August 24, 2026

Transform Or Transmit

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, spent decades working with prisoners, addicts, and people carrying old family wounds before offering this insight. He saw the same pattern again and again: people who never dealt with their pain ended up hurting the people closest to them. This line names the choice that sits underneath every hard moment, do the work now or hand the weight to someone else later. Discernment, in Rohr's world, starts with noticing which of the two you are doing in any given moment.