Trust the Wisdom of Your Broken Heart
Sleep, ever elusive, I spent last night tossing and turning, my semi-conscious mind playing over and over the video of Renee Good being shot in the head at close range by an ICE agent on a weekday morning, January 7th on a snow covered street in suburban Minnesota.
My heart hurts most days. Today, my heart feels broken. This feeling, sadly familiar, finds me sometimes frozen in scrolling mode on my social media feed. Here, my conscious mind views again the video over and over. My newsfeed also has video interviews of others that were on the scene, sharing their observation of what happened in real time. The latest video shows Renee smiling at the officer saying, “I’m not mad at you.”
These were her last words.
His response before he killed her. You fucking bitch.
The last several nights, cities around the country that have had a pervasive, insidious presence of ICE, had demonstrations. Even in small rural communities, people showed up on streets with signs and steely resolve. In Minneapolis, the winter streets were packed with warmly dressed people carrying signs, some lighting candles, showing up with broken hearts, and angry, grief stricken voices. This phenomenon, not unique to this situation, of people showing up for one another, lands like medicine in my heart. My exhalations lengthen and my body softens even as I weep at the senseless loss of yet another irreplaceable life lost.
It does not go unnoticed by me that there are countless nameless and faceless individuals that have been disappeared by ICE. As of late 2025, close to 30 deaths (that we know of) have been recorded for people in ICE custody. On New Year’s Eve a black man, Keith Porter, ringing in the New Year by shooting off a gun, (something that happens often on NYE in my neighborhood), was shot and killed by ICE.
What Do We Do With the Unbearable?
An inquiry for me, for you, for us-the wholehearted.
- where does the unbearable live in your body? Is it solid? dense? Jagged and sharp? Does it move and shift? Shrink or grow?
- does the unbearable have a sound? A color?
- Do you sit with this and reflect/dialogue with the unbearable or do you just suck it up and move on?
- Does living with the unbearable impact your ability to be joyful and find meaningful connections in relationships, as well as in the natural world?
- What are your self care practices to reconcile the unbearable in your psyche?
Beyond Self Care-Widening Your Circumference of Caring & Belonging.
Self care potentially can be utilized to enter back into business as usual. It can soothe our frazzled nervous systems, enabling us to get back to living our lives.
AND we are capable of expanding what self-care means to us. Giving ourselves space to grieve, digest, metabolize, and assimilate these life altering challenging events and circumstances can offer us discernment on how to show up for ourselves and one another in these times.
Discernment, a fruit of mature spirituality, offers us Clarity. The point is not always to find a state of calm, but to have clarity in our responses.
I have been thinking a lot about civil disobedience, resistance, and noncompliance or “good trouble” of unjust laws and policies. As Americans, this is also our birthright. Remembering that segregation was once encoded in law as well as voting rights for many populations as well as accessibility rights and education for people with disabilities can serve as a compass for these times. The way we moved forward, was not to wait patiently for people to come to their senses, but to resist and challenge inhumane law and policy. Please don’t forget that in the time of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. over 70% of white people disagreed with his stance, his organized protests and other acts of resistance.
Can our self care potentially move us beyond settling our nervous systems to liberating our nervous systems to see the humanity in all people and supporting us and grounding us in resisting when that humanity is compromised by unjust laws and policies?
Can our self-care potentially move beyond focus on our individual nervous system to the collective nervous system in our communities? Can this help us co-collaborate in creating new ways of being together economically and socially and even spiritually?
Otherwise, we are caught in a cycle of numbness, despair, and outrage which we then enter into our self-care to help us get back to business as usual.
Business as usual is killing us. Many of us (esp black, brown folks) literally are being unalived by business as usual.
I believe we all have unique roles and skills that we can bring to the table to usher in ways of being together that serve more of us instead of just some of us. Again, discernment and clarity can be the fruit of a contemplative practice that can guide us, support us with courage and grounding, and help us find our people.
The following words are a quote from Joanna Macy from A Work That Reconnects Workshop where participants face their pain for the world:
I want to call your attention to what is happening here. Please observe how far the concerns you’ve just shared extend beyond your personal ego, beyond your individual needs and wants. This says something very important about who and what you are. It says you are capable of suffering with your world. That capacity to suffer-with is the literal meaning of compassion, a central virtue in every spiritual tradition. It says you are a compassionate being. Another word for that, in Buddhism, is bodhisattva.
So don’t you apologize for the tears you shed or the rage you feel about what’s happening to other beings and to our living world. Your tears and your rage are just the other face of your belonging.
Belonging.
Contemplative practice/Self-care can offer much when we are humble and open and cultivate beginners mind as lifelong students on this path.
I am still learning so much.
I am learning not to be afraid of my pain for the world to lean into that as a sign of a wise, caring heart.
I am learning that it is not pathological to care beyond my own comfort and sphere of influence.
I am learning not to be silent in the face of injustice and oppression.
I am learning that the other side of rage is passion. The other side of grief is love. The other side of fear is courage. The other side of despair is hope.
I am learning to call on the abolitionist energy of Mother Tubman, the Grimke sisters, Angela Davis, Mariam Kaba, my Irish and Scottish ancestors, and beyond.
I am learning to lean into what I am for rather than what I rage against.
I am learning that gratitude, love, compassion, empathy, and connection, as well as joy in that connection is as essential as air, water and food.
I am learning that softness and tenderness can also be fierce.
I am learning that we are the problem and also that we are the answer.
Finally, but not the end of my learning, I am learning to trust the wisdom of my broken heart. 💔
