselves back together, only to fall apart again. And pretending that we can somehow opt out of the suffering part? That just piles shame on top of pain.

What if we stopped sugarcoating it?
What if we stopped trying to mindset our way out of what it means to be human?

What if, instead, we gave people permission to feel it?
To admit it. To name it.
To suffer without being told they’re doing it wrong.

Because the goal isn’t to avoid suffering. The goal is to learn how to meet it with grace, grit, and tools that help us navigate—not numb—our way through.

We don’t need more bypassing.
We need more honesty.
More rooms where people can say, “I’m hurting,” and be met with compassion, not correction.
More spaces where healing isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence.

So maybe suffering isn’t optional.
Maybe it’s sacred.
Maybe it’s the very thing that cracks us open, so the light can finally get in.