Reflections On Strengthening Our Hearts In Hard Times

Look For the Helpers

There are times in most all of our lives when it's hard to not be swept up and overwhelmed with grief and loss, depression and despair, anxiety and anger, cynicism and fear, or horror and heartbreak. I recognize today that it can vary widely how it is that we individually and collectively meet what is unfolding within us and in our world. And, while we're all doing the best we can, it is also true that the responses of each of us fall somewhere on a continuum with helpful on one end and harmful on the other. One way or another, we are all creating ripples within ourselves and which also extend outward impacting the greater whole.

 

I'm moved to share some of how it is that I am meeting the great challenges and crises of our times. That said, I also acknowledge that caring for ourselves and others when we experience the kinds of multiple stresses and struggles that we are today will vary for each and every one of us. No two people have the same ways of coping — and what may make all the difference in the world for one person may not work at all for someone else. We are all unique. And we are all connected.

 

It's also true that those who are often struggling the most — with untreated additions and/or emotional illness, with unemployment and homelessness, with illness and lack of healthcare, with facing eviction and food insecurity, with chronic isolation and loneliness, with domestic violence or systemic racism, with living in war zones and/or with the devastation of climate disruption and our warming planet — that these are the ones who are less likely to experience the range of healthy choices that we do when we are not suffering daily with simply trying to meet our most basic and fundamental human needs.

 

And it is exactly because of the millions in our country and the billions worldwide whose suffering is so great that it matters how we are coping with and facing these times of great uncertainty and heartbreak. It is certainly true that we will be compromised in our capacity to reach out and be of service to others if we are not first attending to our own deep needs. We cannot help ourselves much less anyone else if we are trying to draw from an empty well.  And we will not be inspired to do our part and to expand how it is that we can participate in the healing of our hurting world if we are closing the eyes of our hearts and turning away from the pain and suffering we carry within ourselves and that of our planetary sisters and brothers. 

There are many evolving ways that I've been cultivating over many years now in how it is that I can strengthen my heart for these and other hard times. Among them is certainly to "look for the helpers." In the midst of all that is hurting our our hearts and those so many other beings across the planet, there are also countless courageous, caring, wise and loving, and fiercely compassionate people in this world. These are the ones who inform and inspire us, who touch our hearts and change us, who relentlessly expose what needs our attention and action, who offer us beauty and creativity and generosity and grace, and who have never given up in the great universal struggle for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. These are the helpers who shine bright light on truth and love, on what is sacred, and on what matters most. They are our heroes, our inspirations, our teachers who invite us to open our eyes and our hearts more deeply, and who bless us with the potential for ever growing consciousness and compassionate action.

No two people will share all the same teachers and visionaries, healers and spiritual leaders, activists and authors and artists. These are some of the "helpers" who I've adopted over the years and who inspire me to be more present and aware of what needs attention, healing, and transformation within myself and our world:

 

Pema Chödrön, Riane Eisler, Joanna Macy, Jane Goodall, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Angeles Arrien, the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Rachel Carson, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Michelle Alexander, Jane Mayer, Frances Moore Lappé, Terry Tempest Williams, Margaret Mead, Christiana Figueres, Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Sir David Attenborough, Howard Zinn, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Cornel West, Bernie Sanders, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jeremy Scahill, David Sirota, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Parenti, Paulo Freire, Chalmers Johnson, Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley, Bill Moyers, Bill McKibben, Dahr Jamail, David Korten, Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Michael Meade, Carl Jung, Fred Rogers, Frank Ostaseski, Francis Weller, Jeff Brown, Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Dalai Lama, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Judith Duerk, Rachel Naomi Remen, Brené Brown, Charlotte Kasl, Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue, Rumi, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, Jack Kornfield, Matthew Fox, Robert Beatty, Doug Pullin, my three sons, my loving husband Ron Matela, many beloved and wise friends, the Earth, and the list goes on and on... 

 

It is my experience that it can be helpful whenever we find ourselves thinking how incredibly messed up the human race appears to be to remember the helpers, the heroes, the ones who never gave up, the ones worth fighting for, the voiceless ones who need us to act on their behalf, and those who help us to remember and to do whatever we can to stand in protection of all that we most cherish. And hopefully what we care for — our circle of caring — is also continuously growing and expanding to ultimately include all of life on this beautiful hurting planet.

* * * * *

 

Activism As an Antidote To Despair

 

It is important, I believe, to face head on — and as best as each of us is capable of doing — what is happening within ourselves, our families and communities, and our nation and across the planet. In saying this, I am well aware that many of us are already doing this and have long been courageously growing in conscious awareness and acting in some way on behalf of a higher good for us all. At the same time, I also want to acknowledge that it's especially hard to be conscious during times of multiple deep crises and when there is so much to hold, so very much. And certainly this is one of those times.

 

Yet to the degree that we are turning away and limiting our understanding of what is happening within ourselves and in our world is the degree that we are limiting what is needed of each of us to address and transform the roots of that which is causing so much harm and devastation. Turning away perpetuates pain and suffering — and because we are all connected — this is true both inside and outside of us. While seeking the helpers can be key to strengthening ourselves and giving us hope, there is more. What do we do with all that is arising at this time in our human history and which is begging for our attention and our action? What is our personal role, our purpose, our part in adding to that which helps and heals?

 

For me, personally, there is a reason why — in addition to nine photos of my husband, my children, and grandchildren — my 10th featured photo on Facebook is of myself with Amy Goodman. Amy has long been one of my "helpers." She is the embodiment of courage, truth, integrity, activism, and a fierce caring for the Earth and all of her inhabitants. She inspires me to research deeply and to be continuously learning, to strengthen my heart and to courageously be in the world with my eyes and heart open, to be passionately committed to truth and addressing the roots of violence and injustice, and to evolve and expand how it is that I can contribute to alleviating the suffering of those near and far and which spans the whole of our Earth Mother.

 

It is this profound commitment to truth and depth of courageous caring for the too often unseen and unacknowledged stories of injustice which compels Amy day after day, year after year, decade after decade to fight for a better world. She is absolutely relentless in exposing the suffering of our world and the roots of that suffering. Democracy Now! also brings us the stories of those courageous truth-tellers who have never given up in the struggle to illuminate the truth and expose and stop the many horrifying faces of violence. Amy Goodman — and the enormous diversity of voices that she brings to Democracy Now! (https://www.democracynow.org/) — acts to hold the powerful accountable rather than serving as their mouthpieces. This is what true independent investigative journalism looks like! Unlike so much of corporate funded American media, the in-depth interviews take us again and again to where the silence is, shining penetrating light on the larger pictures and deeper truths that we most need to know.

 

All of which reminds me of this quote by Emma Goldman: "The most violent element in society is ignorance." Just imagine what our nation and the world would look like if we humans were consistently exposed to the deep truths which would free us from our ignorance, our numbness, our separation and polarization, and whatever our level of complicity with a status quo and normalized cultural belief systems which have never been a reflection of the highest good. Just imagine.

Courage, truth, consciousness, integrity, and those who work to alleviate suffering in our world inspire me. And there is a cost to growing increasingly awake. Coupled with an ever expansive experience of connection and inclusivity, abundance and joy, beauty and love, gratitude and grace is also the growing awareness and felt experience of pain. Once I was blind. And now I am  increasingly found. I see, know, hear, feel more of what used to be beyond my conscious awareness. So many veils to lift, layers of fog to emerge from, illusions and ignorance to shed. And it hurts. A lot. To see with the eyes of my heart.

It is also my experience that it hurts more to stay numb, oblivious, distracted, and asleep. To the degree that we expend energy on repression is the same degree that we are vulnerable to depression. Repression and depression are often intimately linked. And whether or not we are aware of the pain within ourselves and all around us, because we are all woven together and interrelated this pain still permeates our cells, our bones, our hearts and minds, and the decisions we make in how we live our lives. For so many reasons, our wisest choice is to commit to the ongoing deep inner work of opening our hearts. 

 

And this is true, I believe, even as our growing awareness touches us with despair. Because, indeed, as I've come to see and understand more of what is actually happening in our country and globally, I've also come to understand that the crises that we face today are indeed the greatest in our human history. The pandemic in and of itself is horrific. Add onto that the sixth major extinction and the catastrophic warming of our planet, which make the horrors and heartbreaks of Covid and the whole Trump era pale in comparison. Again, there is so much to hold. So much.

I am reminded of one of the times when I heard Bill McKibben, author and activist and co-founder of 350.org (https://350.org/), speak in Portland. Bill spoke about the major crises which are growing day by day, year by year. He spoke about despair and how bleak things can appear. And Bill affirmed: "The antidote to despair is activism."

 

I hold deep respect and gratitude for the great diversity of ways in which each of us may be choosing to meet the enormity of the challenges of our times. My experiences are a reflection of how activism, self-care, and spirituality are all interwoven. This is but a glimpse — in no particular order — of some of what I'm called to and what activism looks like for me:

• Embodying a profound commitment to truth. 
• Placing principles before personalities.
  
• Ongoing deep research, staying informed, discerning who I can trust for information and resources of support, and speaking the truth of what I am learning again and again.
• Recognizing that there can be no solution for that which is denied and not seen, I'm deeply committed to exposing the shadow side within both major political parties, within our predatory capitalist economic system, within harmful cultural belief systems, and within all that perpetuates and increases suffering and the great harm to the Earth and her inhabitants.
  
• Supporting and donating to independent media, to a variety of causes, and to people who are fighting for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. 
• Becoming vegetarian 14 years ago — which I did after learning about the extreme cruelty of factory farms and the devastating harmful impact to our climate and the Earth of eating meat and any being that has a face.
  
• Expanding my circle of caring to increasingly include all of life through the ongoing deepening and evolution of my capacity for empathy and compassion.
• Extending a dollar, a smile, eye contact, and "Bless you" to every single person my hand can reach who is standing on a street corner, and regardless of what they look like and what their sign reads, with the core intention to communicate I see you, I care, you matter.
  
• Participating in social events, protests, and rallies for immigrants and refugees, Black Lives Matter, the climate, and any cause related to political, racial, social, economic, and environmental justice.
• Writing.
  
• Providing support, compassion, and caring to those who reach out to me.
  
• Random acts of kindness.
  
• Staying connected with family and friends and all who nourish my heart and soul.
  
• Caring for and strengthening my heart in an ongoing way.
• Embodying gratitude and grief practices.
• Engaging in the ongoing work of seeing and staying open to what is — the beauty and love and the horror and heartbreaks and everything in-between.
  
• Dissolving obstacles to connection and caring and, wherever possible, turning inner and outer walls sideways to become bridges of compassion and understanding.
  
• Embracing — as best as I can — inclusivity, respect, curiosity, courage, compassion, and lovingkindness.
  
• Staying sober, mindful, and continuing to address wounds, triggers, and whatever it is that emerges within me as being in need of attention, healing, and transformation.
• Deepening and evolving in my spiritual practice — which actually includes all of the above. 

What activism and caring for ourselves and others looks like will be different and unique for each of us. All that I know is that we all matter. And what is happening on Earth matters. Deeply. It's my belief that there are growing and evolving ways in which we can participate in our own healing and awakening and that of our families, communities, nation and world. We all create ripples. We are all needed.

 

 

* * * * *

 

The Wisdom of Our Hearts

 

In so many ways and for so many different reasons, we are witness to how it is that humanity has long lost its way. I see how this is true for us individually and collectively. Today I bring a great deal of empathy and compassion to how difficult it can be to find our way back into our bodies and the wisdom of our hearts and souls when — to one degree or another, and whether we know it or not — we've disconnected from the strength and beauty and grace of what lies inside us and all around us.

 

We are constantly immersed in messages which serve to impair or deaden our capacity to love. I smile sadly as I reflect back to 1984 when I first heard in an ACOA meeting (Adult Children of Alcoholics, a 12 Step program) the rules of alcoholic and other painful family systems: Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel. (I also ended up adding in Don't Be.) And all those years ago I thought that those "rules" were just confined to "dysfunctional" families like the one I grew up in. Not true.

Over time I've come to recognize that these are among the unspoken cultural dictates that have long been normalized throughout our society and beyond. I mean, really, think about it. There is no way that we would be facing all the multiple crises, horrors, epidemics, and pervasive suffering and violence that we are today if we humans hadn't absorbed in mass — and into the very fiber of our being — harmful cultural belief systems which absolutely lead us away from the core of who we most wholly are.

Some may disagree that we humans are holy sacred beings. Yet this is the truth that I have discovered within myself and, because of the felt experience of interbeing with all of life, I experience this same beauty and value and intrinsic worth and holiness within everything. The sacred lives and breathes and connects us all with one another. 

 

"We are here to awaken from the illusion of separation." — Thích Nhất Hạnh

 

Of course, to know — I mean to truly know the sacredness of our holy selves and our interrelatedness with all of life — we have to shed a few mistaken identities. Like that we are born with sin, that we are separate rather than intimately connected, that rugged individualism is healthy and normal, that we are lacking in worth or that those Others are lacking in worth, that we are flawed and inherently selfish, sinful, violent, and greedy. This is not who we truly are. Although there was a time when I believed that much of this was true. What a painful way to live.

Which brings me back to the wisdom of our hearts. We have to be in our hearts to know the wisdom that has always been there. This is not a wisdom of thinking, it is experiential. Yet, we cannot know the crises which desperately need our fiercely loving attention if our hearts are defended, if we're still living by all the "Don't rules," if we're denying ourselves empathy, compassion, tenderness, and love. Our capacity to be of service to our hurting world will only be commensurate with our capacity to compassionately attend to our own hurting hearts.

And there is no magic wand which will teleport us overnight out of our fragmentation and disassociation and back into our holy bodies and the fullness and riches of our deepest wisdom. I've been on this journey for nearly 38 years. It is a lifelong amazing and wondrous journey. And it all began all those years ago when I reached out for support and help — and when I began to thaw out, intervene on my ruthlessly judging inner critic, and make tentative steps in learning how to hold myself over and over and over again with tenderness and compassion. 

 

This holding, this deep compassion practice, is something that very much continues to this day and will inevitably continue as long as I am alive. Because there can always be these triggers, these old places, these pulls to slide back into the judging, the shaming, the numbing, the disassociation, the illusions, the narratives which question my core worth — and, therefore, also yours. And to the degree that I hold these deep places of withholding love from myself is the degree that I will be compelled to withhold love from others. 

 

Gratefully, these old once seemingly solidified walls around my heart which fed the old patterns which caused myself and others harm have been gradually diminishing and dissolving for many years now. And today I have mindfulness and supports and skills and tools to meet these painful times and hurting places within myself when they arise that I once didn't know existed. I do not need to go numb, disassociate, act out or act in, or in some way blindly project my pain onto others. And when I do slip up, as I will because I am human, I don't have to stay stuck in the old patterns which once dominated my life and the world as I mistakenly believed it to be.

Instead, I can speak into the loving witnessing silence of my women's circle. I can ask for holding and tenderness from my loving husband. I can pick up the phone and call one of my loving friends. I can hold myself with lovingkindness. I can weep and lovingly accept and be with whatever is needing to arise. And there are so many other options that I have today when the old negating, judging, fearful, scary, separate places are triggered.

Again and again it comes back to love. Love is the elixir, the great healer, the deep medicine, and the grace-filled wisdom of our hearts that is always there. Sometimes it gets covered over with layers of lies, with fear or shame, with painful beliefs and illusions, and with unattended wounds and betrayals. But under it all is the wisdom of our hearts. It's there. We have to be brave enough, supported enough, and committed enough to do the healing work that ultimately frees us to be more deeply human, more whole, more loving.

 * * * * *

 

Are You With Us?

 

The scope of what is needed and what is asked of us in these times is hard to take in. Really hard. It takes a great deal of courage. And it takes support, fierce caring, and the intention to know, to truly know what we are facing here, now, today. Anyone who believes that we can breathe now that Trump is on his way out and that a vaccine is on its way in does not understand the enormity of what is happening and what is urgently asked of us all.

 

In looking deeply, I have also discovered that the roots of what has long caused so much suffering — and injustice and inequality, polarization and dehumanization, devastation and death — can be traced back hundreds of years and beyond. What we're up against is far greater than Trump, who has been but a horrifying late stage symptom of the disease that remains. What we're faced with cannot be pinned down to any one issue or political party, but is instead interwoven within belief systems, policies and politics, cultural stories and hierarchies of power which are grounded in the ideology of Domination rather than that of Partnership. These deadly and toxic systems are perpetuated and normalized within:

• Patriarchy
• Misogyny
• White Supremacy
• Imperialism
• Colonialism
• Racism
  
• Militarism
• Neoliberalism
  
• Nationalism
• Predatory Free-Market Capitalism
• Fascism

There is no one election or president or political party which is going to shake us awake and catapult us into the deep paradigm shift that is essential to the systemic transformation that is needed if we are to save ourselves and provide the next seven generations with the chance of inhabiting a livable planet. What is needed is much, much greater. And this is why we all have roles to play in service to our hurting world.

 

It is also true that we will only step fully into our role in an expanding and evolving way if we are first attending to our own hearts. This is why each and every practice, support, and act which serves to strengthen our hearts is so critical, and not just to our own well-being, but to the well-being of us all. Our consciousness of the needs of the heart of our world will only be as deep as we have first come to embody, listen to, and attend to the needs of our own hearts. If we are neglecting our own human hearts, it is inevitable that we will turn away or burn out or in some way be impaired in bringing our needed gifts forward on behalf of all that is yearning for help and caring.

 

This may sound like a strange thing to say to some of us — that we need to embody our own hearts. Yet, and as I reflect on my own life, I am well aware that my first three decades of life were spent in a largely disassociated state. I was often living up in my head, something that I'd learned to do to survive the traumas of my family of origin and the traumas of growing up in a deeply unhealthy culture. I had no idea how much I'd been cut off from the depths of my heart until I began to gradually dismantle the protective walls I'd built and cultivate a stronger mind-body connection. In other words, I did not know what it was like to truly feel until I began to feel. Experiencing a rich emotional life had been something entirely foreign to me. That is what happens when we buy into all the "Don't rules" — the rules which, in their essence, tell us Don't Be.

 

Today all we need do is look around with the eyes of our hearts to know that something is horribly, heart-wrenchingly wrong... And what just came up for me is all the tents that lined the streets and the freeway as I traveled between Vancouver and Portland today. There were so many more than just a week ago!..

 

And I need to stop and weep...

 

People living in tents is wrong! It is wrong! And the list of what else is so very wrong can go on and on. Yet, we're supposed to believe that it's just the way it has to be. NO!! NO IT'S NOT!

 

But we're not going to rise up in mass if we aren't seeing and feeling with the eyes of our hearts the breathtaking injustice and suffering that is all around us. We need to be hearts with ears. And to truly listen and see, to truly be here now, we need to have strong hearts. Otherwise it is too much. 

 

Perhaps never before has it been so incredibly important to cultivate an ever deepening capacity for empathy and compassion, connection and caring, and generosity and love. When we see with our hearts, we feel the suffering of others. It isn't just that we think it, we feel it. And it is this expanding experience of empathy that is the antidote to any empathic impairment that we may have absorbed from a culture than tells us to not feel, to not be human or humane, to stay complacent and not act.

My lived experience has taught me some very different lessons from the ones I had absorbed in my childhood family and in our emotionally and spiritually stunted culture. I have come to experience that in not turning away from my own pain and that of others, in allowing my heart to break open, in accepting grief as part of being a fully-embodied human — rather than turning away and numbing out, I am now able to feel the suffering of others. And in feeling that suffering, my heart is strengthened. Who knew?!? I certainly never would have guessed that in allowing my heart to break open, more space would be cleared for love. I never knew that before! Now, I recognize that I am much stronger than I knew through all the years of running away from myself, my pain, and the pain of others who were hurting.

 

And gradually, I've been finding my "soulpod" — a word coined by Jeff Brown that I just love. There are so many of us who are doing the work of opening and strengthening out hearts, a process which creates the ripples of fierce loving action that our world hungers for and desperately needs. Because we can't do this alone. We need each other. We need to seek and connect with others whose sleeves are rolled up and who are fiercely fighting for a more just and humane world. Isolation is a killer, as is ignorance, as are our illusions. 

 

Yes, it is painful to wake up and come to see, I mean really see, that person standing on the corner with his or her little sign. And I am so grateful to feel that pain — because now I have to do something. I have to do something! I can't just turn away and pretend that he/she doesn't exist, doesn't matter. I can no longer add to the suffering of other humans and non-humans. Not when I see them with the eyes of my heart. Now I must act. 

 

Just imagine a world where millions of us feel increasingly compelled to do something! Empathy = suffering with = compassion = taking some action to alleviate that suffering. This is the equation that results in love in action. 

 

Just imagine our small actions multiplied by hundreds, thousands, millions. Just imagine a world where we decide that we're all in, where we've claimed the strength and the wisdom of our hearts, where we're deepening and coming to be more fully here in our holy human bodies, aligned and rising up together in the great universal struggle for a just, peaceful, sustainable, and caring world. Just imagine how we can work to transform these hard times into ones of great possibility, vision, and change. Just imagine.

Are you with us?

Bless us all,

Molly