Toward the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I'm talking about the book and not the movie here (we all know how often the book is better than the movie, and it's certainly true of the Harry Potter series, and even more true about the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Albus Dumbledore forces Harry to sit down and re-hash a harrowing experience he's just had.
In a nutshell and without too many spoilers, Harry has just witnessed the death of one of his classmates, the resurrection of his worst nightmare (Voldemort), and is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. Harry endures a lifetime's worth of trauma in one night.
Dumbledore sits down at his desk across from Harry. Harry knows that Dumbledore is going to question him, make him re-live the whole night. Obviously, like any of us, Harry doesn't quite want to talk about it. Much how I feel, years later, about the Pittsburgh Steelers' loss to Tim Tebow and the Broncos in the playoffs. We don't talk about these things.
But Dumbledore says to Harry, "If I thought I could help you by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better."
After Harry goes through unimaginable pain, Dumbledore knows the way forward, and isn't to avoid what's happened. So he tells Harry, "Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it."
Oof.
I've seen all of the Harry Potter movies at least a dozen times, I re-read the whole set of books every year, and each time, I find myself moved by moments like this, when Dumbledore says something to Harry that cuts right to his core, but it might as well be you or me sitting across from him.
That whole “numbing the pain for a while will only make it worse” line? That’s for me. That’s for you.
Because we're not great with pain. (By "we," I mean almost every person for probably all of human history.)
We are great at finding ways to avoid our pain. We're masters of the many methods of pain avoidance, prolific with the stuff that has "pain killer" right on the label, or alcohol, or social media, or overeating, or insert your vice here.
So I’ll say it again: When Dumbledore’s talking to Harry, he’s talking to us. We may not have a lightning scar on our foreheads or just escaped the clutches of the Dark Lord, but we’ve all been through stuff.
We all have our wounds. Some are small. Some run deep. Some are recent. Some have been around for years, decades. We all have and experience pain. It's an inevitable part of life.
And as Fr. Richard Rohr says, "If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it."
This is why some pain—some grief, some trauma—sticks around, even for generations. We're so good at not dealing with it that we end up passing our pain and our ways of dealing with pain on to our loved ones, to our children, to our grandchildren. We’re living in the midst of so much un-dealt-with trauma, pain, grief.
By the way, my super-smart wife is working on her MSW and has been educating me on all kinds of trauma-related issues, and if you are an educator, a clergy person, or just a person person, you should learn as much as you can about seeing the world through the lens of trauma.
In Dumbledore's conversation with Harry, we find maybe the most important thing for us to do with our pain: we’ve got to face it, and eventually, ultimately, transform it.
Dumbledore knows that, to Harry, it doesn't make sense to face his pain when all he wants to do is try to forget and wipe away the memory of what's happened. He explains to him that "only with acceptance can there be recovery."
Only by facing our pain, by sitting with it, by processing it, can we begin to heal.
It reminds me of something Jesus taught in his "sermon on the mount":
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
To me, that passage reads like this: you can't experience healing until you accept what's going on, until you face it, until you let yourself feel it and grieve it. Then, and only then, can we be truly comforted, begin to recover, and to heal from our wounds.
So long as we numb, we guarantee the transmission of our pain. If we face it, we can transform it into strength, into wisdom, and maybe—just maybe—even beauty.
Harry Potter? It’s a good thing he had Dumbledore to teach him this.
Every time I read about Dumbledore helping Harry to face his grief and to avoid numbing it, it's so clear to me that it's what's best for Harry in the long run. But what about me? What about you?
Who do you have?
What could be a starting point for facing your pain instead of numbing it?
If you need help, here's a place to begin, from therapist Sean Grover. He's smarter than me, and walks through some of what the process could look like for you. Or call an actual therapist. Or talk with a trusted friend or family member. It might be a slow, tough process.
But start somewhere.
Blessed are those of us who mourn, who find ways to face our trauma and grief and wounds, who resist numbing, who do the work.
We will be comforted.
And we will transform our pain.