The presence of pain is the promise of change. That’s because it hurts to suffer, and when we’re suffering we’re far more inclined to take risks, to take action, to fall on our knees, to break out of bad habits, to break out of the box in order to get beyond the pain that we’re in. Suffering, therefore, is always an invitation to change, to get into alignment with what is most true and beautiful in life, with our deepest and most expansive feelings, with Love itself.
It may not feel this way right now, but just as the oak tree, folded and invisible, lies whole within the acorn, so everything you need to live through this current anguish is within you. You are blessed. Your life is designed. If this crisis weren’t meant to be part of your life, it would not be happening. This is the moment and these are precisely the experiences through which your emotional body is being healed, your soul is being refined and enlarged, and your life itself is taking on a new meaning.
— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. xviii-xix