The pain itself in the hospital is I would have told you before that surgery that I lived

at a 9 or a 10.

I didn't have a clue that it could be so much worse.

I was like, oh, I thought I knew pain just kidding.

Like this is a pain I didn't know was possible.

So when I opened the door to welcome today's guest Ruthie Lindsay, I literally was greeted

with a ray of light, a sort of a human bundle of joy and lightness, which is pretty incredible

considering that along with all that joy and radiance and beautiful service and sense

of just love, she lives in constant pain, physical pain that is progressively getting worse

every year.

When she was 16 years old after living what she would describe as a pretty charmed life,

she was in a car accident that left her in a hospital for a month with a rewired upper

spine.

Everything seemed to be going along fine until about five, six years later when everything

fell apart and her world was turned upside down yet again.

How she's coped with that, what actually happened, how it sent her into a very dark place for

many years.

And the decision that she made and the trigger that it would take to have her respond profoundly

differently to a pain that as we sat and had a conversation still was very much a part

of her every day, every moment experience was something that rattled me, that inspired

me, that endured me and that gave me hope that we can experience pain and suffering as

all of us either have or currently are or at some point will and still live a deeply connected

...