Tending Our Tender Hurting Hearts In Traumatic Times

Photo by Molly

"When I finish giving speeches, during the question-and-answer period, people often ask if I think our system needs to fall apart before it can change. I believe we would be wise to accept recent events as symbols that things already have fallen apart. Action cannot wait any longer."

— John Perkins

 

* * * * * 

 

 "This, my dear, is the greatest challenge of being alive:

To witness the injustice of this world, and

not allow it to consume our light." 

 

Mass shootings... again and again and again. This pandemic era we are living in. Continuous devastating floods and droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, and all of the many faces of the escalating human caused climate crisis. Mass extinction. Mass migration. Mass racism. Mass incarceration. Mass homelessness. Mass misinformation. War. Polarization. Corporate powers which have infected and overtaken our mainstream media and political systems. The vast redistribution of wealth upwards in the midst of crushing and growing poverty, inequality, and suffering. The destruction of our ecosystem. A toxic and poisonous economic system rooted in patriarchal, neoliberal, predatory capitalism. Growing fascism and authoritarianism....

All of this and more. And add these breakdowns, injustices, and atrocities onto any of the challenges and struggles that are unfolding in our personal lives. Is it any wonder that we all aren't overwhelmed under the weight of so much trauma and loss? Of course we are. Of course we are.

Two days ago I was listening to an interview by David Barsamian on Alternative Radio with Noam Chomsky. Paraphrasing Professor Chomsky, he remarked on how we are catapulting towards species extinction, how those in power are speeding this process as rapidly as they can, and how any other beings from another planet observing what we humans are doing here on Earth would say that we're insane... which we are.

 

And now within days of each other, two 18 year olds embarked on separate rampages with assault rifles which have left ten dead in Buffalo, mostly Black American elders, and two teachers and nineteen 8-10 year old children dead in Uvalde, Texas. And those were just two mass shootings out of so many more that have occurred in recent days and weeks in our country, in America.  

Truly, the madness is all around us. Everywhere we look we are witness to the symptoms of the pervasive and deep collapse that is occurring in our nation and beyond. It is unrelenting. Heartbreaking. Horrifying.

 

I also often find the news coverage of what we are witnessing and experiencing as limited and lacking. After each catastrophic record breaking climate event and forecast, for example, I too often hear the smaller picture perspective that does not connect the dots, does not look deep and wide, does not illuminate what we most need to know and act upon now. 

 

Like this morning on NPR when the person interviewed voiced that the coming hurricane season "will have above-average hurricane activity this year" — which would make it the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season — and that it "may be related to climate change." It may be related to climate change. Just imagine if starting decades ago — instead of minimization, silence, doubt, denial, and disinformation — the media informed us about the looming human caused climate crisis that put most life on Earth at risk if we didn't act immediately to implement dramatic systemic change that would take us completely off of fossil fuels. Just imagine...

 

And now we hear again and again that "no motive has yet been established" for why an 18 year old set out to kill as many children as he could. No one is asking, what first killed the child in him? What are the circumstances that result in children killing children? Why is America the home of the greatest gun violence on Earth? Why?

 

Monsters do not fall from the sky. They don't. The deep ongoing collapse we are experiencing also did not arise overnight. Rather, it has been a long time coming. And the neglect of attending to the shadow side of our nation and beyond is costing us all dearly. And as with any addiction, there is an early stage, a middle stage, and a late stage. 

 

We are late stage. 

 

We are late stage in our denial, our avoidance, our refusal to embrace the hard work of consciousness, accountability, healing, and transformation. We are in a period of late stage consequences of our lack of empowerment and support to stand strongly rooted in the wholeness of who we are individually and collectively. 

 

This must change. 

 

I see this deep, deep need for us to witness the injustices in our world and not let it consume our light. 

 

* * * * * 

 

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

— Anais Nin 

 

Our human aliveness has long been compromised. I say this with the deepest compassion and awareness that many of us have long been on deeply spiritual, heartfelt, and soulful paths. Some have been shedding our illusions and dismantling the walls we've built inside of ourselves for decades. And yet, humility reminds me again and again, there is more to open to just beyond the vista that I now see, there are more veils of ignorance and unknowing to lift, and this process of opening and awakening and evolving is lifelong.

 

It is also true that these are extraordinary times that we are living in. There is so much to hold. So much. And it is human to turn away when we are overwhelmed. There is also a price we pay when we consistently turn away from pain, loss, trauma. Our hearts harden. We contract rather than expand. Our experience of joy and beauty, connection and compassion, generosity and love within ourselves and with all of life becomes splintered and stunted. To one degree or another, we disconnect from our souls and the hearts and souls of others. At least this has certainly been my personal experience and what I witness in our world.

 

Whether the eyes of our hearts are open or closed, we remain impacted by the suffering we carry and the suffering of others. While the illusion that we are all separate may be strong for some of us, we are not. We are all interconnected in the web of life. Certainly, the great challenge then becomes how do we stay conscious with our minds, hearts, and souls open in times of great change, uncertainty, pain, and trauma? How do we care for ourselves and one another?

 

Without the balance of meaning and deep spiritual practices, beauty and hope and joy, laughter and love and kindness and generosity, witnessing and listening and connections within supportive communities of friends and families, it becomes too much to bear. And then we are vulnerable to grasping repeatedly for any number of distractions — a plethora of addictions, raging against those f*#!king _________ (fill in the blank), and any number of other patterns that keep us in a numbed, disconnected, disempowered, and deeply isolating and painful state. For we cannot receive the nourishment of connecting heart-to-heart with others if we are largely disconnected from our own hearts.

 

So this is the challenge, isn't it? The invitation to choose one day at a time, and as best as we can, to stay present. Present with whatever our experience is. Present with both the trauma and the beauty that surrounds and permeates us. And this is not easy to do in a culture which idolizes rugged individualism, American exceptionalism, and is mired in patterns of unconsciousness, shame and blame, and the dictate to do whatever is needed to stay far from the wisdom of truth, generosity, compassion, and love....

 

Perhaps now, in this moment, it is time to stop for a moment to hold ourselves. To extend holding to others — physically, in prayer, in our hearts. And to allow this holding. Again and again, to allow this holding with the deepest love, tenderness, compassion, and acceptance for whatever it is that we and those around us are struggling with.  Embracing, accepting, holding. Witnessing, listening, loving. Ourselves. Each other. Again and again and again.

 

This is what we all need, isn't it? There is no way to weather the ebb and flow of the powerful storms upon us in this time of Great Transition without turning to each other for holding, tenderness, understanding, acceptance, and support. And fierce love.

 

* * * * *

"If you're living grief, you are a brave warrior of love.

I bow to your broken heart."

 

This time of great sorrow asks of us to grieve, individually and together. As John Bradshaw wrote about and said in a weekend long workshop decades ago, "Grieving is the healing feeling." 

 

Today I understand that my tears have been the doorway into my heart, into my soul. The day had come where I took the risk, again and again, of doing the work of blossoming into the greater wholeness of who I am. This ongoing journey is one that so many of us are already on, and often have long been walking. This journey of the heart, of the soul.

It is my belief that we live in a culture and a world starved for the cleansing healing of our tears, of our broken hearts, of our fierce love. So many wisdom keepers, truth-tellers, authors and artists, poets and visionaries have spoken about the need and value of grief, of embracing our pain and trauma, of doing the deep work of opening our hearts and souls and growing strong in all of the broken places.

 

"Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul." — Francis Weller

"The cure for the pain is the pain." — Rumi

 

"I have woven a parachute out of everything broken." — William Stafford 

 

And this is what I believe is needed. Together, we can refuse to live numb and small. Together, we can find healing and wholeness through facing both our own individual and our collective pain and trauma. And, together, we can weave a parachute out of everything broken. This illuminates a path of healing and transformation. This is how we will awaken. This is how, together, we will increasingly be brave warriors of love.

 

* * * * * 

 

"The work of the mature human being is to carry grief 

in one hand and gratitude in the other, and to

be stretched large by these two things.

— Francis Weller

 

I am moved to add these excerpts by Francis Weller from the preface of Duane Elgin's powerful and brilliant book Choosing Earth: https://choosingearth.org/. For information on Francis Weller's The Wild Edge of Sorrow, please go here: http://www.wisdombridge.net/the-wild-edge-of-sorrow.html. It is by far the most comprehensive, illuminating, helpful, and empowering book that I have ever read on grief.

 

For now, here is Francis Weller writing in the preface of Choosing Earth: 

 

An Apprenticeship With Sorrow 

 

...Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future. Our ability to stay present to this tidal wave of loss depends on our capacity to cultivate this essential skill. We must take up an apprenticeship with sorrow.

Our apprenticeship begins when we come to understand that grief is ever-present in our lives. This is a difficult realization, but one that has the opportunity of opening our heart to a deeper love for our singular life and for the wind-swept world of which we are a part. We begin with the simple gesture of picking up shards of grief that lie littered on the floor of our house. We begin by building our capacity to hold sorrow in the tender hut of the heart. Through this practice, we learn to welcome the pervasive and encompassing presence of grief. And then we invite one, two... a few trusted others, to gather and share the ongoing waves of sorrow as they come ashore. "Our ability to love and comfort is expanded by others' grief, our own too-big-to-be-contained pain finds its freedom in others' witnessing of it.

 

Grief is more than an emotion; it is also a core faculty of being human. It is a skill that must be developed, or we will find ourselves migrating to the margins of our lives in hopes of avoiding inevitable entanglements with loss. Through the rites of grief, we are ripened as human beings. Grief invites gravity and depth into the psyche. Fortunately, we possess the capacity to metabolize sorrow into something medicinal for our soul and the soul of the world. 

 

One of the essential practices in our apprenticeship is our ability to hold one another in times of grief and trauma. This skill has, for the most part, been lost under the extreme weight of individualism and privatization, especially in Western, industrial cultures....

 

But what of traumas impinging on us from the wider world? Here, [Duane] Elgin proposes a new way of framing the global field. He introduces Chronic Planetary Traumatic Stress, and writes: "The difference between PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and CPTS is that, instead of a relatively brief and confined episode, the trauma is life-long and planetary in scope. There is no escape — the burden of collective trauma permeates the psyche add soul of humanity." There is no escape! Whether we acknowledge the wider traumas or not, our psyches register the disruption. How could we not? Our lives, our bodies, our souls, are entirely entwined with the beauty and sorrow of the world. As Elgin points out, without containment, the chronic traumas of the planet will leave many of us "deeply sounded, both psychologically and socially." The capacity to create spaces potent enough to hold the intense energies of our raw grief is a key element in our apprenticeship with sorrow....

 

How are we to respond when life confronts us with overwhelming circumstances? How can we hold all that we feel when the source is far beyond our ability to control? How do we recalibrate our inner lives to heal our psyches in times of trauma? Here are a few offerings for tending our souls during traumatic times — and who isn't living in traumatic times? 

 

1. Practice self-compassion. Self-compassion helps us hold our vulnerability with kindness and tenderness, allowing us to remain soft and open. Times of great uncertainty call for a level of generosity to ourselves that helps offset the effects of trauma that can often envelop our emotional body. This must be our first and primary intention: to hold all that we experince with compassion — to offer a safe place for our fears and grief to land. 

 

2. Turn toward the feelings. No bypass or strategy of avoidance can help resolve the difficult emotions we will encourter. Turning toward our suffering is essentail. Not only must we endure times of pain and sorrow, hoping to get beyond them, we must also actively engage them and feel them fully. This move takes great courage. However, without adequte compassion and support, it is hard to open ourselves up to the painful emothins that await us. 

 

3. Be Astonished by Beauty. Trauma has a profound impact on our feelings of aliveness, often generating a state of numbness or anesthesia. This anesthetized state protects us for a time from having to encounter the raw, searing emotions that often accompany trauma, but it also dulls our sensual engagement with all that surronds us. Beauty's allure helps to fully open the aperture of the heart. Sorrow and beauty side-by-side. The soul has a fundamental need for encounters with beauty — a central source of nourishment that continually renews our sense of vitality and awe.

 

4. Patience. Healing from trauma takes time. Patience helps heal vulnerable pieces of soul splintered by trauma. Knitting a bone takes time. Mending the soul takes even longer. Be patient with your process. The soul's deep wisdom knows the value of going slowly. Stepping out of the manic pace of modern culture is essentail for regaining our footing in the world of soul. Patience is a discipline, a practice that reassures wounded vulnerable souls, and helps us reap the benefits of our efforts.

 

A Gradual Awakening, An Emerging World

 

Our long apprenticeship with sorrow results in a spaciousness capable of holding it all — the loss and the beauty, the despair and the longing, the fear and the love. We become immense. Our steady devotion to working wiht the heavy cargo of grief, slowly softens the heart and we feel our connection with the wide, sentient world expanding. Our time in the depths helps us to develop a felt intimacy with the Earth and the cosmos. We come home. We sense a diminishing distance between us and others. Our identities become permeable, and we feel a growing kinship with the human and more-than-human community. A new reverence for life emerges as we sense the living presence of the Earth as an organism embedded in a living cosmos.

 

This is the dawning experience of a possible future for the Earth..... 

 

* * * * * 

 

"We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don't ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don't apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time."

— Joanna Macy

 

I have long been deeply blessed and changed by my daily practice of grief and gratitude. This journey has helped me to open ever more deeply my own heart and soul and to experience abiding and ever growing connection with our human and other-than-human planetary family. This, of course, is a lifelong journey. 

 

May we all be connected with the practices and supports that we need to embrace and embody beauty and kindness, to stay open to what our hearts and souls need, and to ever more deeply act out of compassion, consciousness, generosity, and fierce love.

 

Bless us all,

💗 

Molly 

 

 

Peonies are beginning to blossom in our garden. 

Beauty abounds. 

 

Photo by Molly