"What would your sign say?"

January 21 will long be remembered as the day of the women’s marches. It is so inspiring that women from each continent participated, even Antarctica. We just watched a women’s march that took place in Israel in which Jewish and Arab women marched together. We could not read their signs but I could only imagine that they all wanted peace. There seems to have been such a feeling of joy within these marches.

Barry and I had scheduled our second mentorship four day session during this time, not knowing that these marches would take place. I woke up that morning feeling that something special must be done to honor all of the women and men marching all around the world, and in some way join in their energy. And so Barry and I and the nine women in our group sat at our dining room table and made our own signs using large pieces of paper, crayons, markers and colored pencils. We asked each woman to express the deepest feeling they would like to put on their sign, just as if they would be on full display in Washington DC.

When the signs were finished, we went into the living room and each person stood up with their sign and spoke why the words were so meaningful to them. In this way each person gave a little talk which was inspiring and also insightful into who they are and their deepest values.

My sign was quite simple and said, “Love one another as I have loved you --Jesus.” I have always loved this quote, and my mother repeated it to me often when I was growing up. Jesus loved all people. They did not have to be his own Jewish religion for him to love them and reach out to help. He gave water to a non-Jewish woman at a well, which was forbidden to do. He helped a prostitute and saw goodness in her so that she wanted to change her life and follow him. He had dinner at a tax collector’s house, a man that everyone despised. He even invited another tax collector to be one of his followers. Even his own disciples criticized him for opening his heart and love to so many different types of people that others were shunning. And his response was that he came to help all, a true sense of equality. Equality and love for all beings is what I want to march for.

Barry went last to hold up his sign and we all loved it. “I am a man dedicated to making it safe for all women.” Truly this is who Barry is. Can you only imagine a world in which more men could hold up a sign like that and truly mean it? I posted Barry holding this sign on my very small Facebook page and am pleased with how far this photo went. It is a message needed at this time.

After each person spoke about their sign we then marched around our living room holding our signs and singing a powerful song. We felt connected to each person who was out marching the streets in towns and cities around the world.

Did the marches all over the world do any good?

Forty-eight years ago, Barry and I were in one of the first civil rights marches in the south. We lived in Nashville, Tennessee at the time and we heard about a civil rights march several hours away in the deeper rural south. We, along with our friend Jim, were excited to go and participate. We reached this small southern town and a man named Dick Gregory was there as the organizer and speaker. There were many blacks, but we were the only whites. We were welcomed, but told it was more dangerous for us as whites. We marched with these poor blacks down the streets of the town. The whites looking on yelled and cursed at us and some threw things. It was loud and noisy and scary, but we continued down the street. Then it became violent. The police came and started using clubs and arresting people. One of the organizers told us to leave quickly as they would be hardest on us. Like Harry Potter and the invisible cloak, we left undetected and drove home realizing that we had placed ourselves in a very dangerous situation. There must have been TV coverage of the march, for the next day I was called into my place of work as a public health nurse and told I could never march again or I would lose my job and never be able to get another one in the city.

One march. Did it do any good? Was our effort and putting ourselves in danger worth it? I like to feel that yes it was. True it was only a drop in the bucket of what had to happen, and yet it was a drop and we participated in that drop. Forty years later, our country proudly elected our first black president. All those marches, all those signs, all of that effort in the end truly paid off.

What would your sign say? As a really good practice, sit at your dining room table with crayons or markers and paper and make a sign that holds your deepest feeling about what is going on right now in our world. Make it positive, inspiring and loving, something you could show your children and explain why you wrote what you did. Or you could sit with a group of friends and create your signs together, or sit with your children and talk about it. Your sign, and especially how you live the truth of what it says, will place another drop into the bucket of what is needed right now.  

Here are a few opportunities to bring more love and growth into your life, at the following longer events led by Barry and Joyce Vissell:

Oct 11-17 — Assisi Retreat, Italy

Joyce & Barry Vissell, a nurse/therapist and psychiatrist couple since 1964, are counselors near Santa Cruz, CA, who are widely regarded as among the world's top experts on conscious relationship and personal growth. They are the authors of The Shared Heart, Models of Love, Risk to Be Healed, The Heart’s Wisdom, Meant to Be, and A Mother’s Final Gift.

Call Toll-Free 1-800-766-0629 (locally 831-684-2299) or write to the Shared Heart Foundation, P.O. Box 2140, Aptos, CA 95001, for further information on counseling sessions by phone or in person, their books, recordings or their schedule of talks and workshops. Visit their web site at SharedHeart.org for their free monthly e-heartletter, their updated schedule, and inspiring past articles on many topics about relationship and living from the heart.

"Feeling ALL Our Feelings"

There are popular feelings: joy, happiness, love and affection, to name a few. And then there are unpopular feelings: anger, sadness, grief, hurt, and fear, among others. Most of us tend to hide the unpopular feelings and, instead, only feel and show the popular ones.

If we want integrity and wholeness in our lives, we must embrace all our feelings. Picking and choosing simply won’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried it plenty, and in a bit I’ll tell you what happened to me.

Remember, there are no good or bad feelings. There are just feelings. They make us divinely human and humanly divine. It may not be necessary to express them all with others, but we need to be aware of them within ourselves. Feelings are part of our experience here on Earth. Our feelings don’t define us. As souls in these bodies, we are always more than our feelings. Still, they are vital.

Joyce and I recently remembered a powerful experience I had starting out as a resident in psychiatry. I was especially fixated on only feeling … and showing … the above-mentioned popular feelings. I was able to fool a lot of people by my appearance of unswerving peace and happiness. I was not able to fool two persons in particular. One was Joyce. She always saw what I really felt. She saw right through my false pretense, even when I didn’t. She knew when I was angry, even though I was smiling. She knew when I was sad, even when I had no clue.

The other person I could never fool was Leo Buscaglia, the author of many books on love, and our friend while we lived in Los Angeles during my final two years of medical school. He was not polite with me. If I wasn’t being genuine, he’d get right in my face and say, “Barry, you’re being phony right now!” I actually appreciated his candor, and felt the “tough love” in his honesty. Unfortunately, when we moved up to Portland for my residency training, I hadn’t yet learned how to be genuine with my feelings.

That was about to change. Early on in my psychiatry training, the first-year residents, eleven of us and our spouses, were required to attend a five-day intensive led by Lee Fine, a master-teacher of psychodrama. I should add that the year was 1973, and a significant part of the five days would be better termed “Encounter Group.”

All of the participants became vulnerable, showed their fears, their sadness, their grief over losses in their lives. One resident went over the top in the expression of his vulnerability, and described, through his tears, coming home from school as a child and discovering his father hanging in the garage.

I showed no vulnerability, no fear, no pain. Instead, I presented myself with a smile on my face and peace in my life. Some of the residents were gentle and compassionate in their probing for my depth. Yet my smiling mask never faltered. Looking back at my level of emotional immaturity, it’s embarrassing to me now.

One by one, all the residents came around me and began confronting me. Each, in their own way, asked me to be more genuine and honest with all my feelings.

One resident asked, “How can I feel close to you if you’re pretending to be happy all the time?”

Another said, “It looks like you’re hiding behind a mask.”

And yet another blurted out angrily, “It’s pissing me off how phony you’re being right now!”

Still, I remained frozen in my phony happiness. I just was not able to access my “unpopular” feelings.

So the confrontation escalated. Some of the residents were angry at my apparent resistance. Forget psychodrama. This was pure 1970’s encounter group. I was sitting on the floor while all ten residents stood above me. I felt real compassion coming from some of them.

Finally, something broke inside me. I just wasn’t strong enough to withstand the mixed barrage of love and anger. I started crying … then sobbing. I had flashes of being a little boy and not wanting my tormentors in the tough neighborhood in Brooklyn to know that I was scared and hurt. I learned to show the world how strong I was. I learned that my vulnerability couldn’t be trusted with anyone else. It was me against the world.

In that moment of the workshop, I felt completely vulnerable with ten psychiatry residents. Now they could pounce on me and finish me off. I was defenseless.

But that didn’t happen. When I opened my eyes, I saw the gentlest, most caring faces looking down at me. I saw loving fathers, mothers, siblings and friends. I heard gentle compassion in their words. I felt accepted … and acceptable. It was a moment of coming-out as a sensitive, vulnerable human being.

It was also a turning point in my life. From that moment on, I knew my spiritual and human growth depended on my opening to all my feelings. I have accepted this work as essential. I’m far from perfect at identifying my feelings. It’s hard work. Sometimes, when I need Joyce’s love, I push her away instead. Sometimes, when I feel hurt, I still rationalize and talk myself out of the feeling. But I do recognize that, because I am committed to feeling all my feelings, I am becoming a better counselor, teacher, husband, father … and person.

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"Unsuspected Heroes among Us"

In 1960, I was fourteen years old and my mother was the first civil rights activist that I knew. She did not march the streets. She lived her beliefs. She had Blacks, Muslims, Gays and other minorities over to our house for dinner almost every Sunday. She treated them all with the greatest respect and honor like they were part of her family. She also spoke up loudly if anyone said anything against one of these minorities. She often coached me, “Joyce, remember every person is a child of God. It does not matter what color their skin or their religion. Our God loves them all the same.” This love of humanity and human rights is something that my mother has passed on to me, one of the many gifts I have received being her daughter. In this way, she was one of my heroes.

During this same year, there was a crisis for one of my uncles. He and his family lived close to us in Buffalo, New York, in a quiet simple middle class neighborhood. He learned that a black family was going to move into the neighborhood, about ten houses down from his house. My uncle was livid, and complained bitterly to anyone who would listen. He felt it would ruin his neighborhood and make it unsafe for his children, as well as bring down the value of his home. He spent great time and effort visiting every single neighbor and explaining the terrible result that would happen if this family moved in. He gathered signatures, and if a neighbor did not want to sign his petition he repeatedly went back to that house until they did sign.

After much time and effort, he was ready to go the house of this black family and give them the petition. He got dressed in a suit and tie and, armed with pages of signatures, went to the house and rang the bell. A very large, powerfully-built black man answered the door. My uncle quickly hid the petition behind his back and held out his hand to welcome the man. You see, this man was my uncle’s hero on the Buffalo Bills’ Football team.

Several years ago at our Hawaii couple’s retreat, there was a man, who I will call Joe, who looked with distain at the local people who lived in the area. Joe was a CEO of a large company on the mainland, described himself often as “a very important man,” and felt that these “hippies” were lazy and worthless. Many of these locals had long unruly hair, colorful clothing, and were typically gathered at the beach drumming, dancing juggling, or fire spinning. Joe spoke often about how much he disliked them, even though he hardly ever saw them and had no idea what they did when they were not at the beach.

One day Joe went to the beach alone without any of our group with him. There is a steep trail that must be climbed down to get to the beach. It is not necessarily dangerous, but one must be careful. When it was time for Joe to leave the beach, he started climbing the trail but slipped and fell, dislocating his knee. Joe lay there helpless and in enormous pain. Very soon, one of these “good-for-nothing locals” spotted him lying there in pain and ran to help. When this long-haired young man discovered the extent of Joe’s injury, he ran to get his friends and together the men carried him all the way to the top of the cliff, which is quite a journey especially carrying someone in pain. They put Joe in a car and drove him all the way back to the retreat center, helped him into his bed and then notified the retreat center that he was hurt. Fortunately one of our group members was an emergency room physician and he pulled Joe’s knee back into position again. Joe was deeply humbled and to our whole group he stated, “I have been so wrong in judging these locals just because of their hair and lifestyle choices. When I really needed heroes, they stepped in and helped me.”

When my mother was eighty-seven, three years before she died, she lived in a little apartment above our garage. She believed in exercise, and each day when it was not raining, she drove her little car to the beach and walked along the sidewalk. At that time at Rio del Mar beach, there were a group of homeless men who would sit on the wall at the entrance to the beach. These men sat there all day and talked together. My mother learned their names and each day would stop and talk with them. Soon they asked her if she would like to sit on the wall with them and she gladly accepted, sitting with them for maybe a half hour each day. She liked them very much and truly enjoyed their company. After a few months, they asked her if she would like to be an official member of the “Wall Sitters’ Club.” My mother accepted and felt it was an honor to be included in their conversations.

One day some ladies from her church walked by as my mother was laughing with the men. The ladies were shocked to see my mother there, and even though she wanted to introduce them, the ladies rushed on by. Later that day my mother received a call from one of these ladies who said, “Louise, you must be careful and you should not sit on the wall with those men. They are homeless and could cause danger to you.” My mother replied, “I trust that God loves them just as much as He loves you and me. Those men have given me the gift of their friendship and I am giving it back.”

There is the potential for a hero and a friend within each person we meet, regardless of the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation or the fact that they are a minority. We are all God’s precious children.

Joyce & Barry Vissell, a nurse/therapist and psychiatrist couple since 1964, are counselors near Santa Cruz, CA, who are widely regarded as among the world's top experts on conscious relationship and personal growth. They are the authors of The Shared Heart, Models of Love, Risk to Be Healed, The Heart’s Wisdom, Meant to Be, and A Mother’s Final Gift.

Call Toll-Free 831-684-2299 or write to the Shared Heart Foundation, P.O. Box 2140, Aptos, CA 95001, for further information on counseling sessions by phone or in person, their books, recordings or their schedule of talks and workshops. Visit their web site at SharedHeart.org for their free monthly e-heartletter, their updated schedule, and inspiring past articles on many topics about relationship and living from the heart.