Chelan Harkin: The Seed of My Heart

Photo by Molly

The Seed of My Heart

I feel God

germinating the seed

of my heart

again

new life bursting

out through me

breaking down

all that I've known

that She may have more space

to love the world

through me.

— Chelan Harkin

From Wild Grace

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Grace-Poems-Chelan-Harkin/dp/1958972126

Joanna Macy: What We Cherish In Our Hearts

Photo by Molly

What We Cherish In Our Hearts

 Out of this darkness a new world can arise, 

not to be constructed by our minds so much as to 

emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see 

clearly how it's going to turn out, we are still called 

to let the future into our imagination. 

We will never be able to build what we have not 

first cherished in our hearts.

 

— Joanna Macy

https://www.joannamacy.net/

Arundhati Roy: Anti-Americanism, Nationalism, Capitalism, War, and Our Strategy

First spoken during the horrors of the Bush era and now remaining tragically relevant to the horrors of today. This is worth sharing again and again... and especially now as the incredibly needed and courageous actions and voices of dissent are so often demonized. Deepest bow, as always, to Arundhati Roy, and to all who remind us of the deeper truths that are vital for us to see, absorb, and act upon. 🙏 Molly

Anti-Americanism

Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology.

The term 'anti-American' is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely -- but shall we say inaccurately -- define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

What does the term 'anti-American' mean? Does it mean you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans? .....

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti- Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Nationalism

Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

The Cost of War

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

I think it was 50 million people across the world who marched against the war in Iraq. It was perhaps the biggest display of public morality in the world - you know, I mean, before the war happened. Before the war happened, everybody knew that they were being fed lies.

Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries.

It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers."

Never counted in the "costs" of war are the dead birds, the charred animals the murdered fish, incinerated insects, poisoned water sources, destroyed vegetation. Rarely mentioned is the arrogance of the human race toward other living things with which it shares this planet. All these are forgotten in the fight for markets and ideologies. This arrogance will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species.

Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn't matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.

Capitalism

Capitalism’s real “grave-diggers” may end up being its own delusional Cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they seem to have trouble grasping a simple fact: Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises — War and Shopping — simply will not work.

Talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work. There was a time when the United States waged war to topple democracies, because back then democracy was a threat to the Free Market. Countries were nationalising their resources, protecting their markets.... So then, real democracies were being toppled. They were toppled in Iran, they were toppled all across Latin America, Chile.

Now we're in a situation where democracy has been taken into the workshop and fixed, remodeled to be market-friendly. So now the United States is fighting wars to instal democracies. First it was topple them, now it's instal them, right? And this whole rise of corporate-funded NGOs in the modern world, this notion of CSR, corporate social responsibility - it's all part of a New Managed Democracy. In that sense, it's all part of the same machine.

Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.

Our Strategy 

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

— Arundhati Roy

Quotes from War Talk

and from

Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Thomas Merton: The Secret Beauty of Our Hearts

Photo by Molly

The Secret Beauty of Our Hearts

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed ... I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

― Thomas Merton

Joanna Macy: Invoking the Beings of the Three Times

Photo by Molly

Invoking the Beings of the Three Times

This ritual invocation, to which the group members add their voices, affirms our connectedness with those who have gone before and those who come after us, as well as those living now. It evokes our solidarity with all these beings across time, and opens us to the inspiration they can offer. Heightening our sense of gratitude and responsibility, it strengthens the will.

Gather with us now in this hour. Join with us now in this place.

Invoking first the beings of the past:

Be with us now all you who have gone before, you our ancestors and teachers. You who walked and loved and faithfully tended this Earth, be present to us now, that we may carry on the legacy you bequeathed us.  Aloud and silently in our hearts we say your names and see your faces…  

Invoking the beings of the present:

All you with whom we live and work on this endangered planet, be with us now.  Fellow humans and siblings of other species, open us to our collective will and wisdom.  Aloud and silently we say your names and picture your faces.

Invoking the beings of the future:

You who will come after us on this Earth, be with us now. It is for your sakes, too, that we work to heal our world. We cannot picture your faces or say your names – you have none yet — but we would feel the reality of your claim on life. It helps us to be faithful in the work that must be done, so that there will be for you, as there was for our ancestors, blue sky, fruitful land, clear waters.

—  From chapter 9 of Coming Back to Life 

by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown

* * *

Please go here for the original: https://workthatreconnects.org/resources/invoking-the-beings-of-the-three-times/

Joanna Macy: Vows of Active Hope

Joanna Macy, Photo by Adam Shemper.

Vows of Active Hope

On the last afternoon of a two-week intensive workshop, Joanna Macy was out walking and met a young monk from the retreat centre hosting the event. "Well", he said, "I expect now on your last day you'll be giving people vows". Joanna told him that wasn't something she did. "Pity," he said, "I find, in my own life, vows so very helpful because they channel my energy to do what I really want to do."

Continuing her walk, Joanna thought that if we were to have vows, they should not number more than the fingers and thumb of one hand. Almost immediately, the following five vows came to her.

I vow to myself and each of you

To commit myself daily to the healing of our world
and the welfare of all beings.

To live on Earth more lightly and less violently
in the food, products and energy I consume.

To draw strength and guidance from the living Earth,
the ancestors, the future beings,
and my brothers and sisters of all species.

To support each other in our work for the world
and to ask for help when I feel the need.

To pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind,
strengthens my heart and supports me in observing these vows.

― Joanna Macy

From Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power

https://www.activehope.info/the-book

* * *

Please go here for the original: https://www.activehope.info/book-extracts/vows-of-active-hope 

Reflections On Grief, Trauma, and Loss: Recognizing and Transforming the Obstacles to Healing, Health, Wholeness, and Love

Photo by Molly

For Satia and her family,

for our three sons and their father,

for my twin brother and our ancestors, 

and for all of us who have struggled 

to grow into the wholeness and 

beauty of who we truly are.

This is one of the most important pieces that I have written because of its implications for our healing and transformation both individually and collectively. 

I believe in our human capacity to grow and evolve into the embodiment of our true nature. I have experienced this profound transformation in my own life and that which I have witnessed in countless others. 

What I address and illuminate here is the antidote to the great suffering of those who have been tragically lost and disconnected from the sacred thread of love and beauty that is woven through us, through all of life, and is at the heart of who we are...

***

Satia, June 1985

Satia with her younger sister Ashley, my three sons, and our dog Dillon, September 1990

Satia

It has now been over two weeks since I first learned of the death of the adult daughter of old friends... 

In the early years of my sobriety and healing journey, our family did everything with Satia, her younger sister, and her parents. As adults, we participated together in 12 Step meetings and therapy and conferences with John Bradshaw and others. As families, we shared holidays and birthdays and beach trips and more. We were present for the births of our youngest children, our "recovery" babies. 

Then, after seven years, our families began to go our different ways. There is no blame or shame in this at all. And, regardless of anything that unfolded all those many years ago, Satia and her family never ceased being held in my heart with the deepest caring and love. These were unbreakable bonds that lived on within me.

Satia's tragic death has hit me hard. My grief is with me every day. And my heart aches for the unimaginable pain and loss that her parents and younger sister are experiencing. Just aches... And there are so many who loved Satia.

I need to stop and weep....

This is very painful... to go here. And I am compelled to. Because there are stories that need to be told. And as I follow the threads of this deep grief ― mine and that of those Satia has left behind ― I am plunged into the larger experiences of all of us who have suffered and struggled to find our way home to our Self. 

* * * * *

Our family, 1990

Matthew, Kevin, and Brian, 1993

Our Family

Reflecting on our three young sons and their father and myself, it is so clear to me how great my passion was all those many years ago. I was absolutely determined to break the generational cycle of addiction and pain ― and especially for our precious children.

For years, I did everything that I was told to do. Initially, upon breaking out of my denial in 1983 about my former husband's alcoholism (thank you, Ann Baker), I went to Al-Anon. Then, in 1984 when I emerged from my delusion that only Jim was an alcoholic, I got sober and began attending AA myself. I got sponsors and worked the Steps and began to develop a new community of sober friends. Shortly after that ― and upon now understanding more about addiction and how my parents were also alcoholic ― I went to ACOA 12 Step meetings (Adult Children of Alcoholics) for years.

I'd also put myself through two treatment programs in 1983 for spouses and friends of alcoholics. I was a committed to learning about addiction and its impact on myself, my family of origin, and how to "break the cycle." Then in 1985, as my childhood trauma was emerging and I feared relapse, at nine months sober I also put myself through a 28 day inpatient alcohol and drug treatment program. And I'd embarked in years of counseling ― individual counseling, couples counseling, couples group counseling, a women's counseling group, weekend counseling intensives.

And my young lifetime of repressed, suppressed, depressed, and denied emotions came flooding out onto the pillows I beat and the rage I screamed and the grief I wailed. For years. Initially it felt like the intensity of it all would kill me, and there were times when I wanted to die. But I couldn't. Because of my three young sons. And because I could never leave anyone in the aftermath of suicide. Not after experiencing the acute and torturous trauma I'd been left with in the wake of the suicide of my twin brother. 

So, no matter what, I would keep going. And my bookshelves filled with anything and everything related to addiction and recovery, self-help and inner child work, co-dependency and spirituality, and more. I attended and participated in conferences and workshops, retreats and ceremonies, women's forums and circles.

And I believed that everything in my life was changing. I had worked so hard to sustain my sobriety, to heal my wounded inner child, to try to be the mom my boys needed, to somehow have a healthy marriage, to root into a deeply spiritual path, and to do everything that I was told that I needed to do. I believed that we were a family in recovery, that the cycle was being broken, that I had succeeded in being the break wall standing between my beloved children and the pain and trauma I'd experienced and that of countless generations before me.

I was wrong. This is not what happened.

* * * * *

Photo by Molly

Storms Were Brewing

Satia's death has triggered and deepened both my conscious awareness and my grief of what was missing in all those years and all those efforts and all those resources of many years ago. And this growing understanding didn't just begin two weeks ago. I've actually now spent years in skilled, wise, and heart-centered therapy ― and while also engaged with other resources of support, wisdom, and love ― healing from the many aspects of the healing path that I'd been on for so long that had also caused harm to myself and my family. 

Yes, there were aspects of the counseling, the 12 Step programs, and other resources that were indeed helpful. That is true. It was all definitely a beginning. It is also true that for years I had been blinded to the deeper trauma which was unknowingly untouched and continuing to be enabled and perpetuated. I couldn't see this and the impact of yet unaddressed fragmentation, disconnection, and disassociation on myself, my children and their father, and others I've known personally and professionally.

The limitations of the resources of healing, of sobriety, of support that I'd had up until that time meant that there remained this estrangement within myself from wholeness. While I was absolutely doing the best that I could, as is true for all of us, I was also continuing to act out of the disconnected hurting parts of myself that had unknowingly remained abandoned. This unclaimed empowerment and underdeveloped relationship with my Self, and with others, perpetuated the legacy burdens I'd inherited. And this despite my sobriety and years of healing work dedicated to "breaking the cycle" of pain and addiction for myself and my precious children.

Which is why it was so shocking, so traumatizing, so beyond painful when each of my sons began to show symptoms of the pain that I had thought we'd left behind. I couldn't believe that this kind of suffering was happening for our children! How could this be when I'd worked so hard and for so many years to be that break wall, to protect and shield our sons from the trauma legacy I'd been blindly handed by my parents and our ancestors?!? It was beyond devastating!

Through all this pain, there were profound lessons to be learned, absorbed, and transformed related to how it is that ancestral and cultural trauma is perpetuated and lives on within us. And how we can truly and effectively intervene.

What I have come to understand deeply today is that it is crazymaking for children to be told that we are a family in recovery all while old ancestral and cultural patterns ― of shame and fear and anger, of silence and unspoken needs and unfelt emotions, of fragmentation and disconnection and disassociation, and of addictions and trauma and grief ― continue to permeate families. Sometimes this is subtle, sometimes blatant. On some level, and beyond my conscious awareness, the old rules of Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel, Don't Be had continued on unabated. 

We can have blind spots that obstruct our vision and often don't see this happening, or dismiss or minimize it, because these old ways of relating, and not relating and connecting, are so familiar. It's just the way it is, just who I am, just the way it's always been, and I can't do anything about it. 

What can be hard to recognize is how these old generational and cultural patterns are the roots of addiction, depression, anxiety, shame, illness, violence, and the many other faces of unaddressed trauma. What can be difficult to realize and know is that healing and transforming generations of harmful and painful patterns is possible. No matter how deep the trauma, we do hold this capacity for transformation.

That said, without receiving the support we most deeply need to heal ― to understand and listen to our different internal parts, to address and transform the burdens of our neglected parts, to develop and strengthen our connection with our Self, and to grow into fully embodied human beings ― we remain vulnerable to:

• addiction
• relapse (whatever our addiction, substance and nonsubstance alike)
• shame
• depression and anxiety 
• eating disorders
• OCD and other compulsions
• perfectionism
• migraines, autoimmune diseases, and other illnesses
• affairs and painful and broken relationships
• maintaining secrets rather than risking vulnerability 
• patterns of unskillful ways of coping and relating in our relationships 
• acting out of the (often very old and younger) hurting parts of ourselves 
• a lack of trust and intimacy and authenticity
• the isolation that keeps us feeling alone and unlovable 
• continuing to experience and pass on legacy burdens
• having our children show up with symptoms of legacy burdens (addictions, eating disorders, depression and anxiety, painful relationships, etc.)
• the experience of being increasingly haunted and impacted by our repressed parts and patterns and those of our ancestors 
• confusing our parts with who we are
• not knowing who we truly are

It is these yet unaddressed layers of wounding and disconnection from ourselves, from others, and from love and wholeness that keeps us stuck. Generation after generation. It is why each of our three sons emerged into adolescence with painful issues larger than anything I thought possible at that time. 

It is why their father is drinking himself to death today, and this after 17 years of abstinence during our marriage. Not sobriety, but abstinence. There is a difference. And is it any wonder that upon moving towards divorce that my first husband mocked all those years of counseling and meetings? No, it at not. "What good did all of that counseling do?", he asked. What I realize today is that the deeper roots of what Jim needed had remained untouched. Which breaks my heart. Just breaks my heart. As my heart breaks for all of us who tried so hard to heal ourselves and our children... and yet the pain, the disconnection, the addictions and secrets, the suffering and trauma remained...

There is absolutely no shame or blame here. Certainly all of the resources of support and healing that we sought and connected with over the course of all those early years were doing the best that they knew how to do. And, that said, it is not possible to help support anyone in going any further than we have first gone ourselves. We can't grow into our Self if we are turning for support to others whose relationship with their internal parts is tenuous and limited. Only those who are growing into the wholeness of being a fully embodied human being can help us do the same.

* * * * *

Photo by Molly

A Path of Transforming Obstacles and 

Blossoming Into Our Wholeness

The journey of recognizing and transforming the obstacles to healing, health, wholeness, and love is a difficult and courageous one, to say the least. That said, with what I know today, it is also much more accessible and possible to do this profoundly transformational work today than it has ever been before.

It also needs to be illuminated that it is more painful to push away and distant ourselves from the roots of what we struggle with. Unattended pain and disconnection and suffering only grows stronger. And as we age, the cost grows exponentially.

It also takes courage to allow in disillusionment, which is the antidote to the illusions we unknowingly carry. This is especially hard for those like myself who have been highly vested in control, in getting it all figured out, in not risking vulnerability and shying away from humility, and in having the path forward laid out in a way that doesn't really, not truly, threaten the world as we've known it.

My plan, initially, was to get in, get things figured out and under control and healed within a couple years. There were so many times that I thought I'd finally made it! I would get my husband to be sober. Then, oops, and thank the Goddess, that path led me to face my own addictions. So then I had to figure out this business of sobriety myself. But then all the trauma of my young life began demanding attention. And I turned to others for help. Just tell me what to do so I can graduate and move on.

I attached myself to John and Caroline Derrickson. Best counselors in the whole world I thought. And AA and ACOA. And Stephen Beck and other therapists and New Agers and spiritual leaders and teachers. They were all the BEST! The plan was definitely not to have things continue to fall apart. But they did. And I had to face the limitations of the counselors and 12 Step programs and teachings which I had once declared as absolute truth and the only way or the best way... only to again have things come crashing down around me.

These are huge lessons. And today I am profoundly grateful.

There are so many things which I am now empowered to recognize as obstacles to cultivating a strong connection with our Self and the many parts that we hold within us:

• the spiritual bypassing of those like Eckhart Tolle 
• the New Age beliefs in such things as manifestation, the underbelly of which is shame
• 12 Step beliefs and narratives which unknowingly foster shame, disempowerment, alienation from the roots of our pain, and separation from our Self
• counselors and therapists who have not done their own deep internal work themselves
• denigrating and judging our painful human emotions as "negative"
• referring to our internal parts as "demons"
• dismissing our egos as something to be transcended
• pathologizing the ways that our hurting and neglected parts act out their pain (through addictions, depression, anxiety, etc.)
• the mantra of just move on, transcend, rise above, be enlightened
• the dismissal of the value of our human stories and the vital lessons and gifts that we can glean from them, very much including the most painful ones

It is hard and a courageous thing to question the status quo of engrained beliefs found in many systems. Just looking at 12 Step programs, when we walk in the door we are told that we will have to wrestle with addiction for the rest of our lives, that addiction is "cunning, baffling, and powerful," and that if we let down our guard we'll relapse. And if we stop going to meetings we will risk relapse. We hear that relapse will not happen if we are working the Steps, working with a sponsor, and regularly going to meetings. At the same time, every meeting holds literature and beliefs highlighting that we have "character defects," that some of us are born incapable of self-honesty, and that who we are is an alcoholic/addict. That is our identity. And we'd better not forget it or we will relapse... 

Next month I will have 40 years of sobriety. And I have found none of these things to be true. The larger question, I believe, is found in listening to our different parts and discovering the pain that the addiction has been used to cope with. As we identify the roots of our pain, and learn how to no longer be the neglectful parent to our hurting parts, everything shifts. The addictions, the compulsions, the depression and anxiety, the migraines and autoimmune disorders, the unhealthy relationships and distrust and distance with others, the deep shame and fear and anger, all of this and more becomes gradually transformed over time.

There are even gifts found in our deepest struggles, including our addictions. And as we befriend our different parts and grow our connection with our Self, all the ways that our hurting parts had been acting out or acting in begin to subside and be transformed. Discovering this kind of freedom and grace, opening to compassion and love and beauty, experiencing clarity and truth and meaning, and connecting with our different parts and our Self and with all of life is AMAZING! It feels nothing short of miracle.

This is a whole new way of framing all that it is that we struggle with individually and collectively. It is paradigm shifting. And profoundly transformative. Because, over time, the parts of ourselves, all of ourselves, is seen and listened to and honored and blessed. And we become empowered to let go and transform the old ways of coping that often have their origins in legacy burdens that stretch way beyond ourselves and our parents and deep into countless generations before us and our culture at large.

It can not be overstated how difficult it can be for so many of us to be healthy in our unhealthy culture. Depression and anxiety and addictions and violence and all of the many faces of trauma are epidemic in American culture and beyond. And, that said, there are also more clear transformative pathways and supports available today than there have ever been before. Truly, ever before.

And as I reflect on what my healing journey would look like today, if I were just beginning to seek to address the pain carried deep in my body and soul, I know that everything would look radically different. Radically. 

I am especially and profoundly grateful to those in my life today who support me on my journey of growing ever more strongly into the strength and wholeness of my Self. These are the deeply compassionate and wise people who have given me the gifts of not struggling to stay sober ― because the part of myself that is an alcoholic knows that my Self will meet the needs that I once only knew how to cope with through my many addictions. These are the ones who have helped this once incredibly fragmented and addicted and shame and fear-filled human being pull together my different parts and learn how to listen and meet my experiences and needs with compassion, tenderness, and love.

It has now been 20 years since I last suffered from symptoms of fibromyalgia. I am secure in my 40 years of sobriety and have no fear of relapse back to alcohol or cigarettes or other drugs. I am in a loving marriage with my beloved husband. I am blessed with so many loving relationships with family and friends. And my life and experiences today are filled with tools and skills to meet trauma and loss, internal and external supports, purpose and meaning, connection and openheartedness, gratitude and grief, joy and laughter, wonder and awe, beauty and love. This is so radically different from the way I once experienced myself and life to be.

This is largely true because ― as Richard Schwartz so eloquently and wisely speaks and writes of ― with each year of my life I am experiencing more Self leadership. This is a very different way of being in the world from all those many years that my neglected and hurting parts were running the show. But now they are unburdened. Increasingly I am now able to experience the "8 Cs (https://foundationifs.org/images/banners/pdf/The_8_Cs_of_Self_Leadership_Wheel.pdf):

• calmness
• clarity
• curiosity
• compassion
• confidence
• courage
• creativity
• connectedness

Does this imply that I have now simply transcended the struggles, pain, and loss of being human. No. Not at all. It is just that today, and more and more with each year as I grow older, I am free to be my Self and to meet life in healthier and more compassionate and loving ways. Coming from so much trauma and loss and grief, this is a profound and treasured gift.

And this, I believe, is what is possible for us individually and collectively. And what is so needed. We humans can evolve. We can heal and grow into the wholeness and beauty of who we truly are. We can. It is time.

* * * * *

How Internal Family Systems Therapy

Helps Heal Trauma

I am moved to leave us with this short video interview with Richard Schwartz. 

This highlights the crucial pieces of what was missing in all my many years of seeking to heal myself and break the cycle of pain and addictions and trauma for our three sons. Through all of my many years of counseling, 12 Step meetings, sobriety and inner child work, conferences and workshops, intensives and circles ― it is IFS (Internal Family Systems) which best illuminates what I needed, what our children and family needed, and what so many others have needed, and yet did not receive. And this was true even given all the years and years of hard work. This is a huge part of what was missing.

And this is the heart of what has made a profound difference for many years now in my life. There is no pathologizing, no shaming in IFS of our struggles, whatever they are. There is instead openness, curiosity, and an ongoing invitation to welcome all the different parts of ourselves into a conversation, into an intimate connection and intimacy and understanding, and ultimately transformation. It is paradigm shifting. And this is true, I believe, for us both as individual human beings and for our species collectively.

Because under it all, under all the flailing about and blind spots and addictions and relapses and repeated patterns that are not helpful, is our Self. Who we truly are. And it is our Self who can step in and end the estrangement, end the abandonment, end being the neglecting parent of our inner parts. And instead we learn how to truly hold and love ourselves ― and others.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

 — Rumi

There are many paths to healing and transformation, wholeness and health, wisdom and truth, courage and compassion, beauty and love. Hopefully, this has touched something that is helpful for you. It is what I would have wanted to share with Satia if she were still here — that I welcome and hold and love and bless all of her. And that I see and honor and bless the beauty of who she truly is...

Bless us all on our journeys,

Molly

💗

* * *

Additional suggested reading

that you may find helpful:

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring

Wholeness With the Internal Family

Systems Model

https://www.amazon.com/No-Bad-Parts-Restoring-Wholeness/dp/1683646681

* * *

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind

and Body In the Healing of Trauma

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748

* * *

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness,

and Healing in a Toxic Culture

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Normal-Illness-Healing-Culture/dp/0593083881

 * * *

Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and

the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

https://www.amazon.com/Bearing-Unbearable-Love-Heartbreaking-Grief/dp/1614292965 

* * *

The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of

Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Edge-Sorrow-Rituals-Renewal/dp/1583949763