There Is A Light Within Us All: A Personal and Universal Story

Thanksgiving 2017. Nancy at 91 and Molly at 66 at the home of my oldest son and his family in Portland, Oregon.

Christmas 1968. Our parents, Nancy and Jack, with John and myself at 17, at our home in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, 
resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

 ― Jack Kornfield

The last time I spoke with my twin brother was Thanksgiving 1977. That's when John told me his latest "plan." He had decided that he was going to hold out, no matter what, and just be himself until our mother finally loved him for who he is. No more pretending. No more going along with her ideas of what he should be or or what he should look like or what he should wear or what he should do. John was going to stand his ground until he was finally loved, loved by our mother.

***

My mother visited me and my former husband that Christmas of 1977. It was her first time to come here since Jim and I moved to Oregon from Michigan in the summer of 1975. Shortly after our move across the country, my dad had died suddenly on November 13th, 1975 following a trip to Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. This was where he was bitten by a tic that gave him Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. My father was just 60. I've always believed that what contributed to his death was a severely compromised immune system due to living with the toxic energy of my mother's severe mental illness for over 25 years. 

So our mother came alone to visit. I was disassociated and largely numb to so much 40 years ago. Disconnecting from conscious awareness of how tortured and torn and traumatized I was had been how I'd learned to survive. I just knew that I had to walk on egg shells and soak in every drop of apparent love that my mother offered. Christmas also came and went without either my mother or me bringing up calling my brother. I was so fearful of stirring up our mother's depression and intense and unpredictable rages if we were to call John, who she was very upset with. And I also kept at bay my own deep anguish and guilt that I had our mother with me for Christmas and that she wasn't with my brother. Because at some deep level I knew that my twin was isolated, alone, depressed, and starving to death for love...

When Dad had died two years earlier, I also had intuitively known that John was done for. Our father's kindness in the midst of all the horrors that permeated our home had been the one stabilizing force that provided any nourishment and protection for our hearts and souls. My brother also confirmed my worse fears when I visited him on our first visit back to Michigan in May 1977. He was again hospitalized, this time on the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe. That's when John told me, "I know I need to get away from Mother. And I know I can't." When Jim, my first husband, and I walked out of the hospital that day I fell apart in the parking lot. Because I knew that my twin was telling me goodbye and that I would never see him again.

On January 30th, 1978, just two months after my brother told me his "plan," and less than two months before our 27th birthdays, John ended his life. He had checked into a motel room on Friday, January 27th with his vodka and Valium, paid for three nights lodging, and was found dead on that Monday morning. My brother left two suicide notes. And John left a poem:

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 Ward Strong, Jr.

***

Five years passed. I had continued in my addictions and disassociation and pretense that I was fine, thank you very much. I had two babies. And then, in 1983, the world as I'd known it began to fall out from under me and I sought help. It was a world that needed to go. Sobriety followed. And a long gradual process began of thawing out and peeling back layer after layer of my defenses and illusions, my long buried grief and trauma and shame, and the harmful belief systems that I had absorbed which had formed around the rules I'd grown up with - Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel. Don't Be.

This gradual awakening allowed me access to a wholeness I had never before known and to the truth of what I had experienced as a child and as an adult. In walking through this doorway, I also opened myself up to the horrors of what I had buried deep within myself. And initially I did not believe that I could ever forgive my mother. There was the physical violence, which prompted one therapist of mine who had actually seen my mother in a counseling session in 1985 to tell me that my brother and I were lucky to have physically survived our childhoods. In that session, she'd told him that I had "forced" my mother to nearly suffocate me to death with a pillow because, no matter what she did, I would not stop crying. I was around 13 months old. But mostly there was the psychological violence that chronically sucked at the very life force of my brother and myself, and also of my father and of any who were in close proximity to our mother. 

Another therapist told me nearly 30 years ago that on a scale of 1 to 10 of "people of the lie," my mother was a "10." He and another therapist had both recommended that I read Scott Peck's People of the Lie (https://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0671454927/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513380324&sr=1-1&keywords=people+of+the+lie+hardcover). This was a book about the most severe form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and what many today refer to as "malignant narcissism." This was also the first time I heard the word "evil" when referring to those with my mother's severe mental illness.

It would be some time after that, and many years of deep healing work, before I would be able to understand the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wisely stated, "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

 ***

In late November 2012, my phone rang just past 5:30. I was still at work. It was my mother. "Don and I had a big fight! I called the police! He told me to call the police and I did!" I tried to remain calm as I asked what had happened between her and my step-father, Don, who was my mother's fourth husband. I could not get a coherent answer, just that it was "Over!!!" The marriage would end! And my mother yelled, "I want to punch him in the stomach! Do you think I should punch him in the stomach?!?... But then he'd punch me back!" I calmly responded that I did not believe that punching Don would be helpful... (Some time later, after the divorce and in response to my question if my mother had physically battered him as I knew she did my father and her second husband, Don disclosed that he is a small man, not more than 5'6", and that within a year after they were married he told my mother that he would do back to her anything she did to him. My mother remembered these words which gratefully protected my step-father from being physically battered.)

What followed the collapse of my mom's fourth marriage were the first tentative steps for my mother in attempting to build a bridge and reunite with me. While still at her home in Florida, my mother called me one morning in early December 2012, saying that she thought she should come [to the Pacific Northwest] and explore moving to live near me. I cried. I was shocked. My mom and I hadn't seen each other in 14 years. This had been her choice. Respecting the healthy boundaries I'd learned to have on my healing path, and being open to receive the deepening love and compassion I'd been offering her, was very hard for for my mother. As the therapist who met her told me afterwards, "Your mother is compelled to push away love." I thought this was unchangeable and all the evidence pointed to that my mom was indeed incapable of allowing love into her heart. With my father and brother dead, I was also the primary target for her projections - all of the fragmented and split off parts of herself that were too painful, shame-filled, and traumatic for her to see, embrace, heal, and transform.

Still, that said, Yes, I responded, please come, Mom. Through many, many years of healing my heart and cultivating compassion, I had learned to hold my poor mama with tenderness and deep compassion while also maintaining the boundaries I needed to no longer allow her to victimize me. I also knew my mom was elderly and so fragile and vulnerable and that this was the time that she most needed to be with her family. I asked her to please come and that I would support her in any way possible in this process. I began to look for possible senior and assisted living in our area.

However, my mom had someone in her life, a step-son from her third marriage, who for years had been consistently feeding my mother's narcissistic supplies, both providing the mirror she demanded from those around her while also working to take my place and fuel our estrangement. My mother saw this person as her "only friend." As I had continued in my journey of awakening, I could no longer collude in or enable my mother's cruelty toward myself or anyone else. And my mom, being chronically and severely mentally ill, could not tolerate anyone disagreeing with her. You're Jesus or you're the devil. You're with me or you're with the terrorists. You're agreeing with me or you're telling me off.

With the ending of her 4th marriage, my mom was once again exceedingly vulnerable and profoundly unstable. So when she was strongly encouraged by the former step-son and his wife to leave Florida and return to Michigan to live near them rather than move to live near her family, my mother was pulled into moving to Michigan. A month later she attempted suicide and was hospitalized. Mom's fourth husband called me as soon as he learned what had happened, and the next day Ron and I were on a plane. And I remember looking through the locked glass doors of the psychiatric ward and seeing my mother for the first time in all these years. Ron and I walked through those doors. My mom and I hugged and hugged. Under it all is the love that will not die. This was a love that my poor mama had never known. This was about to change. Miracles happen.

***

I was ready to care for my mother. I knew I could do this. I knew that I was strong enough and had healed and strengthened my heart to the point where I was absolutely capable and ready to care for my severely mentally ill mother. I also had more support than ever before in my life with my sweet, strong, and incredibly supportive husband, Ron, with my three beautiful now adult sons, and with a strong loving community of friends. I'd also done so much work over three decades related to rooting into my spiritual path, healing and forgiveness, understanding my mother's mental illness, opening my heart to compassion for my mother and what her own traumatic experiences had been that caused her to abandon her heart, and more. So we were ready. I was ready.

First there were other challenges to face. Thus began a nearly year long legal battle with the former step-son over guardianship of my mother...

Several excruciating months had passed before the Michigan judge first awarded me temporary guardianship and consented that my mother be moved here to the Pacific Northwest on a three month trial basis. If this move was successful and my mother was able to be stabilized, in September the Michigan judge would grant me permanent guardianship. Of course, if my mother were to remain here and I were to be granted permanent guardianship, the former step-son would be out his retirement plan, which was my mother's estate. He'd already had each piece of her jewelry appraised and was focused on cementing his many years of investment in "befriending" my vulnerable, elderly, mentally ill mother.

Mom's initial move to live minutes from our home occurred in May 2013. However, and unknown to us, her Michigan doctor had taken her off the powerful antipsychotic medication, Risperdal, and my mother experienced a crisis and hospitalization after arriving. I went on FMLA and saw my mom at least once every day. I knew how fragile she was. And I knew the profound difference the strong antipsychotic medication, and other medications and treatment, and all combined with the love of family was making for her. After 2-1/2 months of incredible positive changes ― successful treatment for her mental illness, amazing healing between my mom and myself that I had not thought in my wildest dreams possible, building relationships with other family members and friends, and stabilization in her new assisted living ― the former step-son and his attorneys presented misinformation and lies to the Michigan court that my mother was endangered staying in my care. And the Michigan judge ruled that my mother was to be forcibly returned to Michigan.  

This ruling went against the written recommendations of her Washington State doctor and therapist and GAL (guardian ad litem). In August 2013, and three days before her oldest grandson's wedding, my mother was forced to leave by the other man and his wife and their Michigan attorney ― who was needed to fly here to convince my frail mother that she would be in "really big trouble" if she did get on that plane with them and return to Michigan. Without the pressure from the attorney, my mom was simply not going with this former step-son and his wife.

The justice system had failed my mother and was anything but just. It was a nightmare. Yet, in time the Michigan judge would end up recusing herself due to her unethical behavior and decisions. This was the first time in his over 30 years of practice that my Michigan attorney had ever needed to ask a judge to recuse herself.

It was abundantly clear that for the former step-son this fierce and prolonged legal fight, which cost nearly a total of a quarter of a million dollars and which was unlike anything either my Michigan or Washington State attorneys had ever seen before, was over my mother's money. Ultimately, this other person prevailed with securing as valid the will that was written two months prior to my mom's first suicide attempt that favored him. The will that my mother wrote disinheriting this person three months after her suicide attempt and hospitalization in Michigan was declared invalid because my mother was deemed as "incapacitated" at that time. 

This other person, whose greed had masqueraded as love for years, got what he wanted financially in the settlement/ransom agreement. We got my mom. True, we would have likely prevailed in a trial, but that would also have prolonged by months my mother forcibly remaining in Michigan. And I worried that my mom was so fragile that she may not survive extending the legal battle. So we settled and agreed to let go of any true financial justice. And, that said, with what most matters, we triumphed. We brought my mother home, home to live near what my mom referred to as "my flesh and blood" ― which my mother became more and more clear was all that she really wanted, to be with her family.

 ***

What I had not initially been prepared for or thought possible was that my mom would be able to experience a partial awakening from the lifelong torture and debilitating darkness of her severe mental illness. Before all this had begun, before the crises that began to stir and open something deep within her, I had truly believed that any light within my mother had been extinguished. Just gone. All the violence ― the sadistic cruelty and brutal shaming, the endless rejections and rages, all the scapegoating and hatred, the chronic demonizing and projections that led to my twin's suicide, writing her only grandchildren that they should burn in hell if they aren't Republican and don't worship George W. Bush, all the refusals to see me unless my clothes and hair and politics and down-on-my-knees apologies and worship of her were just right, and on and on ― all of this had told me that there was no light left in my own mother.

I was wrong. 

The potential miracles of the life, death, and rebirth cycles can happen, even when all evidence points to its impossibility. Even for those who we believe are irretrievably lost, there is a Light within us all that simply does not die.

***

My mother has indeed been among my great teachers. So many profound lessons have emerged from both the trauma of her severe and chronic mental illness, from my own spiritual journey of healing and awakening, and from the partial awakening of my mother that first began for her at age 86. I would not have embraced compassion with such passion had I not had a mother incapable of compassion throughout most of our lifetimes. And I would not have had my deepest spiritual beliefs confirmed if I had not seen with my own eyes and experienced within my own heart my poor sweet mama, who could never let love in and experience love for herself or me or John or anyone before, begin to wake up from all the darkness that had enveloped her and gaze into my eyes and tell me that she loves me with all her heart and soul.

Even when all appearances say otherwise, there is a Light within each and every one of us. That Divine Light permeates and connects all of life.

***

My youngest son, Matt, who's 30 now, called me a few weeks ago, asking if I had a minute. (I have his permission to share about our conversation.) He said he'd been shopping at Trader Joe's. Pause. Great, I responded. So what's up? Pause. Matt responded that he's feeling hatred. I went to Trader Joe's and was looking at people and wondering, are they a Trump supporter? Is he a Trump supporter? And Matt related that he was noticing the hatred he had and didn't like it. My heart smiled. How wonderful, I affirmed, that you have this insight about what's happening for you, and this discomfort with hatred. I hear you. And I know you are so not alone. So many are struggling with this now. I wonder what might be under this hatred you're experiencing? And I wonder what wolf you are feeding? Matt responded without hesitation ― the "bad" one. We proceeded to have a long, deep talk about hatred and compassion and the antidotes for treating the "bad" wolf.

Years ago I shared the old Cherokee story with my son: 
 

An old Cherokee told his grandson: “My son, there is a battle 

between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, 

greed, and resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is good. 

It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.”

The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”

The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed."

http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2016/09/an-old-cherokee-story-there-is-battle.html 

***

The old Cherokee story, the story of my mother and me and our family, my son's struggle with hatred and his desire to increasingly learn how to feed the "good wolf," all the family and cultural stories and belief systems we consciously or unconsciously act from, and what it is that we carry in our individual and collective hearts and minds all serve to impact and influence how it is that we are in this world and embody our own hearts. My experience has been that nurturing consciousness requires a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth, the courage to shine light on and befriend both our wounds and our strengths, and a deep intention to doing the work over the course of our lifetimes of waking up. As my therapist has said, it is also painful to be conscious in these times. Yet, this pain is something we must be brave enough to allow. Otherwise, we stay asleep. And we also shut out joy and beauty and belonging and an abiding love and compassion for ourselves and one another.

We all fall somewhere on this continuum of being more or less conscious and awake, compassionate and wise, contributing to the peace or the violence in the world. My experience has been that it takes courage and support to look honestly at ourselves and to welcome and befriend all that we find there.

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 are 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 whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Rumi

***

This is the journey that I have discovered awakens us to the truth of the Light that lives within each of us. This is the pathway of strengthening our hearts through gradually learning to befriend ourselves with compassion, humility, insight, wisdom, and love. This is what empowers us to befriend each other and this beautiful world we share. 

And if my now 91 year old mom and I can make peace, surely we all hold this potential to soften, open, and strengthen our hearts. We can all work to model and inspire in ourselves and one another the capacity to be the calm within the storm in this time of both great unraveling and Great Awakening. We can learn to scale the "empathy wall," as Chuck Collins brilliantly calls it, because, as Chuck wisely states, "You cannot hate people you understand." I believe this to be the empathic imperative of our time.

"The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period of one's life." — the Dalai Lama

This is what is before us, both individually and collectively, a most difficult time that offers to us the potential to grow in knowledge and wisdom. And compassion. This is the antidote to all the many faces of violence in our midst. This is the path that leads us to wise action rather than unskillfully and often unconsciously contributing more harm rather than help and healing. As Pema Chödrön reflects, "War and peace start in the human heart and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications." 

I understand despair and outrage and the impulses to strike back at those who we see perpetrating such great harm and suffering upon humans, other beings, and our Earth Mother. I understand this, deeply. Which is why I am moved to share this story, which is both my personal story and a human and universal story. I always am writing to send out ripples that may be helpful and to myself, to further integrate what I have been learning over these past three decades of my own awakening.

And I treasure all the teachers along the way, those who in some way touch us and remind of what we have forgotten. "Action creates its own courage and courage is as contagious as fear. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." — Eleanor Roosevelt

We can do this. We can remember that there is a Light within us all. And we can work individually and together to strengthen that Light. We are all in this together.

With love and blessings to all,

Molly

Our greatest strength lies 

in the gentleness and tenderness of our heart. 

— Rumi 

 

My mom and me gazing deeply into one another's eyes, something that had never happened before until now, so late in my mother's life. Miracles happen.