Collective Heartbreak - Is Happy Real?

photo by author

Clients occasionally arrive equipped for the journey – with appropriate gear for the long trek – aware that they are not going to get to the pinnacle or goal in a day. However, some sit on the couch with doe-eyes feeling as though they have been traveling on the rocky trail forever without an end in sight. They’ve run out of supplies. They may hope that I have a technique, a pill – something that will just make the pain go away.

In moments like those I wish I were a magician. A few weeks ago, I threw down my notebook and exclaimed: “Being a counselor sucks sometimes!” (I think my client and I were both a little surprised, but she knew I did it because I felt for her. I wanted more than anything to diminish her pain.) The only consolation I can offer clients is that things usually get better if they want it, stick with it and work at it. Change can be scary even when it is positive.

Some days a client might cover 10 miles on the trail and the next day it may start snowing and she may only travel a mile before setting up camp, but inevitably, she will arrive at her destination... or a destination. So we can’t always see the ground we’ve covered or how we’ve changed, but a year out or two we look back and feel like a different person.

People are occasionally suspicious of happiness, assuming that the happy person is faking it or just born

Kissing The Bull

My client hesitated at the door before leaving. “So, this is feeling stuff is supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.

I put a hand on her shoulder and sighed. “Yes. It will.”

Image: CarleMuseum.org

The trials of meeting our inner monsters: I couldn’t bear to tell her that it would be like riding a rank bull and getting thrown a few times. Or staying on only to have your face meet the bull's head, termed "kissing the bull." I wanted to tell her it would hurt like Hell, but it would be worth it. Down the road her heart would expand, and she would feel more keenly connected to the whole human race. She would forgive more quickly, love more deeply and experience radiant joy. (Disclaimer: I don't know if this is true for bull riders.)

Counseling is an art with diverging theories and myriad techniques. (If only people knew!) And, good news, it works! (At least, most of the time). A lot of what goes on cannot be measured. The aspects that can be measured are occasionally not what make counseling effective, but numbers please the funders and universities.

A universal understanding in the field is that after developing a trusting bond, we ask a client to acknowledge and feel his/her feelings, which ultimately helps the client process them. By feeling and processing, emotions shift and release hold of us. But if someone is accustomed to thinking their way through life, they will be in for a rough ride initially. Often clients assume that in counseling we are going to spread out their life on a table, like puzzle pieces, hold our chins and analyze it. When they are asked to be vulnerable and stay with their heart, it is not easy. And, if I ask my clients to stay with their hearts, I have to do it too. I have to walk the ego’s fire, trusting that my spirit will overrule.

Part of the trouble is, in terms of feelings, we are a constipated culture. We’ll do almost anything to talk ourselves out of them. Here’s what I know about feelings: If you ignore them, they will show up at

Love Lasik

Baby bird in Niwot, CO

Dance transformed me into a more open-hearted woman. Becoming a counselor is yet another quest to chase out the places where I am afraid of intimacy. Witnessing (and urging) another person into the terrifying territory of feelings has required that I be equally brave.

Being open-hearted sounds either medical or perhaps like what follows will be Hallmark sentimentality. Sure, I’m now a big mush-ball when it comes to the people whom I love, but recently, my new understanding has been like Lasik surgery to the heart. Lasik permanently changes the shape of the cornea. In the same way, what I need to do to love more fully has become clear, and my heart and self are permanently altered.

Rainbow over Niwot, CO

Why is intimacy terrifying? (Counselors ask a lot of questions.) Being “burned” makes it less enticing to jump back into the water. And I’m not just talking about the relationship between couples. It applies to the connection with our parents, children, extended family and friends. We throw daggers between ourselves and others just to keep them back. Like some fake watch salesman on a NYC street corner, we hide the daggers inside special pockets of our coat – just in case someone gets too close.

Niwot, CO

  How do we do it? We judge. The other
  is too slow, too uncultured, too smart,
  too shut down, too fat, too emotional,
  too unemotional... the list goes on. Our
  egos convince us that it’s super
  important that we teach the other person
  a lesson (even if the person will learn whatever they are supposed to
  learn in their own way, on their own time). Or we argue politics
  when in fact our tantrum may have to do with poor early attachment
  to a parent. Or we hold strings to the money or time that we give. (I
  was there for you; therefore, you should be here for me now.) Or, we judge based on another’s appearance or seeming difference. And we are equally harsh on ourselves.

Captured on a visit to my sister and family

Our only job is to love... and that requires that we become bigger than ourselves, entering possibly unknown territory. When we love we set ourselves and the other free. Our egos, pesky little buggers, have the power to convince us that if we don’t do what they tell us to do everything will fall apart. And if everything falls apart, we will have no control, and then it will be our fault that the world ends because someone didn’t load the dishwasher correctly.

In NYC with my girls

  We live in an angry
  culture, and it’s not just
  road rage. Yesterday I
  saw a father walk up to
  his teenage son in the
  airport and twist his
  arm so hard I thought the boy would cry out. Love, and the healing of the
  world, begins at home. Undoing the fear of love begins at home. Where do
  you throw daggers to keep people back? Who do you need to manage so
  you will look better? Will you need to wait until you are dying to decide that
  love is really worth the pain?

LASIK is a surgical procedure intended to reduce a person's dependency on glasses or contact lenses. LOVE is a radical choice intended to reduce a person's dependency on the illusion of separation.

Balanced and Unstable

A fond memory, in a twisted sort of way, is the time my mother chased Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland because he wouldn’t take a picture with my younger daughter. The woman escorting him said he was late for a show, but that didn’t stop my mother from swinging her big bag at his head and yelling, “You ridiculous, ineffectual lump! My granddaughter wants a PHOTO with YOU!” I know from whom I inherited my colorful vocabulary. I can’t imagine what would have happened had my Mom actually made contact with the ducking hunk of fluff. Perhaps Disney police in the guise of Brutus would have swept poor Mama off and handcuffed her to the slate wall of Snow White’s palace. Moral of that story: Don’t mess with my mother’s children or grandchildren or any blood relative! I love that about her. My mother is passionate and expressive. There is nothing passive-aggressive about her. You know where you stand. And as a side note, we always felt safe around her. Evidently, she reserved her physical aggression for imposter Disney characters. She is equally loving and brilliant; a perfect nurturer.

 Mama with my niece and nephew

I was thinking about an irony of our culture: that if someone shows sadness or anger they are considered “unstable,” but when we repress emotions, a whole gamut of physical stress related conditions manifest, including chronic (particularly back) pain issues, fibromyalgia, depression, bursitis, arthritis, TMJ, IBT, eczema, tennis elbow, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, sexual dysfunction, Bells Palsy, rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions as well as addiction issues.  We have been slow to believe the direct mind-body relationship. People stuff their emotions until feelings burst out inappropriately in a fit of misdirected rage, and then guilt ensues and nothing has been gained. Feelings are blamed as too risky. The key is...

The Art of God

photo by Vanessa Hill Rogers

  We are never separate from God. This is one of
  many lessons I have been learning from
  discussing my relationships with my spiritual
  masters, Helen Lordsmith and JoLee Wingerson,
  for the last 15 years (I am a slow learner). I have
  heard it said “We are God” or “We are part of
  God." Ultimately spiritual experience is personal
  and the way we frame it is unique to us. We
  decide what that relationship will be. Sometimes
  we pattern God after a wicked parent (which is
  interesting because individuals with Dissociative
  Identity Disorder also develop a personality
  modeled after their abusers).

  I feel connected to God - some Cosmic Chemical, Energetic Power, Paternal-Maternal-Fraternal Force. I like the image Marianne Williamson used of one wave saying to another wave: “Do you believe in the sea?” But, as fate would have it, humans are not created to be sailing smoothly with God in our sails. We are born thinking we are separate sinners, and our egos want us to confirm that with proof, because the ego seeks power at the expense of our health and happiness. People will treat us in exactly the way we believe we deserve to be treated – as Ego or Spirit.

Lovers and friends will come and go, but who are we between those times? Why do we give away our power to the Other as if we are not enough. When we give away our power to them, we are no longer the person the Other chose.

When I’m doing it right, my happiness is not dependent on who walks in the door on a particular day or what they are saying to me. I am totally flowing. To learn this I have kicked and screamed when someone walked out the door or didn’t appear in the way I expected. My heart has been shattered by conditions and expectations, and re-pieced. As as result, I’ve become a better teacher, mother, counselor, lover and friend as I’ve learned how to sculpt my life without expectation for the materials or the outcome. Oh how I’d like to be able to CONTROL things. Grr. My ego is a pirate!

With awareness of the fact that we are never separate from God, we are never apart from the people whom we love. We can feel them in our hearts. This is not a THOUGHT. This is something FELT and, amazingly, we can shift or morph or grow into this feeling state of being. The example I have had to model what true love looks like is my grandmother, Mutti, who died 15 years ago. I can feel her hands wrapped around me when I was a baby. I can feel her embracing me as a teen when I cried after breaking up with a boy. I can feel her braiding my hair, and I still smell her food. Her love was so total and complete. The safety I felt in her presence was so thorough that to this day she is woven into my heart and the loss of her does not throw me because I can still FEEL her. (Papa was great too but he was working long days to help support us.)

Mutti and Papa

I did not realize that this could apply across the board. The trick is to be totally open and present with the people in our lives, the people we love – without conditions. We get into trouble when we think: “I’ll only love you if you stay with me the rest of your life.” That’s a thought. The heart wants to feel. TODAY. LOVE. GO DO IT. Your kids will move out. Your lovers will leave or die. Your friends will move. Your parents are doing the best that she can. What is your personal barrier to love? Because that is the faulty belief that you are separate from God. That is the illusion standing between you and Heaven on Earth.

Skid in Broadside, Balls to the Wall

I am watching my 16 year old dog sleeping soundly – eyes pressed closed, her head encircled by a soft cone to keep her from gnawing on wounds. She has days, maybe weeks to live. I wish she would just go to sleep one day, outside in the sun, and never wake up, instead of slowly losing function. She’s not in a huge amount of pain yet, but there are moments like when she can’t stand in the morning and I help her up and hold her belly until I feel her legs able to carry her weight. She is still eating although she’s picky. I’ve never known Keesha to turn down anything!

Today I lay on the back porch with her and sobbed. Her imminent death brings up the people and pets I’ve lost, as well as those I will lose; my own mortality… failed relationships and missed opportunities. I let the grief grab hold and swallow me until it spits me out. It’s the only way to clear it.