Mountain Marie and Leading With My Heart

I was lying on a portable massage table in my sister-in-law Marie’s living room in Tabernash, Colorado. If I could turn my head, I would see a beautiful valley before me stretching to snow-capped peaks in the distance. I was aware of the scene, but I was looking up toward the ceiling as Marie was crucifying my toes. Well, that’s what it felt like at times.

Marie is a foot reflexologist and is also very knowledgeable about the uses and application of essential oils. She had graciously offered to give both Mark and I a “treatment” while we were in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, and I went first.

The basic idea behind foot reflexology is that certain spots on toes and places on the foot tie into various organs and areas of the body. I couldn’t believe the pain as she squeezed and massaged the places on my toes that refer to the brain, to my center of though, memory and hormones. 

As I groaned, Marie made the comment that I keep everything inside.  “Your mind feels like it has to protect your heart,” she said. “You need to try to stop overthinking.” Mark has made that comment to me many times, but he wasn’t playing with my toes at the time.

Marie and me in Hawaii in July 2013

The over-thinking I knew about. What I hadn’t known about was the heart thing. I had often felt that something or someone was imprisoned inside of me. He very occasionally gets out for some air when I am less inhibited, but then he goes back into his cage. In this regard, I could relate to something I read about what André Gide felt about his friend, Oscar Wilde: “Gide felt that Wilde was often inhabiting a role, even if the role was himself.” That’s exactly how I have felt.

I pondered what Marie had said and what I had felt as she kneaded my toes, and I eventually came to a couple of realizations. First, my mind doesn’t realize that it no longer needs to protect my heart. From the time I was a small child, my mind learned to protect my heart. As an abused boy, I dissociated myself from what was happening to me (as a survival mechanism), and my mind increasingly directed my actions, particularly after I realized as a teenager that I am gay. A process that began when I was small continued throughout my life. It was only once I came out that I began to live more from my heart.

The second realization I came to is that, in the process of trying to protect my heart, my mind has stifled it, much as an overprotective parent can stifle and smother a child. Through its desire to protect a child, a parent can go way overboard and prevent the child from living life and maturing emotionally (and from learning that the world is a wonderful place instead of a fearful, dangerous place). Similarly, I realized that my mind - in its zeal to protect – has stifled my heart. Because my mind doesn’t realize that it no longer needs to protect me, it has continued this process. (It is the same phenomenon that has sealed off so many of my memories from my childhood, youth and early adult life – i.e., my life before Mormonism.)

A third realization I came to is that if I am going to lead with my heart, I’m going to have to work at it. As I pondered this, I was reminded of something I was told by a very wise, perceptive and intuitive man - my doctor in Vancouver who also served as a counselor. When I first started really dealing with childhood abuse, he once told me: “You have never allowed yourself to have passions, let alone act upon them.”

In the process of working on my Invictus Pilgrim book (based on my coming-out blog), I recently ran across an email that my sister sent to me in those early days. She was describing her memories of me before I joined the LDS Church. One of her recollections was that I used to laugh so hard my sides ached. I hadn’t remembered that. I hadn’t remembered the exuberance of youth when I was going to college and was enjoying life in my fraternity. I hadn’t remembered that, as a child up to the time of my parents’ separation, I was a jokester and laughed easily. 

I had forgotten these things because my mind had spent so long creating the Mormon, married, heterosexual me, it had successfully wiped out most of these memories of how I used to be. It’s time to reclaim the youth in me, to celebrate my passion, to help my mind realize that it no longer has to guard my heart. This is going to involve some effort, and it is going to require that I have the courage to allow myself to be exuberant, to let go, to feel, to live.

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Just a note to my Australian friend, Loris. Thank you for reading my blog and for sharing. I am sending thoughts, concern and best wishes to your "angels" - Michelle and her partner. Cancer creates a special kind of fellowship. Namaste.

My North Carolina Closet

I first visited my sister Martha and her husband Koen at their Durham, North Carolina home in April 2011. I had started the process of coming out six months earlier, in which Martha had been a huge support. I was blogging as Invictus Pilgrim and could not for various reasons reveal my identity at that time. So I have decided to come out of my "North Carolina Closet" by posting some pictures that were taken during that visit.

Martha and me in front of Duke Chapel on the campus of Duke University

These other pictures were taken on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Martha was at that time teaching French course. She had not yet started working on his dissertation at that point.

It was during this trip that I had the opportunity to meet Jimmy Creech, a (straight) former United Methodist minister from Raleigh who been active in LGBT issues within his church as well as others - locally as well as nationally - for over two decades. He had just published a memoir about his journey entitled Adam's Gift (which included being "defrocked" by the UMC for performing a same-sex commitment ceremony.) Martha and I happened to decide to visit a bookstore in Durham one morning while I was there, and Jimmy was doing signing books.

I loved reading Jimmy's book. When I had finished, I wrote a post about it on my Invictus Pilgrim blog, which I plan to republish here in the near future. When the first Circling the Wagons Conference was being planned for the fall of 2011, I invited Jimmy to come speak at and participate in the conference. He graciously agreed to do so (with no honorarium), and his presence and words of hope and love added much to that memorable weekend. He is a gracious, humble, loving man.

In December of 2011, I made another trip to visit Martha and Koen, only this time I was with Mark. We had a great weekend during which we visited various historical sites in the area.

"Yesterday was a an eventful day," I wrote in my journal on 14 December 2011. "We went to several historical sites. The first was the Bennett House which was where General Johnston surrendered to General Sherman. I learned a lot - things I never knew about the Civil War. I found it interesting, too, to hear things presented from a southern perspective. We then went to the Duke homestead, followed by a visit to an old plantation [Stagville] which was one of the largest in in antebellum North Carolina."

"What was perhaps the most interesting aspect of the afternoon," I continued, "was how I felt while at these sites. Martha was trying to tell me that this - history - is my passion and that I should pursue it. Of course, I know this, but I have denied it and relegated it to the place of avocation rather than vocation my entire life. Now, I find myself approaching the end of middle age, wondering what I'm going to do the rest of my working life, wondering whether I've wasted my [profession] life."

Martha and Koen on the campus of Duke University, where Martha will be teaching this fall. Most of the pictures here were taken by Koen.

"Last night," I wrote, "I had a bit of a crying breakdown. I felt so very lost. I have felt this way from time to time since coming out - disoriented, unsure of myself. My relationship with my children is so different. In many ways, it's better. But it's different. My professional life is in upheaval. My one constant that I cling to is my relationship with Mark ... So at times like this, like last night, I open up the chambers of hidden sorrow and pain in the dark recesses of my soul and I let it out. I cry. Mark was so sweet ... I love him. That is my one constant."

This photograph was taken by Koen, my brother-in-law. At first, I just thought it was a really cool picture. But since Mark's diagnosis, the clairvoyance of the image has become increasingly haunting.

Under the Hood: My Sister's Big Day

This past Saturday, my sister Martha (pictured above as she advances toward the stage to received her hood) became the very first person in our extended family to obtain a Ph.D (Doctor of Philosophy). I am immensely proud of her. In her mid-30's, she moved back to the United States after living in Geneva, Switzerland for more than a decade and went back to school. Though she had had a successful career in the fragrance industry, she decided to follow her dream and her passion - to finish her bachelor's degree, then obtain a Master's degree in French, then - ultimately - to obtain her Ph.D.

During the thirteen or so years that it took to achieve her dream, she saw many ups and downs. She divorced. She moved to North Carolina to study at the University of North Carolina, where she had been accepted as a doctoral candidate. She met Koen Van der Drift and they subsequently married. 

Photo by Rachel Broom

Meanwhile, Martha persevered for several years to write, revise and ultimately "defend" her dissertation, which focused on the work of Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. During the course of her work, she was privileged to meet, interview and work with Le Clezio himself - a high honor for an American doctoral candidate.

And! Through this period, she was a constant and generous source of support to me when I came out of the closet in the fall of 2010. Thank you, Martha, and congratulations from your big brother.

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Koen and his family on their way to the ceremony (photo by Mark Koepke)

As we sat waiting for the ceremony to start, I started reading through the list of Ph.D. candidates and the titles of all the dissertations (see above photo). All of these titles had two things in common. First, most of them were completely incomprehensible to me. Second, each one represented the passion of the author. As I looked out on all those candidates, I saw passion - a passion for a subject that had inspired them to go through years of schooling in order to create something that wasn't there before: an original work of academic scholarship. It was inspiring sight to see.

Martha indicated above and below with Carolina blue arrows.

It was also a cool experience for me to be there with my daughter, Rachel. She will be beginning her journey of higher education this coming fall. It was thrilling for me that she was there to witness this - not only because of Martha's example, but also by the example of all the many, many other women who were being hooded that day and by the passion exemplified by all of the candidates. 

And Martha serves as a example - of perservence, of passion and of pursuing one's dreams - not only for Rachel, but also for my son, Adam, who is pursuing a degree at the University of Utah, my daughter Hannah, who has commenced taking on-line classes to complete her associate degree before moving on to finish her degree at a university in British Columbia (where I earned my law degree), and for my other children who are still at home.

My beautiful daughter Rachel and me before the ceremony.

Now some words about a hooding ceremony. I had never been to one before Saturday, and I didn't really know what it is about. So for my own benefit as well as that of others, I am shamelessly copying the follow from Duke University's website:

“The Hooding Ceremony is a special recognition ceremony for doctoral degree candidates during which a faculty advisor and the Dean of the Graduate School place the doctoral hood over the head of the graduate, signifying his or her success in completing the graduate program. The ceremony is similar to a graduation in that faculty and students are dressed in academic attire … 

“Today's academic dress has its origins in the clerical dress that medieval scholars used for warmth in unheated buildings. The tradition of special academic dress seems to have entered this country through King's College (now Columbia) in colonial New York. The custom grew so rapidly that in 1894, an American Intercollegiate Commission standardized the style and color of robes and hoods. The commission decided all robes would be black, which is not the standard for schools today. Bachelor's robes have open, pointed sleeves; master's gowns have sleeves that close at the wrist; and the doctoral gown has bell-shaped sleeves, velvet trim down the front, and three velvet strips across the sleeves. 

“The hood that forms part of today's academic dress was originally a head covering for bad weather. Later it was dropped to the shoulders in the form of a small cape. Eventually, the hood became a separate piece of apparel bearing even more symbolism than the gown. The hood's facing is colored velvet trimming denoting the wearer's discipline (e.g., Arts and Letters, white; Engineering, orange; Law, purple). The width of the velvet trimming designates the level of the degree. The lining of the hood identifies the institution that granted the degree, dark blue with a white chevron for Duke. 

“The cap or square has come to be symbolic of academia. It has evolved from a tufted, square cap called a pileus quadralus worn by medieval laity to a rigid, square academic cap, commonly called a "mortarboard." The velvet tam is commonly worn by doctorate-holders. A tassel is attached to the center of the cap. Tradition dictates that doctoral and master's graduates flick the tassel on the cap from left to right when the degree is conferred.”

Martha is at the top of the stairs. Her dissertation advisor is in the red gown, preparing to place Martha's hood over her shoulders. - Photo by Rachel Broom

The look on Martha's face says it all just after she had been hooded. - Photo by Rachel Broom

CONGRATULATIONS, MARTHA!