Getting Real With Pain

For Grace will host its 6th Annual Women In Pain Conference on Sept. 13 at the California Endowment’s Center for Healthy Communities in downtown Los Angeles. The conference will bring together hundreds of women in pain, their caregivers and the healthcare professionals who treat them along with leaders in pain management, pain psychology and advocacy to explore chronic pain and the spectrum of coping choices one makes to endure and thrive with this daunting health challenge.The conference theme , “Getting Real: Transforming Hidden Truths into Positive Action”, was inspired by For Grace founder Cynthia Toussaint’s recent memoir, Battle for Grace: A Memoir of Pain, Redemption and Impossible Love (PainPathways recently did an article on this book).  A chronic pain sufferer since age 21, Toussaint found herself continually in the position of confidante for women who had unspoken truths they had not shared with anyone else.

“Since I chose to be brutally honest about my good and bad coping choices in Battle for Grace, women are approaching me to ‘confess’ the behaviors they’ve never shared”, said Toussaint. “I wrote the book to start conversations about the ‘unspeakables’ we women in pain will go to in order to survive. This conference is a natural extension of that dialogue and I expect it to be our most empowering event to date.”

The conference will feature presentations and panel sessions from distinguished pain psychologists, medical and wellness practitioners who will focus on helping women in pain and their caregivers discover how coping choices and techniques, from the everyday to the most extreme, affect their pain control, overall wellness and relationships.

Actor and pain sufferer Kevin Dobson will do a reading before each of the three major presentations.  Breakout sessions will focus on a key turn-around phase to moving forward, including Change Management and Narrative Therapy.

“The conferences day will be filled with love and bonding.  We’ll be having real conversations that we’re not hearing elsewhere”, says Toussaint.  “We want people to join us for webcast…have Women In Pain parties, watch the conference live, participate in our Twitter chat and follow the conference through our Facebook page.  It’s going to be a very interactive day.  Please tune in and tell your caregivers, friends, and family about it.”

For more information about the conference, please check out the Women In Pain section of the For Grace website.  A photo montage from last year’s conference can be seen on YouTube (link below).

About For Grace

Founded in 2002, For Grace is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure the ethical and equal treatment of all women in pain. For Grace has educated, supported and empowered thousands of women in pain through the use of public advocacy, legislative outreach, and mass media. For more information, please visit For Grace online at www.forgrace.org