In the Wake of Loss, How Do We Make Whole Anew Our Broken Hearts?

Photo by Molly, November 3rd, 2024

Ron and I are married, September 14, 2013

In the Wake of Loss, How Do We

Make Whole Anew Our Broken Hearts?

This has not been an easy time. And I am very consciously aware that my husband and I are not alone in the grief that we have been experiencing.

I recently wrote about this rupture, a painful betrayal of trust and its aftermath within our spiritual community. I reflected about the many layers of this tragic loss here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/10/personal-reflections-on-tragic-loss.html. 

I also recognize that what happened is not an isolated event in spiritual and religious communities and in our culture at large. It is all too common for respected and beloved spiritual teachers and leaders to be discovered, not as the embodiment of compassion and wisdom and love we believed them to be, but rather also as perpetrators of great harm ― and sometimes for many years. For anyone who has experienced this kind of betrayal, I can now more deeply understand how heartbreaking and traumatic it can be.

* * * * *

Yesterday there was a deeply healing gathering of community at PIMC (Portland Insight Meditation Center). The intention has been to provide safe space and compassionate support for us to grieve together and give voice to whatever it is that we are carrying in our hearts. The actions of Robert Beatty, the Guiding Teacher and founder of PIMC, and its impact on the community member who committed suicide and countless others, has spread ever widening ripples of ruptured trust and betrayal, trauma and shock, anger and confusion, and pain and grief. There is great need for healing and support for so many. 

Gratefully, PIMC's board brought together three amazing, wise, and beautiful women to facilitate yesterday's gathering:

• Jan Chozen Bays is an ordained Zen teacher and a pediatrician who specialized for thirty years in the evaluation of children for abuse and neglect. 

• Laura Jomon Martin has been practicing Zen since 2004 and received Lay Teacher Transmission from Chozen and Hogen Roshi in 2019. Laura also continues a long career as a social worker (since 1993), with most of those years in community mental health agencies. 

• Nan Whitaker-Emrich has been an active member of the Zen Community of Oregon since 2006.  In her professional life she worked as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for more than 35 years. Nan's father was also a pioneer in psychology related to bringing forth the concept of family systems. 

One soothing balm to my heart was knowing each of the three wise women who facilitated our gathering. I recognized Laura and remembered that my dear longtime sister and friend Lynn Negrete used to work with Laura. Decades ago, Lynn had also treated me to a weekend retreat on "healing the inner critic" at Great Vow Monastery where I first met Chozen. I then again met Chozen when she was a presenter at one of the trainings on child abuse that I attended when I was in training to be a child welfare caseworker 18 years ago. And it was close to 40 years ago when I did a daylong workshop with Nan with the focus on addiction. Nan was the one who spoke of how "frequency and amount are not the determining factors of alcoholism," which was so helpful to me in the earliest years of my recovery. Such a small, interconnected world...

The intentions for this healing community experience were powerful and described in this way:

Council is a practice of relationship and of building community, in which we commit to a process of empathic listening and heartfelt communication. 

 

The open sharing at the heart of council practice may have therapeutic effects, but it is not therapy and is not convened with the intention to resolve anything, or necessarily to come to a particular resolution or consensus. Its potential is to cultivate the thoughtful expression of the individual’s voice of experience, reflection, and wisdom. It is an invitation for collective or communal wisdom to arise.

(For more details, please go here: https://www.portlandinsight.org/.)

* * * * *

The pain as we sat in circle in the sanctuary was palatable. And as was our individual and collective gratitude for this opportunity to share from our hearts and further our healing journeys together. This was also just another important step in what will no doubt be a long process.

For me, personally, there has lived in my heart this ache for the lost trust and betrayal by the man who my husband and I listened to in dharma talks off and on for years, who Ron and I chose to marry us in 2013, and who I chose to facilitate my mother's memorial ceremony in 2021. There are many layers of grief, many layers.

That said, there are important things to remember here...

• What has unfolded with Robert does not diminish the sacred experiences of our wedding, my mom's memorial, or the ways in which we experienced Robert's teachings as being helpful, compassionate, and wise.
• We humans have many parts. To the degree that we do not address the parts of ourselves that hold deep pain and trauma, that pain has to go somewhere and will inevitably be acted out on ourselves and others. This, no doubt, is what happened with Robert.
• In now more clearly recognizing the unethical and predatory nature of Robert's relationships with other women, it is so incredibly clear how vital it is that we all are talking about our experiences of being harmed, or uncomfortable, or in some way having our boundaries violated by someone in a position of power. We need to not hide away in silence and shame and isolation, but rather seek the safe and trustworthy support that we need in order to give voice to our experiences, concerns, pain, and trauma. Silence only perpetuates our suffering and enables the perpetrator to continue to harm others.
• Safe internal and external spaces need to be created which encourage, honor, and hold with the deepest compassion and support our hurting hearts and the experiences in which we humans have been wounded in our lifetimes and also caused harm to others. We need to stop apologizing for our pain and instead understand that our tears are holy.
• In the midst of it all, there is something that can arise from our suffering, some ways in which we can ultimately grow stronger and wiser, more discerning and whole, and more committed to our journeys of awakening and sharing our voices of truth rather than being silenced.
• We can remember and affirm that out of the ashes, new life can be born within ourselves, our loved ones, our community, our nation, and beyond. Claiming our inner alchemist is a sacred and holy journey.

* * * * *

We have a long ways to go to recognize, heal, and transform our individual and collective pain and trauma. And, that said, more and more of us are awakening and understanding the impact of the words of bell hooks that I continue to return to again and again ― and that is how we have all been impacted by the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy that we've long been living under. If there weren't this wide spread trauma permeating our culture, the epidemics of addiction and anxiety and depression, misogyny and racism and transphobia, fear and hatred and dehumanization, and all of many faces of unaddressed ancestral and cultural trauma would not be causing so much profound suffering, destruction, and death.

So, in the wake of loss, how do we make whole anew our broken hearts? We will each no doubt answer this in our own unique ways. For me, this is what arises...

• We tend to our hearts. 
• We listen to and give voice to what we hold in our hearts, our bodies, our souls. 
• We find ways to mend our internal and external isolation by seeking out and finding ways to create connection and belonging, safety and trust, vulnerability and authenticity, compassion and love. 
• We learn how to be Bodhisattvas to all who suffer... beginning with ourselves. 
• And we remember that Love is always the most powerful medicine.

With love and blessings to us all,

Molly