Remembering My Brother On the Anniversary Of His Death

 For John

 

It was 44 years ago today that my twin brother ended his life. As January 30th comes around once again, I am surrendered into the sadness of this loss that does not go away. The sorrow that I carry in my heart changes, evolves, and is transformed, but it does not go away. I both go on without my brother, and John is also always with me, always in my heart.

The suicide of a loved one is a very different and difficult kind of death to experience and come to terms with. It's taken me many years of deep work and loving and wise support to learn how to carry this loss in ways which have empowered me to grow in compassion, kindness, and love... and even joy. And this journey of healing and opening and expanding my heart continues, as it will for the whole of my life.

 

* * * * *

 

There was such deep sadness, loneliness, fear, anger and shame in our childhood home. And the trauma that we experienced was also tragically not unique. Over the years of my sobriety and gradual awakening, I've come to recognize how it is that the pain that was so deeply rooted in our family is pervasive in our society and beyond. So many of us are lost to ourselves and our sacred interrelationship with one another and all of life. So many of us are lost to love.

 

It is not my belief that we are born with sin, but rather that we are born blessed, beautiful, and with the Divine woven through our being. My personal journey has been grounded in coming to recognize the illusions, the harmful beliefs, the obstacles that I've built against love and shedding them one by one by one. 

 

Over many years now, I've gradually been growing into me, Molly, an increasingly fully embodied human being ― and who is also connected with and a part of, not separate from, all life. I've been laying claim to the beauty and strength of love and compassion that I was born with, that was an essential part of who I am before I first became lost as a very young child. I believe that this is the essence of us all.

* * * * *

 

John never found the support that he needed to recognize and go through the doorway out of hell. Instead he was given Valium and shock treatments and mental institutions and psychiatrists who did not know how to help him heal his broken heart. The gifts of the alchemist were always out of reach.

 

My brother wrote this poem about not being loved by our then deeply mentally ill mother and not finding love in his short lifetime:

 

If Only

I love to be loved.

I need to be loved.

And I am angry when

I am not loved.

And when I am angry

I am not loved.

If only I weren't angry

About not being loved,

Maybe I could find the 

love that I need.

― John Strong

 

 * * * * *

 

Too many of us do not find those doorways through which love can be found and embodied. And without love, without replacing separation with connection, without experiencing the sacred truth of our worthiness of love, we wither and die. 

 

For many years, and through my addictions and disassociation, large parts of me were cut off from the truth, the truth about myself, about love, about all of us. I did not even know that another vastly different experience of life and love was possible. I was lost to myself and the sacred thread of life.

* * * * *

 

All of this leads me to why today I am so passionate about compassion. And love. The heart of this great loss of my twin brother has been transformed. Deeply and profoundly.

 

Many years ago, there were those who didn't write me off, who didn't give up on me, who saw me and both the pain and the beauty that I carried inside. They recognized who I was through all those veils of illusion that I had mistakenly believed was reality. And those who reached out to me with kindness, compassion, and caring made all the difference. They saved my life. 

 

My beloved Judith Duerk was among them... which I will share about another time...

 

My brother did not make it. He couldn't. John did the best he could and for nearly 27 years struggled to find his way out of unbearable pain into the love that he had starved for and was always, always worthy of. But my twin didn't know that. And for many years, neither did I.  

* * * * *

 

And so this is the way that John is always with me, always in my heart, always my guardian angel on this path of heart. Over and over and over again I am reminded of love, the great Medicine of Love. And compassion, kindness, generosity, wisdom, joy, and beauty. And the Sacred Web of Life. And that there is always more to open to, to embrace and embody, to heal and learn from, and more ways to experience and share loving-kindness.

 

This is what I get to do today. I get to embody and share the love, the love that my brother and I were once starved for. But no more. No more. And this is how my beloved twin lives on in me. We were once "wombmates," as John used to say. Now John and I are soulmates on this heart-path rooted in the deep gifts of compassion, kindness, and love. Something that we are all worthy of.

 

Out of this death has come new life. As we heal ourselves, we also heal our ancestors and new generations. And we contribute to alleviating the suffering in our beautiful hurting world. In the wake of great loss, out beyond the tsunami of grief, there are these gifts, these blessings waiting to be claimed.

"The work of the mature human is to carry grief

in one hand and gratitude in the other and

to be stretched large by them."

― Francis Weller

 

Bless us all,

💗

Molly 

 

Photos by Molly

Kuan Yin, Goddess of Compassion