A Tale of Karma: Why Good People Suffer—and How to Stop Carrying Pain That Isn’t Yours

We often say “what goes around comes around,” but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, it lands on the wrong person—the good one. The one who stayed, loved, and kept believing.

My friend and I visited a mutual friend who had recently faced unimaginable hardship: her father had passed away, her husband had suffered a stroke, and now her 30-year-old daughter was lying in the hospital after a failed surgery.

It felt like a lifetime of tragedy packed into one woman’s story.

The friend who knew her longer insisted, “We should spend the weekend with her—cook, clean, help her organize. She’s the kindest person I know. She’s spent her life taking care of others.”

And she was right. This woman had a history of selflessness—volunteering with autistic children, supporting underprivileged families, showing up for friends when they couldn’t show up for themselves.

She was the kind of person who gave her last dollar without hesitation and somehow still managed to smile through her exhaustion.

I didn’t know her deeply, but I liked her instantly. She radiated warmth and quiet strength.

Why do good people suffer the most?

The Visit: A Smile That Hid Exhaustion

When we arrived, she greeted us like a gracious hostess, as though she weren’t the one whose life was falling apart. She smiled, offered us tea, and spoke softly, apologizing for her “messy house.”

As we sat around her dining table, the conversation drifted to her father’s recent passing. She said she regretted ever sending him to a senior care facility.

“He didn’t want to go,” she said quietly. “But I listened to my husband and daughter.

I wish I hadn’t.”

Something about the way she said it carried the ache of unfinished guilt. So I asked gently, “What happened?”

The Story of a Good Woman’s Undoing

She told us that when her father became ill, she brought him to her home for care. It was a compassionate decision—but one that disrupted her work schedule and reduced the family’s income.

Her husband complained.

“He said it was affecting our finances,” she recalled. “So he told me to send my father back to our country, where care was cheaper.”

The tension between them grew. And when her daughter—then a grown woman—took her father’s side, the divide deepened.

At one point, the daughter even stormed into the hospital, yelling that her mother should “go home and take care of her husband instead of playing nurse to her father.” The staff had to escort her out.

Safe to say, she was left carrying the burden of her father’s care alone, abandoned by her husband and daughter, who went on luxurious vacations without her.

It was heartbreaking to listen.

Then came the cruel twist: while her father was slowly recovering, her husband suffered a stroke. Suddenly, she became his full-time caregiver too.

Her life became a carousel of caretaking—hospital visits, sleepless nights, endless bills, and invisible pain.

And then, as if life hadn’t demanded enough from her, her daughter was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

The same daughter who once shouted at her in anger now needed her mother’s constant care.

She was forced to take her dad to a senior care home, where he unfortunately passed away just a few days later.

“These people were mean to me and my dad,” she said quietly.

“Now I’m the one forced to take care of them.”

That sentence hit me like a whisper from another realm.

The Weight of Unclaimed Karma

I thought about her words all the way home.

Why does life keep circling back to her pain? Why is she the one absorbing everyone’s suffering—like a sponge for generational wounds she didn’t create?

Perhaps because life doesn’t punish at random; it reflects what we allow, tolerate, or refuse to confront.

Then it dawned on me: this wasn’t random. It was karmic.

The husband and daughter are suffering their own karma. But she is the one carrying the weight of it all—karma times two.

Why?

Because she stayed.
She stayed silent when her husband and daughter abused her and her dad.
She allowed, accepted, and absorbed their behavior.

Keeping silent about abuse or harmful behavior is not strength. It’s permission.

When we refuse to speak out—when we minimize, rationalize, or quietly “endure”—we’re not preserving peace. We’re protecting the abuser.

Every time we hide behind “family privacy” or “keeping the marriage together,” we hand over the mask that shields cruelty. And the abuser wears it proudly, cloaked in the false honor of marriage, religion, or reputation.

It doesn’t just embolden them—it validates them. They learn that no matter how harmful they become, someone will protect their image.

While we think we’re enduring, we’re enabling. While we believe we’re being loyal, we’re actually teaching them that loyalty means silence in the face of harm.

Enabling an abuser, especially when they target the most vulnerable among us, like children, older people, or the sick—is not love. It’s complicity dressed as compassion.

And when the abusers get their karma, we suffer with them.

Breaking the Cycle: Lessons from a Wounded Healer

I don’t share her story to judge her. Quite the opposite—I admire her strength. But I see how we can all fall into this trap.

Maybe if she had left her husband years earlier, he would have been forced to face his own reckoning.
Maybe if she had defended her father against family pressure, her grief would carry less guilt.
Maybe if she had taught her daughter what self-respect looks like, the girl would have learned empathy instead of entitlement.

Karma doesn’t always punish—it teaches. And sometimes the lesson is simply this:

You don’t have to keep suffering to prove you’re good.

The Universe Doesn’t Reward Sacrifice—It Rewards Alignment

The world teaches women that the more we sacrifice, the more we’ll be loved. But life has shown me the opposite: the more we align with our truth, the freer—and healthier—we become.

Our friend didn’t suffer because she was bad. She suffered because she was too good in a world that preys on goodness without boundaries.

She mistook endurance for loyalty, compassion for duty, and silence for peace.

But in doing so, she absorbed the weight of other people’s wrongs—their unlearned lessons, their unhealed patterns, their karma.

The bottom line is—she’s suffering their karma.

And that’s the tragedy of so many women’s lives.

We think we’re being noble by carrying everyone’s burden, but we end up paying the spiritual price for someone else’s refusal to change.

God doesn’t ask us to be saints; He asks us to be conscious. To have the courage to stand on the side of truth, even when it means standing alone.

To recognize when empathy turns into enabling and to stop mistaking endurance for virtue.

That is how karma transfers—from the abuser who refuses to take responsibility to the empath who refuses to let go.

The lesson? Stop carrying what was never yours.

Reflection: Are You Carrying Someone Else’s Karma?

If you constantly have to defend someone’s hurt, cover up their mistreatment, stay silent when they harm others, or feel burdened and taken for granted, ask yourself:

• Am I enabling their abuse?
• Am I living out their lessons?
• Have I mistaken their pain for my purpose?
• What would happen if I laid down the load that was never mine to carry?

Because the truth is, not every battle assigned to you is yours to fight. Sometimes, the most spiritual thing you can do is walk away—not from people, but from the idea that suffering is noble.

Closing Thought

A good heart is a gift, but it needs armor.

Compassion must be balanced with wisdom. And love, to be healing, must start with the self.

Let your kindness be guided by clarity, not guilt. That’s how you end bad karma—by refusing to recycle it.

Because sometimes, kindness without boundaries becomes karma in disguise.