Hi everyone,
I’ve missed you!
After an extended summer break, I am starting up again by sharing with you the first blog I ever wrote for family and close friends back in January 2023. When I re-read this article the other day, I was surprised to discover how much my words from back then still resonate with me now. And I was reminded how much my intentions behind this blog still mean to me.
Next Sunday, and most Sunday’s thereafter 😉, I will begin sharing new stories and experiences of healing and transformation that I hope will continue to impact your lives and touch your hearts. But I’m changing things up a bit…!
My summer break has taught me that doing less really does open-up space for something more. So, in the spirit of “less content is more” for all of us, I will be introducing a variety of short and simple offerings week to week, in between longer original blog articles.
But today, let’s take a quick glance backward so that we reconnect with the spirit behind this blog, appreciate how far we’ve come, and keep moving forward together. 🥰
When I decided to launch this blog, “Healing Hearts from the Inside Out,” my intention was to help other parents who have lost children.
Maybe my approach to healing will help ease their suffering the way it has eased mine, I thought. Maybe my story can serve as a resource for their friends and family who want to help, but don’t know how.
But as I thought back on my healing journey and considered what to share, I felt nudged to expand my vision.
We all have wounds, I reflected.
Some of us have lost children. Others have lost parents, siblings, and pets. Meaningful friendships and marriages have ended. Businesses have failed. Mysterious mental and physical health issues have chronically attacked and deteriorated lives. The human list of ailments goes on and on. Even if we have someone to blame for them, they are still our own to endure and heal.
As many of you know, I stared my biggest wound in the face on Mother’s Day, May 13th, 2018.
That Sunday was 26 days after my 12-year-old son Tommy went to sleep and never woke up. It was one day before what would have been his 13th birthday. And it was the day I learned what it felt like to want to die.
I was sitting in Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles that afternoon watching a professional soccer match between Los Angeles Football Club and New York City Football Club. All around me, 22,000 fans were drinking, singing, and cheering. Music thumped. Smoke bombs fired. And Jumbotrons at both ends of the stadium captured the magic of live sports. When the stadium suddenly erupted over a home team goal, my nerves jumped and something inside me snapped. Tears raced down my face and my entire being plunged into a thick nasty darkness that surrounded me like quicksand.
So, this is what it feels like to want to die, I thought to myself as an indescribable loneliness settled in. Stronger waves of grief pummeled me from all sides until I touched a deeper layer of sadness that I can only describe as terrifying.
This is some form of depression, I suddenly realized, taking a short break from my own circumstances to empathize with the staggering number of people who suffer from the condition.
That was the first time I ever truly understood why some people don’t feel loved even when they are, and why it’s so hard to convince someone to live when all they want to do is die. In that moment, I heard two clear options: sink or swim.
Sinking meant succumbing to the bitter suffering I tasted that day and passing more of it on to my family and friends. I glanced over at my younger son sitting next to me and knew that was not an option.
So, I started to swim.
I swam away from my darkest thoughts. I swam through my most brutal emotions. And as I frantically searched for hope, I turned to other people’s stories to help me find my way.
“If you can’t accept what is outside, then accept what is inside,” Eckart Tolle later suggested to me in his bestselling book, The Power of Now. I had tried reading this book about spiritual enlightenment a few years earlier but tossed it aside midway through the first chapter. At the time, I honestly had no idea what Tolle was trying to say or how his teachings applied to my life.
But only a couple years later, while I mourned the loss of my eldest son, I found myself hanging on to Tolle’s every word. Something inside me had already changed.
“It’s not that others can’t help us,” the author of Radical Forgiveness Colin Tipping further clarified for me months later. “They can. The right therapist can help us explore our minds and break down our thoughts. The right healers can help us reconnect with our hearts. Doctors can help diagnose our physical bodies. But at the end of the day, actual healing takes place on the inside.”
Not only does healing take place on the inside, I have learned, but that’s where it starts in the first place.
“Healing Hearts from the Inside Out” means genuinely believing in our own selves more than anyone else has ever believed in us before. It means trusting that when we heal what divides us on the inside, we are also contributing to healing what divides our greater world on the outside. And it means finding comfort and feeling empowered knowing that when we heal parts of ourselves, we also heal parts of our world.
I am convinced that if we do little else in this lifetime but address our individual wounds and prioritize the healing of our own hearts, our impact on humanity (not to mention our family lines) will be substantial and incredibly fulfilling.
Throughout this healing journey of mine, I have become overwhelmed with gratitude and awe for every person who has ever shared their story for the benefit of others in need, like me.
I often remind myself: If they found ways to heal their hearts and transform their suffering into something meaningful, so can I.
And if I can do it, so can you.
As I used to tell Tommy when giving him motherly advice, “Take what resonates and throw the rest out.”
My way will not be your way. But I will continue to share with you how I am healing and growing my heart, and hope that it helps you heal and grow yours too.
More next week.
P.S. If you have only recently joined this community, I encourage you to browse through the previous posts in my blog. There might be something I said, an experience I shared, or a resource I recommended that resonated with me back then and will resonate with you now.
