Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional
August 23, 2026
I had a literal anxiety attack recently when my husband offered to go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, while I relaxed. After sitting with it for a bit, I found the culprit. My body could not settle into believing it was ok for him to do the shopping.
That is not the code I got growing up.
I’ve been conditioned to believe that is my job.
And that’s when I remembered something Martha Beck said to me years ago in my life coach training:
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
It took me about twenty more years to actually understand what that really meant. 🤣
Because it turns out, understanding something in your mind and living it in your body are two very different things.
So I continued to unconsciously create a lot of suffering in my life and in my relationships in the years that followed — even though I thought I knew better.
My mind had learned the lesson.
My body hadn’t gotten the memo yet.
I still thought:
> I had to work hard to earn rest.
> I had to tolerate disrespect to keep the peace.
> I had to sacrifice myself to prove I cared.
> I had to “work hard” to be worthy.
Turns out I was wrong.
Because this conditioning didn’t just live in my mind.
It lived in my body.
And you can’t think your way out of something your cells and nervous system have been running for decades.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t outrun my body.
And you can’t either.
Like me and countless women before us, you were taught — by religion, by culture, by your parents, by society — that suffering is the price of being good. That sacrifice proves love. That depletion proves dedication.
This belief runs so deep that you don’t even see it. It’s the invisible code shaping every choice you make.
Where are you suffering in your relationships and life right now?
And what part of you, like I used to, believes — it’s just the way it is?
Are you staying small? Sacrificing your needs? Performing instead of being real?
That’s your conditioning playing out.
And there is a massive impact you cannot afford to ignore.
These beliefs are costing you everything.
Your joy. Your voice. Your aliveness. Your freedom. Your power.
It’s costing your family too. Your children are inheriting the same wound.
It’s costing our communities. We’re in a mental health crisis because women have been taught that suffering is noble.
But it’s not. It’s a lie.
This isn’t an accident.
The documentary No Country for Mothers exposes something most of us have felt but never had language for:
We live in a culture that was never designed to support women.
Patriarchal conditioning has spent centuries teaching women that their value lives in their sacrifice. Their worth lives in their service. Their identity lives in their roles — mother, wife, daughter, caretaker.
And the woman underneath all of those roles?
She got buried beneath a system that needed her to be quiet.
Because:
A woman connected to her voice is dangerous.
A woman connected to her joy is unstoppable.
A woman connected to her body, her desire, her grief, her full expression —
She is way too powerful.
That’s the woman we’re gathering to remember on August 26th.
Not the roles. Not the conditioning. Not the invisible code.
Her. The YOU you’ve been longing for.
So, what’s the way back home to you?
Here’s What I Know to be true.
Pain is inevitable. But suffering? Suffering is absolutely optional.
I’ve seen courageous women live this truth out in the most extraordinary ways — including the four women joining us as panelists in my free online event, The Woman Behind the Mother on August 26th.
My dear friend Dr. Laura Berman knows grief in the deepest possible way after tragically losing her 16 yo son. She knows about feeling it instead of running from it and it didn’t just heal her. It set her free.
Aine Rock walked away from a marriage that looked perfect on the outside — because she refused to keep suffering on the inside.
Dr. Gertrude Lyons has spent her life helping women rewrite the mother code they were handed without their consent.
And Amy Owen guides women back into their bodies and back to themselves, even through pain, through the sacred wisdom of birth and embodiment.
Four women. Four journeys. One shared truth:
When you stop running from your pain — it stops running your life.
The difference is this: Pain is what life brings. Suffering is the meaning we make from it.
When you stop believing that you have to suffer to be worthy — when you stop organizing your life around depletion and sacrifice — everything changes.
Your relationships shift. Your body wakes up. Your joy returns. Your children see a different woman.
You change yourself and you change the world.
Your Voice Matters. Please Join Us:
On August 26th we’re gathering with women who found their way out and through.
Women who’ve stopped suffering unnecessarily. Women who’ve remembered what joy feels like in their body.
We’re gathering to explore what conditioning has cost you — and what becomes possible when you stop paying that price.
We’re gathering to wake up together. And I hope you will join me.
Because you matter.
August 26th | 6:30 PM CT | Virtual via Zoom | Free
👉 [Grab your spot here — and bring a girlfriend]
Let’s end the suffering here.
in trust and gratitude,
Annmarie Chereso
Author, Speaker, Coach, & Meditation Teacher
P.S. Forward this to a woman in your life who needs to hear it. She knows who she is.