Remembering My Brother On Our 71st Birthday

March 25th would have also been 

my brother's 71st birthday. 

 

For many years following my twin's suicide on January 30th, 1978 I wouldn't go there. I wouldn't and couldn't embrace anything close to the depths of my grief. Given that we will only go as deep as the support that we perceive is available to us, I look back with the deepest compassion today for why it was that my younger self was compelled to wall up my heart and do whatever it took to distract myself from the trauma and pain that I carried those many years ago.

 

There were many obstacles to embodying with loving-kindness the truths that my brother and I carried within ourselves. We could not trust, not even each other. The don't trust, don't talk, don't feel, don't be rules so common to families in deep distress were absorbed by John and myself. Vulnerability was dangerous and invited betrayal. The shame we carried also told us that we were flawed, unworthy, unlovable. In our childhood home, there wasn't compassionate loving support, acknowledgement, or understanding for our suffering. And so we each held at bay as best as we could the heart-wrenching ache of not being safe, of not belonging, of not feeling loved. This deep disconnect had been going on for a long, long time within our family and is also sadly pervasive within our culture.

 

In the middle of a lot of abuse, fear, and loss, there were also experiences of happiness, adventure, and breaks from what haunted us. Like when my brother got his first little sailboat and would sail far out on Orchard Lake, a lake in Michigan where our father had also grown up sailing. There were also family trips to Bermuda and Europe and out West and other places. There was getting our first, and then our second basset hound. There was the sweetness of eating the vegetables our dad grew right off the vines in our garden. There were good times.

 

And there was the ancestral legacy of trauma, addiction, loss, perfectionism, image management, and much more that had been blindly passed down generation after generation — a legacy which would not stop its incessant demand for attention, acknowledgment, healing and lessons learned, and deep transformation. None of us were able to hear or understand these messages or find any meaning in the chaos that engulfed our family. And so the pain only grew. And grew. And John never found his way out of the death spiral that he'd long been pulled down into. 

 

I remember these things now as I reflect on moving through a new decade of my life, a decade which follows so many others without my brother.

* * * * *

"Everything that occurs is not only usable and

workable but is actually the path itself.

We can use everything that happens to us

as the means for waking up."

— Pema Chödrön

Our family's story is not unique to us. To one degree or another, most of us experience ancestral and cultural beliefs and experiences which have caused us harm, caused us to lose our way, and cut into that which links together all of us, thus creating the illusions of separation. As Thích Nhất Hạnh wisely affirms, "We are here to awaken from the illusion of separation" — separation from each other, from other beings, from a sense of spiritual grounding, from the Earth and the web of life, and from our own hearts and souls.

Trauma can work both ways. It can lead us into such deep despair, shame, anger, and hopelessness that we are caught up in a kind of death spiral leading us farther and farther away from who we truly are and the depths of beauty and sacredness woven through ourselves and all of life. Trauma and loss ignored, minimized or denied, disassociated and unattended impacts how it is that we are in the world. 

The choices that we are able or unable to make related to the most difficult and painful times in our lives determines whether our hearts remain open or walled up, whether we become brittle and bitter or compassionate and fiercely loving, whether or not we pass on our pain to others or transform what we have experienced into something usable and for a higher good for ourselves and others.

Today I know these words of Pema Chödrön to be true: "War and peace start in the human heart — and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications."  

For many years now I have understood that my healing, my sobriety, my awakening, my fierce pursuit of ever deeper truths and compassion and love is about more than just me alone. And it is about more than doing what I can to "break the cycle" of addiction, abuse, and trauma for my children and future generations. 

In part, this amazing journey of the heart is also a living tribute to my twin, who was never able to find that doorway out of his unbearable despair. It is also, in part, a tribute to my mama, who spent nearly the whole of her life, up until her last seven years, unable to give or receive love. And it is a tribute to my dad, who struggled as a closeted gay man to ever allow himself to be truly and deeply seen and loved. Today I am able to consciously carry John and all of my ancestors with such profound compassion and love. 

"Until you make the unconscious conscious,

it will direct your life and you will call it fate." 

— Carl Jung

I also am incredibly blessed with the great gift of being capable of doing what they could not. I get to use it all — more and more of the entirety of the unconscious ancestral and cultural legacies I've inherited — as part of my journey of waking up, of opening my heart and increasingly grounding myself in the holy wholeness of who I truly am. And in doing so — in embracing and holding my wounds with tenderness and compassion, in lifting one by one by one the veils of my illusions, in growing my heart strong and wise — I have received the exquisite grace-filled gifts of the alchemist. 

Today I understand through my own personal journey that it all is workable, all usable, and all potentially transformative in ways that I could not imagine before embarking on this amazing journey of the heart and soul.

And support is key. Without sufficient support and connection with safe, compassionate, wise and loving family and/or friends, teachers and mentors, healers and spiritual guides it is too much. Too much to do on our own and in isolation. And our culture, which is rooted in patriarchy, misogyny, and rugged individualism, is too often not the fertile ground to find those who can truly be of service to us on our path of making the unconscious conscious, of recognizing and healing how we've been harmed, and of awakening from our illusions.

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." — e.e. cummings

It is indeed a courageous journey. And one which our beautiful hurting world needs more and more of us to be rooted into, rooted into this courageous journey of embodying fierce compassion, fierce caring, fierce love.

 "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

When I remember my brother and how it is that I carry John in my heart and how it is that I am graced with living my life today, I am reminded again and again of the power of love. And I reflect upon the great forgetting of this simple truth — that love is the greatest medicine.

And I imagine a world in which more and more of us are consciously engaging, individually and collectively, in dismantling the barriers that we have unknowingly built against love. In which we are doing the deep work that so many of our loved ones, and those around us near and far, are unable to do. That our lives can, at least in part, be devoted to alleviating the suffering that is so incredibly prevalent. And beginning, or continuing, with our own.

I imagine that more and more of us will deepen in the healing and awakening of our hearts. That we will grow increasingly into being beacons of light and truth, hope and inspiration, courage and resilience, compassion and caring, wisdom and love. We all need each other. And we are all connected, one great family here on Earth. We just need to remember that.

And perhaps, as I do with my brother, we all have ancestors who are also here to love and support us. To love us through the healing and awakening and expanding of our hearts. To strengthen us as we remember our deepest soulful connections with all of life. To awaken and act out of the consciousness of who we most deeply are and what we came here to do.

May this time of great transition that we are all living in be a time of great remembrance and great love. And perhaps if our ancestors are speaking to us and we can hear their message, maybe they would mirror the wisdom of Rumi: "Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction."

***

This is for John, my beloved brother.

 

And with the deepest gratitude to all that blesses us with the courage and support, the resilience and grace, and the wisdom and love to choose love, again and again and again.

 

Bless us all,

💗

Molly