Francesca is published in The New York Times, Brain, Child Magazine, The Manifest Station, Ed Week, Drunken Boat, and Word Riot. She leads an annual workshop at The Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her manual, Writing Workshop; How to Create a Culture of Useful Feedback, is popular worldwide.

thumbnail_francesca-grossman.jpg

francesca-grossman.jpg

Francesca Grossman

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<h4>
 After thyroid cancer, Crohn’s disease, and other autoimmune diseases
 defined her twenties and thirties,
 FRANCESCA GROSSMAN
 was left feeling alone with chronic pain. This invisible companion
 affected her whole life – intimacy, motherhood, friendship, work, and
 mental health – but after more than twenty years she started talking
 to others and discovered that her story was not unique, and neither
 were her feelings of loneliness and seclusion. Francesca decided to
 help her fellow chronic pain sufferers feel a little less alone, and
 her latest book,
 Not Weakness: Navigating the Culture of Chronic Pain, is a
 testament to their ability to live and love with chronic pain.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 I have lived in chronic pain for most of my adult life. One thing I can
 tell you with absolute certainty is that the difference between living
 with it and giving up has almost always lived in kindness.



 The first time I lost control of my bowels, I was on the platform of the
 Number 6 train. I was twenty-six, and a cup of coffee I’d sipped led to
 stomach pain I can only classify as agonizing. Though I did everything I
 could to get up the subway steps and into a near by restaurant, my cold
 shaking body let go three steps from the top. The problem in a situation
 like that, I have since learned, is walking makes it worse. And stopping
 gets you nowhere.



 I sprinted in shame to my gym, a place that had been my salvation. I
 rushed into the shower with all my clothes on, peeled them off, pumped
 bright green body soap into my jeans, and threw away my underwear in a
 naked dash from the scalding shower to the metal bins.



 A young woman wearing a black staff T-shirt approached me in the locker
 room. I had seen her many times before, folding towels mostly, mopping
 the floor, and I always nodded my hello. She always nodded back. “Are
 you okay?” she asked. I was unable to speak. “Do you want me
 to wash and dry those for you?” she asked gently, pointing at the heap
 of wet clothes on the bench beside me. I sighed, nodded my thanks
 and sat in tiny white towels for the next forty-five minutes while this
 beautiful woman did my laundry.



 While the moment remains one of my most humiliating, I think it’s
 important to reflect on the kindness this woman showed me. She didn’t
 have to help. She had a lot to do, she was at work, she had a life that
 did not include cleaning up after me.



 We have this assumption that in shameful situations most people will be
 cruel; they will point and laugh, they will walk away disgusted, and/or
 they will not help. I’m not sure if that comes from the playground, the
 horrific news cycle, bad TV, or our own insecurities, but in my
 experience it is mostly false.



 This example of kindness and help is just one of many I can recount. A
 woman stopped what she was doing to help me clean up. She looked at me
 naked and shaking, sitting next to a pile of wet dirty clothes, and she
 held out her hand to take them. She washed my clothes, and in doing so
 washed away some of the shame that had covered me too. Her kindness was
 a work of grace.



 At the time, this was the most humiliating day of my life, and my
 response was to bury it deep within me. It was only the beginning of the
 shame I would experience in the next two decades living with a number of
 autoimmune diseases, which triggered and caused severe everyday pain and
 the total breakdown of my body.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<div class="block-image">
 <figure>
 <img width="700" height="489" alt="kindness-makes-difference2" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/kindness_makes_difference2_700x489_68be39a7a7.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-26T07:23:38.810Z" />
 </figure>
</div>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 We have this assumption that
 in shameful situations most people will
 be cruel; they will point and laugh, they will walk away
 disgusted, and/or they will not help, but in my experience it is mostly false.
</h4>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Living in chronic pain can leave you feeling like there’s no goodness
 out there, that no one can understand and therefore no one cares. I have
 experienced – and the women I’ve interviewed have also – repeated
 dismissal, silencing, and shame by some of the people who were supposed
 to care for us. But many people have been saviors. I have had many
 doctors, nurses, aids, therapists, instructors, and friends who have
 done everything in their power to make me well. My gratitude runs deep.



 The women who spoke to me for my book lit up when I asked them to tell
 me about their experiences with kindness. In almost every case, they
 were happy and eager to recount the moments and people who changed their
 lives simply by being kind.



 Samantha was in a near-fatal riding incident in the mid ’90s, which left
 her with severe, constant chronic pain in her leg and shoulder. She told
 me,“ I’ve run across many kind people. Too many to count. A couple jump
 to mind.



 “The first was a nurse who figured out a way to wash my hair in the
 hospital after my accident, without me having to ask. She knew it was
 bothering me to have dirty hair. Her name was Sophia. I’ll never forget
 her.



 “The second was a paramedic who held my hand in the helicopter on the
 way to the hospital. Never got his name, but I do remember his smile,
 and the way his simple human touch made me feel that everything would be
 okay.”



 Studies show that delivering health care with kindness leads to faster
 healing, reduced pain, increased immune function, lowered blood
 pressure, and decreased anxiety. According to Dignity Health, “In a
 randomized controlled trial of patients with irritable bowel syndrome,
 patients who were treated by warm practitioners who listened actively
 and expressed compassion for their condition experienced less pain, less
 severe symptoms, and greater health improvement than other patients in
 the study… leading to a general conclusion that better communication and
 listening have a positive influence on controlling pain.”



 Love is big. But kindness is often small. Reaching out instead of
 recoiling. Checking up instead of writing off. Texting, nodding,
 smiling. A one-armed hug. A calming song, a cool cloth. A sweet phrase.
 A compliment. Small gestures that in retrospect make huge differences.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<div class="block-image">
 <figure>
 <img width="700" height="504" alt="kindness-makes-difference3" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/kindness_makes_difference3_700x504_abf6168939.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-26T07:24:25.291Z" />
 </figure>
</div>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 To the nurse that washed Samantha’s hair, it is probably just something
 she is happy to do. To the woman in the black T-shirt, maybe I’m a funny
 anecdote or maybe I didn’t register much at all. I’m sure it seemed like
 a very small thing to her.



 But to me, it was huge. And there is no doubt that small acts of
 kindness like these helped save my life.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Love is big. But kindness is
 often small. Reaching out instead of
 recoiling. Checking up instead of
 writing off. Texting, nodding,
 smiling. A one-armed hug. A calming song, a
 cool cloth. A
 sweet phrase. A compliment. Small gestures that in retrospect
 make huge differences.
</h4>

<hr />