On This Anniversary: Remembering John & the Gifts of Our Hearts

For John 

With Love & Gratitude

It was 38 years ago today that my brother died. Monday, January 30th, 1978 will always be with me. My grandfather had called me the Saturday before to let me know that John was missing again. Each time my brother went "missing," I knew in my deepest heart that he was off somewhere trying to get up enough courage or despair or desperation to commit suicide. 

I tried to numb out. What could I do? Here I was 2,500 miles away in Oregon while my twin was off alone somewhere near our mother's home in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. I had been haunted with this bone gnawing trauma that John would die, especially since our father's death two years earlier. And since last seeing my brother on the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe on my first visit back to Michigan in May 1977. That is when John told me, "I know I need to get away from Mom. And I know I can't." That's when I knew I would never see my brother again.

But I wanted to be wrong. I ached with hope that I could be wrong. So this time when Super (my grandfather) called to say that John was missing again, I determined that I would not go crazy like I usually did with fear and my utter powerlessness to save my brother. I wanted to save John. I ached to save him. I hated my powerlessness. So I waited and tried to not think about it and actually noticed that, indeed, this time I was not as overcome with paralyzing fear as I normally was. Maybe I was wrong.

Then came the call on that Monday night. 

My brother had died that morning shortly before he was discovered by motel staff when he did not check out. He left two suicide notes. We learned later that John had checked into the motel room on Friday night. He'd paid for three nights lodging. And John had spent the next three days downing vodka and Valium and calling the suicide crisis line and writing poetry. John wrote:

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

We were two months short of turning 27 when my twin ended his life. Three years earlier, in the summer of '75, I had headed West with our sons' father and our first Golden Retriever pup. After a month on the road camping and exploring where we might want to land, our money ran out.  And, gratefully, it was here in the Pacific Northwest, where I have lived ever since. Today I understand that a deep and soulful wisdom propelled me to leave Michigan because, more than anything else, I needed to save myself. I knew that my family was going down. And I got off the suicide ship - one in which the rules were don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, don't be - and embarked on a different path, one where I learned to live.

It took five years after John's death, and over seven years after my father's, before I set foot on the deeper journey into my heart that would save my life. Physically removing myself from that which was so toxic and wounding was not enough. Because wherever I went, there I was. Something was wrong. Staying disassociated and addicted and detached from my heart and my life was not working. And now I was a young mother desperate to not inflict on my children the suffering my brother and I had endured.  Never did I know back in the beginning in 1983 how hard it would be to open to the love that I need and that John never knew.

 Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers 

within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Rumi

Life can be both so hard and so amazing beyond our wildest dreams. John's death could have killed me, too. Not necessarily my physical body, but my mind, my heart, my spirit, my soul. I could have continued the downward spiral into a kind of living death, one in which I was cut off from knowing the beauty, strength, value, and love within myself and within all of us. It is part of the Great Mystery that I sought that doorway through the depths of my wounds, a doorway I did not even know existed. Yet it was there, and I found it.

All is impermanent. Even that which appears can never, ever change. A therapist who met my mother in 1985 told me that Nancy is compelled to push away love. I was 99.9% positive that that would never change.  Yet, our mother, who suffered tragically from a mental illness that kept her stuck in hell, a hell which sucked all around her into its darkness, found her own doorway through and out beginning at age 86. Miracles happen. They truly do. Especially as we seek to see and know and befriend the obstacles we build within ourselves against love. 

And this is what I'm left with today in the wake of my twin brother's tragic life and death - this passion for love. And because I have met and befriended my own shadow, my own wounds and darkness, and claim their gifts in an ongoing way, I understand in my deepest heart what is possible. And what keeps us stuck. I understand that there is a way through and out, and I understand the courage and vulnerability and support and passion for living wholeheartedly that makes love possible. This is the work I've done and continue to do for my children and grandson, for myself and for John, for my mother and father, for all my ancestors and for all the generations to follow, and for all who my life might touch. A powerful cycle is being broken and one even greater is born and flourishing and evolving. Fear keeps us cut off from caring. Love opens us to an experience of caring that has no bounds.

And so can it be for each of us individually and collectively. We live in times that are often deeply lacking in compassion, courage, curiosity, kindness, connection, empathy, understanding, and love. We hold up John Wayne and others who personify "rugged individualism" and authoritarianism and a deep disrespect and disregard for the well-being of anyone who is not within our very small, familiar, and limited circle of caring. We worship at the altar of wealth and cling to the American Dream, as long as we perceive that we are the ones benefiting or having the potential to benefit. At the same time, we often end up justifying, consciously or unconsciously, our turning away from the suffering of others, oblivious to the deeper truth that suffering anywhere is also our suffering. Of course, to the degree that we have unknowingly built those barriers around our hearts is the degree that we have unlearned the experience of what Thích Nhất Hạnh refers to as our Interbeing.

For many years I had no idea that someday I would find gifts buried in all the trauma of my brother's life and death. I just wanted to save myself and my children. I fiercely did not want what happened to John and me to happen to our sons. I wanted to heal, but I also didn't want it to take long or to be hard. I had no idea what I was in for back in 1983. I had no concept or experience with process or bigger picture or the great struggle it can be to simply become oneself.

Today I understand that sometimes it takes something so horrific to shake us awake from the dream of the false selves and images and belief systems that we have built around our hearts and minds and the way we live our lives. Sometimes we simply don't recognize how far off we have gotten from a path of heart and instead unknowingly rooted ourselves in one which feeds fear and anger, separation and shame, us versus the Other. And so often today it has become normalized to be exclusive rather than inclusive, with large numbers of us not recognizing the profound cost to all of being a part of a culture of Me rather than We. 

Which brings to mind that my mother's severe narcissism did not just emerge out of nothingness. And nor did the narcissism and violence and disconnection that permeates American society today. Sometimes, perhaps often, the journey of healing and awakening starts with one small but heart shattering piece of what evolves into a much larger experience. And then we are given a thread to follow which expands our awareness and our inner and outer worlds. And gradually our connections and what we understand and see and value grows and grows, opening us up to the experience of vast vistas that were previously completely out of view.

All is impermanent. The therapist who first told me that I was going to need support to make that journey from my head to my heart totally freaked me out. Scared me to death. It felt like I might die. And, indeed, much did gradually fall away and die, such as all the armor I had built around my heart. Layer after layer after layer continues to open to this day. I can SEE! I can experience my beauty and wounds and fears and courage. And yours. And I can hold us all with great tenderness and caring. And love. I can love today. Truly love. And allow my heart to break open again and again and again. In that breaking, great nourishment and understanding and compassion and wisdom grows and grows. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude! 

We can make the choice to take that journey that is such a long one for so many of us from our heads to our hearts. We can do this individually and together. As we heal ourselves, we heal the generations before us and the generations to follow. And the ripples that are created in this process are vast and beyond our knowing.

I weep today with missing my brother. The sadness does not go away, but it is transformed beyond anything I could have imagined when I first began to heal my broken heart. And it feels as though John has been with me this whole way on this miraculous and profound journey of learning to open my heart to love. So my greatest thanks goes to my brother. Sometimes it feels as though it is John who first pushed me through the doorway of my heart. And his. And yours.

 Namaste ~ Molly

♥

Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our heart. 

~ Rumi

At the gravesides of John Ward Strong and John Ward Strong, Jr., Pine Lake Cemetery, Bloomfield Township, Michigan

 A photo I took in our yard of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva or Goddess of Compassion