S2E4: Can Pain and Joy Coexist? - Jennifer Magnano
Suffering is one of those things that happens to every single human.
For some of us, it comes and goes, and for some of us, it seems to linger. Either way, what do we do with it? How do we thrive through it?
My conversation with Jennifer Magnano for this episode of Pain to Passion Live hones in on these questions as she shares her own stories of wrestling with pain. I am so honored to be sharing her stories with you all!
Come and listen to this beautiful soul talk about chronic illness, losing her faith, receiving a life-changing diagnosis, finding faith again, and parenting children with unique needs while living with chronic pain. I promise you, you'll find treasure in her words just as she's learned to find treasure in life - not after pain, but in the midst of it.
Thank you for listening! Please take a moment to rate and review! <3
More about Jennifer:
Jennifer Magnano aka The Barefoot Preacher is a mother, writer, and Ayurvedic postpartum (doula) specialist. She honors the wild, holy work of local and global motherhood through resonant writing and speaking, parent and birth worker mentorship, resources & community education. With personal experience of the chaos and complexity to exist throughout the caregiving years, Jennifer’s ongoing work is that humanity knows peace. The kind that begins within and echoes throughout generations to come.
Connect with Jennifer:
Instagram - @thebarefootpreacher
Website - www.jennifermagnano.com
Jennifer's Substack, "Reclamation" - jennifermagnano.substack.com
Connect with Gabi:
Instagram - @gabiruth
TikTok - @gabiruth84
Facebook - facebook.com/gabiruth84
Website - gabiruth.com
Coach with Gabi - gabiruth.com/book-a-1on1-call
Invite Gabi to Speak - gabiruth.com/speaking
(TRANSCRIPT) S2E4: Can Pain and Joy Coexist? - Joy Magnano
Note: Transcript is created by AI. Please excuse any errors.
Gabi: [00:00:00] Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to Paying to Passion Live. I have surprise, surprise, another friend that I have found. On the wild, wild world of Instagram, this beautiful, amazing soul, Jennifer Magnano. She is absolutely incredible. If you don't know her already, you're going to love her. And I'm just so excited to have you here today.
Jennifer, thank you so much for being here.
Jennifer: Thank you for having me, Gabi. I'm really glad to be here today.
Gabi: Absolutely. I don't, I don't even really remember how we connected on Instagram. Um, but I've been following you for a while and you have some beautiful stories and you're an amazing mama. Um, but I would love for you to kind of just share with our audience, like I shared with you before we started recording, I don't tend to read bios because when people [00:01:00] talk about themselves, it can get really cool and interesting.
So, We would love to hear who are you and what are you about?
Jennifer: Absolutely. So my name's Jennifer.
I'm known as the barefoot preacher on social media. And um, that started from my years of teaching Holy Yoga. I was a yoga instructor for over a decade before my body said no.
Gabi: Aw.
Jennifer: And now I work specifically with postpartum families and I write a lot.
Gabi: Yes. And you write beautifully. Thank you. Absolutely beautifully. So you mentioned, and I'm, I'm just gonna jump right in, um, because I'd love to just hear more of your story and how you've become this new, beautiful, refined version of yourself. Um, I know there's been a lot of struggle and a lot of things that you've had to face, [00:02:00] but you mentioned the holy yoga, which.
Is awesome. Definitely a fan of that, but that you can't do that anymore. Um, and you've had to move forward with other things, but I'd love to kind of hear what your journey has been like through that process. You know, pain is really complicated. Mm-hmm. I know that's something that you talk about with a lot of people.
Um, from my perspective.
Jennifer: It's one of the most awful things that's ever happened to me. Mm-hmm. And also it's been one of my greatest teachers.
Gabi: Yeah. Yeah. What, what do you mean by it's been a great teacher? How has it taught you? Oh, goodness. I mean,
Jennifer: the good days are really, really good now. Oh, I love that.
They just are, I mean, when you, so for me, I've been, um, disability adjacent since I was 10.
Gabi: Wow.
Jennifer: So I started having joint pain really [00:03:00] young. The Boston Children's Hospital couldn't really figure out what was going on with me, so I bounced around for prac, like from practitioner to practitioner for 25 years before I got an official diagnosis.
And so I've, um, my pain's just always been a companion, I guess, is the best way of putting it.
Gabi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. How do you think that gives you a different lens on how you see other people?
Jennifer: Oh gosh. I just, it makes me wanna cry because I just know that every single human that we meet is going through something.
Yeah. And the majority of the time you'll, you'll not see it on the outside.
Gabi: Yeah, it's so true. I think you're definitely gifted in that area of just being able to see people at a soul level. Um, My guess is even if they seem hard on the outside, you [00:04:00] have a particular way of noticing the gold on the inside, which is really, I mean, you write in that way, the way you communicate is very much like, where's the beauty that I can see in this?
Um, Which makes me want to ask you too, like what has your faith journey been like because okay, your handle's the barefoot preacher, it kind of makes us think you're in the spiritual realm and I know you've had a really unique journey in that space. Um, and I'd love to hear whatever you have to share about that journey in your faith.
Jennifer: So I was born into an interfaith home. My, um, mom's side of the family is Catholic and my dad's side is Jewish.
Um, so I didn't really know who I was.
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Really for a long time. Um, Kind of wavered between the two spaces. Like, is Jesus really real? Is Jesus not [00:05:00] real? What if I believe in Jesus, but I wanna be Jewish?
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Um, but just all of the things. And then in my late teen years, um, I kind of dabbled in Paganism because I was frustrated with my body and frustrated with God and thought I need to take this into my own hands.
Gabi: Yeah.
Jennifer: And that didn't work. And that spirituality, faith, life has just continued to evolve.
Um, I was in an evangelical church for a while and now I'm not sure where I am. I just know what I believe in.
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And, um, very much feel compelled by the mystery of God, of never really knowing who they are. And yet just having this gut feeling that they exist.
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:00] Yeah. Which again, comes across so beautifully in how you communicate.
Um, you mentioned the, in the dabbling in paganism era, just your anger and frustration with like, where are you? If you were real, then why aren't you doing something about this? Like so many of us have been in that space, right? Of that questioning, and now you're in a space where you understand that God is mysterious and there's a lot that will never understand.
And I feel like those two go hand in hand. But this anger somehow turned into like this acceptance of the mystery. Do you think you know why you have been able to go from anger to embracing the mystery and how maybe others can do that as well?
Jennifer: The anger was [00:07:00] killing me. Mm. Literally. Um, in 2017, I ended up with cancer.
Gabi: Wow.
Jennifer: I had melanoma and it was very aggressive, and in that space I recognized what anger was doing to me.
Wow. Wow. It was literally killing me.
Gabi: Wow. I mean, that's a pretty significant revelation. Yeah. That's, that's so interesting because I do, I do think you still had a choice at that point, right? You had a choice of where to put that anger. What to think about the anger even get angrier. Cuz now here you are with melanoma, right? But you have crossed over to definitely a faith-filled area, even though it's mysterious. Um, what did that [00:08:00] look like for you, even from 2017 up until now? What has that journey kind of felt like for you?
Jennifer: Well, I'll start off by sharing maybe this story of how I found out I had melanoma because it is really relevant to how my faith evolved. So in June of 2017, I had a tiny freckle that bled and I thought, that's probably cancer. Wow. And then I ignored it. Hmm. Um, I pretended it wasn't there for three months.
And then in October, like right after my husband's 40th birthday, I thought, Maybe I should have this checked out. At the time, I was really angry with my body. Um, I survived dengue fever in 2015. Wow. I still had a lot of symptoms from it, severe brain fog, um, the joint pain from my childhood level [00:09:00] 10. And so I was really angry, not just at God, but at my body for failing me.
Mm-hmm. And so I thought, well, this can't just be another layer of my body just
not doing what I want her to do. Mm-hmm.
And so late October of 2017, I told God that if it was cancer and I needed to have it checked out, um, he'd have to give me a sign. And I went online later on that night, that exact same night, and a friend posted bob Marley had melanoma, get Your Skin checked. That's actually what he died from. Wow. Wow.
And so not only was it a specific answer to prayer, it was the exact type of cancer. [00:10:00] Dang. Yeah. So from there I thought, okay, well he's like actually answering me. So, um, probably exists and I found it fascinating that God would still answer me despite how angry I was with them.
Hmm. And. Saw this community around me rise up during that time and so many other God winks. Uh, I was diagnosed with cancer a week after my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. Wow. So we walked through that together. Uh, just so many. God winks in that, of like, I'm not gonna let you go this alone.
You've never been this alone kind of deal. Yeah. Um, but I had always felt [00:11:00] really alone up until that point. Yeah.
Gabi: Interesting. Yeah. That's beautiful. I mean, just thinking about, like you said, despite how angry you were, God showed up. If that doesn't tell you about unconditional love, I don't know what will.
I love that It's beautiful and even like the simple things of you, it's not simple, but it seems simple of you not having to go through it alone. And what a big deal that was for you personally, especially given your history and how you had always felt that way. Um, I just think that's really phenomenal and amazing.
Thank you for sharing that story with us. Thank you for listening. Absolutely. I love people's stories. I think that stories change the world. [00:12:00] I'm sure you feel the same way. Um, because you're a very gifted writer, which I would love to hear, um, like how. You began to write kind of in this therapeutic way and what that's meant to you because you can tell that it means a lot to you to put things into words.
Jennifer: And I have written since I was tiny. Mm-hmm. I was six, six years old when I won an award in school and I remember being so proud. Aww. Like some young author's award and. Also knowing that it just came so naturally to me that like, why are they awarding me for this? This is all I know how to do. And for me it is most certainly this space where I see God the most is when [00:13:00] I'm writing.
It's this divine download through me and I look at words and I'm like, did I write that? Did God write that? Mm-hmm. Did we write it together? Mm-hmm. Um, I kind of go with it together most of the time.
Gabi: Yeah. The co-creation. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think that that perspective is really awesome because I think co-creation is happening a lot more than we realize.
Um, we just like to take. Take the, um, kudos for ourselves. Absolutely. Which is fine if there's nothing wrong with that. But if you start to understand the co-creation, I think that also gets you through the times when you feel in a dry spell. I know it does for me to remember like. I'm not doing this on my own.
I don't have to create this on my own. Like this was an idea given to me and there's someone with me [00:14:00] every step of the way. So, yeah, I just thought of that. That resonated with me for sure. So you're also an amazing mama with beautiful children, and what has being a mother taught you through? This lens too of pain.
I'm also a chronic pain survivor, and I understand how having children and children who need me at an extraordinary, exceptional level, um, how challenging those two things can be combined. But you're doing it beautifully. So I'd love to hear whatever you'd like to share about your parenting journey. I'm sure we'd all benefit from that.
Jennifer: So I have been a mom for almost 13 years. Um, my oldest will be 13 in July. My youngest just turned 10. And what happened? They taught me [00:15:00] it's everything. Hmm. It's a
complete selflessness when you want to be the most selfish ever. Hmm. Yeah. Because before I had kids, if I was having a bad day, I could just go to sleep. Right. And then I gave birth to two kids that did not sleep. Oh man. They just didn't, my son was a critically ill baby. Wow.
Spent his whole first year of life recovering from a virus that caused him to go into liver failure. Wow. And then I had my daughter two years after that and she had issues with center sensory integration and stranger phobias. She has really severe anxiety and a mood disorder, and she didn't sleep until she was like eight.
Wow. So [00:16:00] lots of lessons in there, and I think the biggest one has been. Patience and grace for all of us.
Gabi: Yeah, absolutely. You wrote she wanted to sleep. Oh yeah. No, go ahead.
Jennifer: No, my, with my, with my youngest, um, her body would want to sleep and it couldn't Hmm. And my body would want to sleep and it couldn't because it's taking care of her body.
Gabi: Yeah.
Jennifer: And so, Most days, especially during those first eight years, I could really look at it as this very sacred space. And then there were days where I was just horrified by the demands, the extra demands mm-hmm. On my body that it couldn't handle.
Gabi: Yeah, I can imagine. [00:17:00] How incredibly challenging that is, and it, it makes a listener like me get a little bit mad for you.
You know, and I understand it to an extent, having somewhat of a similar experience, very different. But as far as having high needs children and chronic pain at the same time, it's like next level torture sometimes. Um, and. I, I question sometimes, like, why? Why would someone who's already struggling to just get through the day as their own autonomous being be given the responsibility of children who aren't sleeping, who aren't?
Able to regulate these kinds of things where you're just so needed and your body's [00:18:00] need, like your literal physical body is so needed by other people. Um, that's a hard thing to accept. Even just as someone on the outside looking in, it's hard to accept. However, and I'm sure that you can. Probably say this as well, is people who go through that level of suffering.
Like there's some kind of in amazing treasure that's revealed. Um, I'm sure that you agree that you would not. Really be the person that you are today. If you hadn't gone through all of that, you wouldn't understand the depth of the strength that you actually have. Like what do you think, what do you think you've learned about yourself and what treasure has been revealed in the process?
Jennifer: It's a really great question because there's been [00:19:00] a lot of treasures that have been revealed here.
I think I understand better how God loves.
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: By the way that I love these kids. Regardless of how hard it is on my body or my mind,
I think it gives me a deeper connection with what it means. To be selfless, and I think that's a good thing. Mm-hmm. Because I think that a lot of us just being human are naturally very selfish. Yeah. And we forget about other people because we are centered in our own pain and trauma and hardship, and we forget there's so much else going on out there.[00:20:00]
I have never had the opportunity to forget that there are things going on out there. Mm-hmm.
Gabi: Yeah. That's a really big deal. Yeah. It changes who you are. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's uncomfortable. It sure is. Has anything worthwhile in your life though, ever happened that didn't? Become accompanied with discomfort?
Jennifer: No. No, never. No. All of it has been uncomfortable. I mean, you think of just the smallest choices.
You change career paths, which actually can be a really big choice. That's uncomfortable. Um, your kids grow and that change is uncomfortable. [00:21:00] Your partnerships, your marriages change, and that's really uncomfortable.
Gabi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's goodness on the other side of discomfort.
Jennifer: There is, and there's goodness in the discomfort too. And I think that's what we forget.
Gabi: Yeah.
Jennifer: Is that so many nights when my daughter literally didn't sleep, like. We're talking 24, 36 hours and this child is still not sleeping. Oh my gosh. And we've seen all the therapists and we've done all the things, and still she's not sleeping.
Wow. But I got to be her person during that. I got to be. So though I'm really uncomfortable in it, really uncomfortable and nauseous and tired and all the things that you experience in your sleep deprived. Mm-hmm. [00:22:00] I got to be her person. Mm-hmm. I got to hold her in that space. And some, I really do believe that like, that joy and suffering coexist, beauty and pain occupy the same space.
Mm-hmm. All the time.
Gabi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I absolutely a hundred percent agree with that. And I think the more that we can lean into that and believe that the more we can be present for our own lives instead of waiting for such and such a circumstance to be over, and then I can find happiness or joy or whatever. If we can really embrace, like you said, that joy and suffering can coexist and they do coexist, like how much more alive are we going to be? Right.
Jennifer: So much more [00:23:00] alive and I think it makes life worthwhile. Hmm mm-hmm. And when you can see, this is the only moment you have. And even if it sucks, I promise there is some sort of good happening in it.
There just is. I go back to several years ago we had a dog that got very sick and passed away and I had to take care of him and my children all at the same time.
Gabi: Wow.
Jennifer: Yeah. Just navigating all of the things and there were such. Such like beautiful humans that kept showing up. Like the veterinarian was just so kind and compassionate and like the mobile vet that came out to our house at the end and the neighbors that came and took my kids on hard days, like, Aww.
So much good. It came [00:24:00] in a really hard place and the, the heart didn't leave, it was still mm-hmm. Really? Challenging for us because our pets are our family.
Gabi: Yeah.
Jennifer: Um, there was a lot of good that came in that time too.
Gabi: Mm-hmm. That's beautiful. You wrote recently about your, like people talk about their why mm-hmm.
A lot and they really liked your perspective on that. It's very different than what you usually hear about the why, which I just think lines up with this a lot cuz it. Goes along with showing up for your own life and what it actually is. So, I don't know if you remember what you shared, but I'd love to hear for our audience what your perspective is on your why.
Jennifer: So I don't think why matters. Mm-hmm. It's been this kind of [00:25:00] ongoing space for me of why am I sick? Is it generational pain? Is it the food I eat? Is it the constant high need in my own environment? Is it some spiritual disconnect? I mean, the list could be years long. Mm-hmm. And then I went through the same thing with my daughter.
Okay. Why I, I worked so hard to have a healthy pregnancy and didn't mm-hmm. And then I had this beautiful baby, my first healthy baby, and then she ended up being really complicated too. And so it, I kept spiraling in the Y and then a couple weeks ago, even maybe I realized how much that took away from my life because I'm searching for answers that probably don't even exist.
Yeah. [00:26:00] Because all of our lives, all of our pain is a, it's like a, it's like a kitchen sink. Like everything's been thrown into it and it is generational pain and it maybe is the pesticides and the foods that we ate when we were kids, and maybe it is spiritual disconnection. And does any of it matter?
Mm-hmm. At the end of the day, is it gonna fix it?
Gabi: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: For me it hasn't. Right. So, I'm letting go of the why, just being in like here now, and it's so much healthier for my soul.
Gabi: Yeah, I mean even just the way that you just said that, I can just feel like, kind of like a sigh of relief from my body, you know?
Because we are always Anna as moms too. We get to next level of like figure out why we need answers. Because I gotta fix it. I gotta fix it. And I don't [00:27:00] know about you, but the way I was raised too was like you do whatever you can to find the solution or you're a bad person. Yes. And you can. Wrap that up in your identity, but as soon as you can do that, like you said, does it really matter?
And do what you've been given to do today with the life that you've been given. It gives you your time back. It gives you your presence back. You can actually be present. Now instead of in the why. So I really appreciated that. That meant a lot to me when you wrote that, so thank you for sharing that too with our audience today.
I think it's powerful.
Jennifer: I'm glad too. It's been a really important revelation, perhaps in my life, and I hope that it honors somebody else's.
Gabi: Well, it honored mine, so thank you for that. Um, we are starting to run out of [00:28:00] time and I wanna make sure to honor your time today, but I would love for you to just feel free if there's anything else that you would like to share with the audience, to feel free to do that.
And also let us know what are the best ways to connect with you, um, and how to find you on Instagram, all that. I'll put links in the show notes. But for anyone listening, they can connect with you based on your, your best
Jennifer: options. Yeah. The best way to find me is the Barefoot preacher on Instagram. I post fairly regularly and if I go away for, uh, extended period of time, which I do a couple times a year, then you can usually find me, um, on Reclamation, which is my substack newsletter.
Those are the best ways to connect with me.
Gabi: Cool. And yes, I highly recommend you guys go follow her on Instagram and sign up for her. Really beautiful, encouraging. [00:29:00] Words that help you breathe, and I appreciate that about you cuz we all need to breathe more deeply in the lives that we've been given. Um, you're a gem.
I think you're amazing and I love being able to follow your journey on Instagram. I'm so glad we've connected and thank you for your time today and for being here and for sharing such beautiful pieces of your soul with us.
Jennifer: Thank you, Gabi. I love seeing your story and journey too.
Gabi: Oh, thank you. Very amazing.
Truly. I absolutely agree. Well, you're lovely. Take care of yourself and have an amazing day. I'll talk to you soon.