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I want to share with you a story of true resilience
that really called on these qualities of self-nurturing
and one that really involved facing the most challenging of stressors.
And this is a story of a very, very close friend of mine and Dharma teacher
who just died last month.
And her name is Cheri Maples, she died at sixty-four years old
and really was one of the most resilient and inspirational people that I know.
It is still raw for me, so I kind of held off even talking about her
the first few weeks after her death, because I really love Cheri...
but it fits so well with what we are exploring together right now;
the possibility for being a resilient spirit.
So Cheri grew up in a poor white family, in the Rust Belt, and she lived in a trailer park,
her father was alcoholic, her mother had deep psychological disorders, difficulties;
she didn’t have a lot of nurturing on that early care-taking level.
She was very blessed to be smart and super athletic and had that “locus of control”-thing
where she was really courageous enough to do things her own way,
she figured she could make her way through.
And so she appeared very externally resilient; and by that I mean
she played competitive baseball, traveled around the country with the women’s team,
lesbian, police-officer, became captain of police force in Madison, Wisconsin,
became a lawyer, social activist, assistant attorney-general, I think, in the state of Wisconsin,
I’m not sure of that....
That's, you know, resilient.
And bouts of depression, bouts of depression and alcohol abuse until
this is where the resilience – because she appeared resilient – turned into spiritual resilience or true resilience
– she met Thích Nhất Hạnh, and learned to meditate.
And developed a sort of supportive community in that area.
And she learned what meditation teaches which is: “Don’t believe your limiting thoughts”
– the thoughts that can drive you into sustaining an addiction and being at war with yourself –
and "Learn how to bring a wise and kind attention to your inner life”.
Don’t believe your thoughts, feel your feelings kindly.
Really basic, okay?
So she still went through bouts of depression
where she felt like she couldn’t trust herself and her connection with others
and this, of course, again, she had a really tough early years.
And I want to tell you about the worst of those bouts and how resilience kicked in,
how she grew through it.
Because she really grew through it.
And the worst of the bouts was a few years ago when Cheri and her partner of nine years
went through a really wrenching breakup.
And Cheri spiraled into a depression that was entirely out of control.
And this is just a few years ago,
we were scheduled to teach a woman’s retreat, she had to cancel it, she had to cancel all of her teaching.
She was in the middle of writing a book - came to a standstill...
Tons and tons, as I mentioned she was a social activist, she would go different places and
do trainings with the criminal justice system and how to have a more compassionate system,
she actually brought Tich Nhat Han to train the police force in Madison, Wisconsin.
So she had to cancel all of that – her socializing, her biking
– everything came to a standstill and she just went inward.
And this was for months.
And what had withered was her hope that she could ever feel close with her world.
Okay, so this is about survival of the nurtured, remember.
Her connection was really shaky.
So Cheri and I kept a regular contact, we talked a lot through this.
And she would say, “I know that it is possible to wake up through this
- my mind knows it -
It's just that my body is sinking, my heart is sinking.”
So she knew but she just couldn’t…
But gradually, her informal practice kicked in, and by that I mean mindfulness;
she started noticing more and more, that she could see the thoughts that were the hopeless thoughts
and kind of put a frame around them and just go, “Okay, hopeless thoughts”
and not be quite as much believing them.
"You are not your thoughts" - the cardinal teaching, okay – started kicking in.
She also began to investigate what was under the thoughts.
This is part two: feel your feelings.
And she could sense this pit of isolation in her belly and the squeeze of anxiety in her chest
and she just started learning to stay
so that, instead of the hopeless thoughts,
there was more this sense of “Okay, this is the portal, let go of the thoughts, be with the feelings"
and gradually, she started offering gestures of care.
Her intention was to be kind but she actually offered increasing kindness to her inner life.
Not believing thoughts, feeling her feelings, offering care.
What happened from that was that she started experiencing the reality of her loss
in such a raw way that the grieving was possible, that she could really, really grieve.
And she grieved deeply.
And with the deep grieving, the depression loosened.
With the deep grieving.
What she most feared had happened.
That is what grieving is; it is when you have to open to what you most don’t want to happen has happened;
you are no longer resisting - space opens up...
With the grieving she had come into this place of tenderness and presence
that really allowed her to reconnect with her wholeness.
I have seen (I am going to speak to this a little more)
so often, on the road to resilience, grieving is the piece that is essential.
So for Cheri that was the beginning of opening back into her life again.
Grieving, feeling that tenderness... and she stepped back in.
And she came in with more of an enlarged vibrance, more heart, more compassion,
she got back into doing things she was doing, very involved with reconciliation, with dialogues,
social justice, just this whole level of creativity and presence.
And, only a half year after that, Cheri was on a bike and she collided with a big van
and had an accident that did her in basically.
She was in the hospital for many, many months.
She had just gotten out of the hospital when she really went down.
But I visited her and here is what is amazing: there she was,
and she was basically at best going to be crippled for life,
and her mood, and her heart, she had a brightness in her eyes,
she was filled with affection, she was her humorous self, and when I talked to her
and I asked her the question that you might want to ask anybody in this situation like,
“What is allowing you to face your life this way?”
Her response was, “I have already faced the worst death I can face.
And I came through.
And I know I can awaken through any situation.
I can awaken through this too.”
And that is what she did.
She trusted she had a refuge.
She knew how to pay attention and bring compassion to what was there.
She knew about a kind of place of timeless love and awareness that could hold her life.
And I talked to her just - again this just happened a few weeks ago - the week before she died,
and she was having an infection related to the injury, and she named it out loud,
she said that she might be passing soon.
She knew that was the case.
And she wasn’t framing it as “this is wrong” or “this is bad”.
Mostly she talked about how amazing it was to belong to so much love.
When we know how to take refuge in presence and love,
we find the resilience that can carry us through this living-dying world.
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