One random day, while teaching my SEN class, a child gave me a sticker and hung it on the reward chart.
Then, just as quickly, he took it off.
I asked why.
And he looked at me and said:
“We passed it.”
He was just referring to reward time being over. But those three words stayed with me longer than he did that day.
At the time, I was stuck in an emotional loop — the same hurt resurfacing again and again.
But when I heard “we passed it,” something clicked.
It’s not that pain disappears.
It’s that the first moment of it — that raw, untamed, breath-stealing moment — does pass.
And once it does, something in you has already shifted.
You’re no longer in the same raw state.
Even if the pain revisits, you’re not as unarmed as when it first knocked you down.
You survived the loudest part of it.
That deserves grace. That deserves gratitude.
The first moment of any pain is its sharpest — and once it’s passed, you’ve already started healing, even if you don’t feel it yet.
This truth came back to me again when my cousin, who had no health issues, suddenly had a seizure.
I still remember my aunt screaming his name from downstairs while I was praying.
We didn’t know what was happening — we’d never experienced anything like it before.
The fear in her voice, the chaos of the unknown — it shook us.
But later, I reminded her:
“You passed it. The first time.”
And that was the hardest part — not because the pain disappeared,
but because the first experience always hits the deepest when you don’t see it coming.
So now I hold this with me:
You passed yesterday’s pain.
You passed this morning’s ache.
You’ll pass this hour’s wave too.
And even if it returns — it will never be the first time again.