WHEN I WAS in my late 20s, I began having pain with my menstrual cycle. It was occasional—not every single month. The pain was slight to begin with, but over the course of a few years it became more and more pronounced and intense, until it was nearly unbearable. I became increasingly frightened about it.

I was studying Christian Science all this time, and I had been used to dealing with all kinds of difficulties through prayer. But I was not approaching this particular problem in that way. Over and over again, I put up with the discomfort and just weathered the pain. I think I was just accepting pain as part of this cycle, and as part of being a woman.

Later the pain increased to the point that on a number of occasions I actually fainted and became ill, and was laid up for a couple of days at a time. This became quite routine. As the symptoms grew worse, my fear increased. I felt stymied . . . and anxious. I would go through this for several days each month, and then for the rest of the month I would be fine.

Finally, I took the first step toward healing—facing the fear. Through prayer, I began to contend against the fear I was feeling, instead of just accepting it. At one point, I realized that I would think about being afraid before I actually felt afraid—before I felt any pain or weakness or illness. I also began to think about the story in the Bible in the second chapter of Genesis where Eve was cursed and condemned to sorrow and suffering for the remainder of her life. Many women accept menstruation as that "curse" of being a woman. I wanted to understand, and prove, that I—any woman—did not need to accept being condemned to suffering.

There are two statements in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy that helped me a great deal at this time. One is: "The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness,—yea, the divine nature—appear in man and the universe never to disappear" (p. 509). Here the word Mind means God. I wanted to embrace my "divine nature" as God's image and likeness (see Gen. 1:26), and to see it as the same birthright for me and all women—for womanhood itself. As I began to do that, I started to break through the fear. I realized that I could counter the frightening thoughts when they were still thoughts—before I experienced any physical suffering.

The other sentence from Science and Health that showed me how to accomplish healing was this: "It is well to be calm in sickness; to be hopeful is still better; but to understand that sickness is not real and that Truth can destroy its seeming reality, is best of all, for this understanding is the universal and perfect remedy" (pp. 393—394).

I certainly had been feeling that my pain and illness were real, but Science and Health presents reality from Truth's perspective—God's perspective—what He has created and knows to be true about His children, all of us. I realized I could be calm. I could be hopeful. And I realized that I did know the truth—that God had created me with a "divine nature." This knowledge was "the universal and perfect remedy" right in my hands.

I began to accept these spiritual ideas in the moments when I wasn't feeling afraid and when I wasn't in pain. Consequently, the whole condition began to diminish in my mind. I became less concerned—and freer from pain. Then for a number of months, I was totally free.

Later, I was on a trip abroad to London. It was summer, and very warm. I was taking the subway to another part of the city, standing in a very crowded car, which was stopped between stations, when all of a sudden those old symptoms just welled up in one big rush. I thought I was going to pass out right there. So, I sat down on the floor of the car to be quiet and listen for the thoughts from God that I needed to hear at that moment.

I wanted to be thoroughly conscious that God was right there. I wanted to know that the fact of His presence was a constant power whether I was in my own home, at work, or far from home in a crowd. This comforted and calmed me. I stayed with that prayer quite earnestly for probably half an hour. Bit by bit I began to feel better and better.

When I reached my station, I got out and went to an appointment. I had dinner and spent a long evening out with no problem, and there was no vestige of the pain from earlier that day. That marked the end of the entire condition. It's been at least ten years since that subway ride, and I've never had a return of those symptoms.

I've begun to realize that even when things feel out of control—as they did for me many times in that experience—they never really are. I reached out to God in the midst of the problem, in the pain and illness, and I began to see that all I was really dealing with was fear. And since fear was actually just a mental state, I did have control over it. And this was true no matter how many times the problem showed up—however cyclical it seemed.

Healings like this one illustrate the fact that a woman's identity doesn't include any patterns or cycles of evil or of a "curse." I'm learning that harm or sorrow or pain has no power to invade our lives. We surely have a right to be free from suffering, because the spiritual reality is that God has created us with a divine—perfect—nature.

This account was transcribed and adapted from a Sentinel Radio broadcast interview.