Episode 5: Healing

Darcey Steinke’s engrossing new book explores the subject of pain – what science tells us and what artists and thinkers have made of it. For Steinke, it all started when she damaged her back. As the process of healing began, she began to look outwards, to explore what it is like for others to live with chronic pain. With a new understanding, she reflects on the lives of writers and artists who have found meaning in the experience of pain.

In this final episode, she begins to recover. After trying various alternative therapies, and steroid injections, she finally has back surgery. And it is a success. But the experience of intense pain has changed her:
‘When I started this book, I wanted to try to understand how pain changed me for better and for worse. But pain’s legacy is hard to pin down. I worked with a therapist for a year before I finally got out from under the fear that the pain would come back. As that terror receded, I found myself more permeable, more empathetic, closer to the reality of life’s fragility but also its wonder. When I see people on the street limping, using canes or walkers, I understand with a new connectivity that they don’t just have mobility issues; they are also in pain.’

The reader is award-winning actor Elizabeth McGovern, who played the Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey

Adapted and produced by Elizabeth Burke
Executive producer: Sara Davies
Sound design: Jon Calver
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4