Frida Kahlo lived with pain for most of her adult life. Physical pain from the long-lasting effects of  childhood polio and a near-fatal traffic accident at the age of 18. And emotional pain from her turbulent relationship with the political muralist Diego Rivera.

She painted The Broken Column in 1944, while strapped into a bodily apparatus after a failed surgical procedure intended to strengthen her disintegrating spine.  

When I look at this self-portrait, the main things I see are her determined impassivity and heroic endurance. For me, she conveys urgency and steely strength. She offers us the strongest possible example of dignity in the face of profound physical and emotional suffering.

Nails are driven into her naked body. They continue down her right leg, the site of her childhood polio. A gap like an earthquake fissure splits her torso, imprisoned in its steel corset. Her vertebral column is replaced by a cracked ionic column, whose two-scrolled capital supports her chin. The column is reminiscent of the steel rod that pierced her vagina in the traffic accident. The white corset accentuates the vulnerability of her naked breasts. 

Perhaps the most compelling thing is how Kahlo makes direct eye contact with me. She stares ahead, challenging me to face her predicament without flinching. Tears fill her eyes and roll down her cheeks, but she remains steadfast. She is sending us all the message of an extraordinary ordeal endured. She compels compassion in us as her viewers. And she gives us the courage to face our own ordeals.

My patient Jose is a multiply tattooed biker in his 60s with an impressive grey beard.  He tells me how Kahlo’s traumatic experiences resonate strongly with his own: his severe chronic back pain, through which he has become dependent on opioid medication; and his turbulent relationship with an unpredictable partner.

Jose draws encouragement from Kahlo’s endurance. He has been to see her exhibition in the Tate Modern in London and comes out of it with a renewed sense of hope and possibility. ‘Look’ he says, ‘I’m easily as tough as she is. I don’t have to put up with all of this rubbish’. I support his growing conviction that something is wrong with his world, and that he has the right to redress those injustices. He knows there are healthier ways for him to manage his pain.  Inspired by Frida Kahlo, Jose will find the strength to live his life the way he wants to

And so can you.