All right, I admit I made most of that up, but the title is true. Pain Health News really is  included in the March Pain Carnival at the "How To Cope With Pain" blog.

A blog carnival is a round up of related blogs and posts, so blog carnivals are a great way of helping people with related interests and issues find each other. Dealing with chronic pain can be lonely, depressing and confusing. Each of us needs all the help and support we can get, but those ingredients aren't always so easy to find. That's why I'm so pleased to be included with the other good sites working to provide places where people with chronic pain can find understanding and resources.

Check out the March Pain Carnival at "How To Cope With Pain" to see all the articles included.  I promise—no cream pies in the face!

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information, motivation and understanding to people dealing with chronic pain. To stay in touch with her, please use the subscribe form in the upper right corner.

And in seconds the life I knew was over.

From that moment on, my life was a blur of doctors and therapists asking me where it hurt. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

But none of them every asked me about the pain of losing my sense of self. If they had, I would have told them it was every bit as deep and devastating as the pain I felt in my back, my hands and knees. It hurt as bad and it took as long to heal.

Before pain, I was proud of my intelligence, proud of my independence, proud of my accomplishments. Proud, especially of my work. After pain, I had nothing to be proud of. Everyone who saw me, saw me as a victim. Someone to be sorry for. Someone to pity.

Friends dropped away. One couple, announcing they wouldn't be visiting anymore, said, "It just hurts us too much too see you like this. You never laugh anymore."

It's a testament to my addled state of mind that I thought I had disappointed them! But pain does that to you. It makes you pathetic and needy and most of all guilty. Guilty of not hugging your kids, of not making love to your spouse, of not being as much fun, of not wanting to do anything anymore.

Everyone who discovers that pain has become a constant in his or her life suffers from a loss of identity. And yet almost no one address this. It's not studied. No one holds seminars on it. No one helps you though it.

I once thought this loss of identity was harder for men to bear. Women, I told myself, at least have the luxury of being able to cry about it openly. But after working with so many people in support groups, I came to see that it affects all equally, women as well as men, and that it ripples out, like a stone cast into water, touching everyone around them.

When I was injured, I lost myself. My husband lost the woman he married. And the ripples grew…

So let's talk about it here. Let's go public with the fact that our egos are often as damaged as our broken bones or frayed nerve endings, and healing them is just as important a part of our health and recovery. What has pain robbed from you,  besides physical health? How are you dealing with this? What advice can you offer to others who are struggling though the loss of their former identity? What hope can you give to those who feel lost, and wonder if they will ever find themselves? The comment box is here for you to share your thoughts and feelings.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.

Welcome to the new blog for Pain Health News. Although I still have a lot of work to do setting it up, I'm rushing ahead to kick it off this last day of 2008 so that you and I can welcome in the New Year, 2009, together.

It's lovely to think that we have a brand new year in front of us, like a glistening field of fresh snow just waiting for us to wade in and make our mark. But like so many lovely thoughts, this one is a fantasy.

The reality is that 2009 comes to us trailing the debris of 2008, a year filled with fears and frustrations, a year that sent the entire world into a tailspin. It will take more than the blowing of horns and the popping of firecrackers to chase away the troubles of the year now passing.

We will not wake up on New Years Day to a completely new world, nor a completely new life. Each of us will find pretty much the same struggles and challenges waiting on our doorstep as we step out into our new year. And yet, there is cause for celebration, and for joy, because at the very heart of our New Year a celebration is the most profound and powerful of all human emotions.

There is hope.

To look at the world as it is, to look at ourselves as we are, and to patiently trust and expect that things will be better is the source of true magic, for once you choose hope, anything is possible.

Hope is the source of all courage, of all creativity. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept going when they had nothing left but hope. Hope is, as Emily Dickens wrote, "the thing with feathers-That perches in the soul-And sings the tune without the words-And never stops-at all."

When trust has been broken, when confidence has been wounded, when dreams have been shattered, hope is indeed the thing that sits in the soul and sings the tune without words, the tune that assures us life not only can be better but will be better.

There was a time in my life when I was in despair, when pain seemed never ending and people seemed not to care. But hope sat in my soul and the song it sang gave me the courage and the ambition to push on, to prod, to nag and demand and search.

It was hope that told me there was healing. And hope did not lie.

Tonight, after the horns stop blowing and the firecrackers stop popping, I will go out into the still night, into the quiet and listen for the bird-like voice warbling in my own soul the joyful tune. I invite you to listen to the song inside your own soul, then join me here to share your hopes for the New Year.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.