“Pain is something that we might know, but we don’t always understand it that well,” explains Kara Stanley, writer of The Pain Project. Ten years prior to writing The Pain Project, Stanley’s husband and lifelong best friend, Simon Paradis suffered a brain and spinal cord injury. His recovery and determination to return to work as a professional musician is detailed in Stanley’s first memoir Fallen: A Trauma, a Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music.
Following his injury, Paradis faced unyielding chronic pain that resisted treatment—an experience familiar to many readers of The Spin. He says, “Your world gets small because you start to reserve your reaction to committing to things. You have this little voice of doubt in the back of your head like ‘Will you really be able to handle that on the day?’ So, you cocoon and realize as you cocoon that you’re not mortgaging the future against experiencing pain. The pain is still relentless and persistent as it always was. But now you don’t have the same enrichment of the usual day-to-day touchstones that build your quality of life.”
In 2018, the Sunshine Coast couple launched a year-long “Tackling Pain Project” to improve how they thought about pain. Stanley says, “There’s so much energy spent trying to run away, avoid, or distract yourself from pain. We thought, what if we took all that energy and really focused on it? We were not necessarily going to find solutions, but we could really work hard on asking better questions.”
In The Pain Project, Stanley and Paradis explore the nature of suffering and pain through extensive research, profound conversations with pain sufferers and experts and personal trials of new and old pain management approaches. From cannabis to mindfulness and a suspenseful nerve ablation procedure, Stanley’s writing walks you through their process of understanding pain. Their affectionate, witty banter lightens the heavy topic, drawing readers into the discussion.
Fellow SCI peer and author Bonnie Klein praises the book for its collaborative approach. “Simon and Kara tell their story together,” she notes, highlighting that the publisher included Paradis’ name on the cover. In Klein’s book review in Herizons magazine she states, “Thankfully, this memoir does not offer the typical ‘triumph over tragedy’ narrative. Rather, it is about the acceptance of human suffering and the ways in which caring for someone brings you together… Stanley and Paradis’ pain project is not ultimately triumphant with a capital T nor could it be. Brutally honest and vulnerable, their relationship prompts us to consider how we might respond to life’s inevitable challenges. Are we capable of similar grace, curiousity, and humour?”
Ultimately, Stanley and Paradis hope readers come away from the book feeling less alone. “The book really is about my metamorphosizing into someone that finds different ways of managing pain on a day-to-day basis, rather than trying to obliterate it,” explains Paradis. Stanley says, “Having fun is sometimes what we’re left with in terms of an intervention. Loving your life, loving each other, and building that capacity is our best intervention.”
We asked the couple how things have been going since the project concluded in 2019. With the COVID-19 pandemic halting Paradis’ music gigs, he had the time and space to fully taper off the opioids he was prescribed many years ago (Paradis’ efforts to reduce his dosage by half are detailed in the book). In addition, an article in the Fall 2023 issue of The Spin introduced Paradis and Stanley to a virtual reality (VR) walking simulation game for neuropathic pain, exactly the type of research they had sought during their project. They plan to travel to Texas A&M University to participate in VR research.
Pain remains a daily reality, but Paradis shares a recent triumph. “One of my biggest fears dealing with chronic pain and being a performing musician is to be in the middle of a song and have an attack on pain that derails the performance. Recently, I was performing with a band. Between songs I got hit with a really bad pain and I had to say, ‘I need a moment, folks.’ After two and a half minutes I said into the mic, ‘Thank you. We’re gonna go on to our next song.’” Stanley proudly adds, “There was a huge round of applause and then he leaned in and thanked the audience for making what could have been a really uncomfortable moment very beautiful.”
You can buy The Pain Project at Indigo, Amazon, and select bookstores. Learn more about the couple at karastanley.com and simon-paradis.com.
