Pain has been theorized as the “ultimate” isolating experience that cannot be adequately or easily communicated through language. However, individuals with chronic pain do talk about their experiences of pain. They have had to learn how and when to communicate their pain which requires skillful labor and difficult decisions. The descriptions and words they implement as signs, along with the signs of their bodies, become grounds of negotiations as they navigate others’ perceptions of their illness as well as their own. These semiotic negotiations can become treacherous, particularly in biomedical care settings where semiotic frameworks are troubled by gendered orientations to care. Additionally, the signs of the bodies are privileged, especially those that can be quantified and visualized through technology, over the lived experience of the individual. However, through semiotic labor and language labor, individuals work to become their own advocates and experts who mediate and navigate this fraught terrain. Nevertheless, the resulting dissonance between felt experience of pain and the way it has been captured and negotiated through semiosis can result in a desire to reconnect and listen to one’s own pain. This desire becomes apparent in how individuals discuss their meditative practices as allowing them to “listen to their pain” and re-enter their body, which ultimately allows them to come to know their pain in another way.