There I was, sitting on the meditation cushion at a weekend retreat, the tears streaming down my face drawing concerned looks from the volunteers working the retreat. On the break, one of the volunteers came over with tender concern on their face and asked if I was okay. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m just going through a lot of changes right now and this is the first chance I’ve had to simply be with them and feel the emotions that come with the decisions I’ve made.”
That was back in 2006 when I had decided to leave the company that had become my family for the last 13 years. It was a hard but necessary decision: I had come to realize that while I loved the organization and the people within it, I was stagnating as a person and a professional by staying in a position that offered no growth or future path. I gave a month’s notice to my supervisor and had been working furiously since then to make sure that all the knowledge in my head was captured in a way that the next person in my position could use. Three weeks had passed, and I was finally taking some time for myself by attending this weekend meditation retreat.
Without all the business of getting things prepared for my departure and the smooth transition to another person in my role (whoever that might be), I was faced with myself on that meditation cushion. All the feelings and heartbreak I had within me began to bubble to the surface of my awareness, and all I could do was sit on that cushion and experience wave after wave of anger, fear, sadness. I was angry that the company I loved refused to make space for growth – not just for myself but for others in the company. I was afraid of the new position I was about to move into: I was moving from a management role into an executive one with brand new people and a brand new mission…would I be able to do it?? I was sad – so sad – at the loss of getting to work with people I loved and a team I adored every single day. They were why I had stayed in my position for as long as I had. I sat and mourned the loss and felt the feelings and let them wash over me and through me and beyond me.
At some point, my heartbreak transformed into a heart broke open while sitting on that cushion that weekend.
In his book A Hidden Wholeness, author and activist Parker Palmer described two ways people’s hearts can break. The first way is the way of heartbreak: the heart shatters into a million pieces, leaving only loss and despair and longing behind. The second way is the heart broke open. Rather than shattering, the heart breaks open to hold more: more suffering yet more joy, too. More despair, yet more hope. With a heart broke open we can hold these things not just for ourselves but for our world.
That weekend at the retreat, I experienced my heart broke open. The suffering that had infused my heartbreak dissipated, leaving me with the feelings themselves. There was still pain, but there was so much tenderness and appreciation there as well. Tenderness for myself, tenderness for my friends and colleagues, tenderness for my boss who had been so dismayed when I tendered my resignation. Appreciation for the company itself, appreciation for the leader I was about to become, for the journey I was embarking upon.
Today, I feel my heart straining again as I and so many others navigate the call to emerge from the pandemic and back into a new unknown. So many have lost so much since the pandemic began. So many have sacrificed so much. The old ways of working, being, and doing were for an old time…not so long ago, but what feels like forever ago for some. For me. We are not the same people anymore, and our world is not the same either. Let us let go of what was and look with fresh eyes to what wants and needs to emerge.As we move forward together into this new space and time, let us consider the intentional breaking of our own hearts, so that we may hold ourselves and each other with new capacities for empathy, compassion, kindness, generosity, and understanding.
