Repurpose Your Pain: What I Learned From Watching My Daughter on “Law & Order”

I recently had the strange and wonderful experience of watching my daughter Kennedy McMann on a TV show. She’s an actor living in New York City, and she guest starred on NBC’s long-running hit “Law and Order: SVU” (season 20, episode 4, air date Oct 11, 2018). If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a police procedural focusing on a big city special victims unit. Horrible things happen to the characters portrayed by the weekly guest actors. As I watched Kennedy play these heart wrenching scenes, I found myself feeling incredibly proud, amazed by her talent, and caught up in the emotion of the story.

As I reflected back on that experience, I wondered at how Kennedy was able to portray all that raw emotion with such authenticity. Her acting experience and excellent training at Carnegie Mellon University can only carry her so far. Then I realized an important factor in understanding this ability – she was repurposing her pain.

My daughter has a lot going for her. Kennedy is talented, smart, hardworking, funny, and kind. She’s also had lifelong struggles with anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and chronic migraines. Like most of us, she has had her share of pain in life. But to her great credit, Kennedy has chosen to repurpose it. After appropriately processing and then releasing her pain in a healthy way, she is able to use it as a tool in her acting. When she’s playing a roll requiring deep expressions of sorrow, she taps a well of painful memories and experiences and then harnesses them to produce something beautiful, authentic, and powerful.

Kennedy also repurposes her pain by using it to help others. She’s shared openly on her social media platforms about her struggles with mental health. Here’s a recent example from a Snapchat she posted on Mental Health Awareness Day: 

Her vulnerability in talking about the ups and downs of her battle with anxiety and OCD has been an encouragement and inspiration to many. At the same time, sharing the difficulties she’s faced has helped Kennedy with her own healing process. The courageous yet simple act of putting her story out into the world has made her problems a little less daunting, and she’s received a lot of love and support. You can read her story in her own words here on her blog.

It’s so tempting to deny, bemoan, bury, or wallow in your pain. But none of those responses are helpful. Not to yourself or anyone else. Instead, how about looking for a way to repurpose your pain? Let it serve as motivation or fuel for a healthy personal goal, like training for a race, taking a class, or applying for a new job. Can you share your story in a way that equips, encourages, and empowers others to face their own struggles? It may be as simple as a social media post or sharing a little more deeply than normal with a friend over coffee. Maybe it’s something more substantial like starting a blog or teaching a class or volunteering at your favorite charity or writing a book. Whatever it is for you, choose to start today.

We all have pain. The question really comes down to this – what are you going to do with it? I encourage you to embrace your pain. Feel it. Process it. Learn from it. Then let it go. Refuse to bury it, deny it, or marinate in it. Use your pain as fuel for a personal growth goal. Share your story to shine a light for others and find your own healing. If you do, you’ll take another giant step to Becoming Yourself.