It’s Monday morning, as I write this.
I’m supposed to be working. I have calls scheduled. I have things to do, people to communicate with, and projects to move forward.
In this moment, however, I feel utterly sad, numb, grief, loneliness, anger and fear – all in a mixed, tumultuous soup.
I’m horrified at what happened on early Sunday morning in Orlando, Florida, USA. So much senseless violence and hate.
Being a part of the LGBTQI community myself – it hits especially close to home. I have personally suffered various forms of violence by the hand of others for being gay – as I know many others have. Nothing like what happened in Florida. And yet, it’s incredibly painful. Situations such as what happened at Pulse nightclub feel re-traumatizing to me, the LGBTQI community, and the whole world.
And I’m ragefully angry. I want this to stop. I’m decidedly over the debate and want to see change – not only in laws and legislation, but in the hearts and minds of a great number of people who operate from a state of fear, ignorance and hate towards people in the LGBTQI community in general, and especially those who are trans, and/or people of color. I’m so horrifically sickened and tired.
>sigh<
And, it’s Monday… and there’s work to do. So what now?
I’m not quite ready to re-focus on work just yet. I know my heart needs care first. Does your heart need care first? Will you please take a moment as you complete the reading of this note and give your heart some care?
For me, I’m doing what I can to help with the situation – any way I can find to lend support. I’m doing my best to take care of and nourish my own heart with as much love as possible through Remembrance. I know it’s so important to face and be with all that’s coming up for me, and to be so gentle, compassionate and merciful with my own heart amidst it all.
I’m also trying to remember that getting back to work isn’t about “putting this away,” and moving on to something else. I know my work here at Heart of Business, my work in my own business, and I imagine your work too, is focused on bringing love and healing into the world.
Our work is a part of the healing this world needs. It’s not separate. It’s part of Oneness. It’s holy. It’s healing. It’s helping.
So, along with my own activities and Remembrance, I’m remembering that the work, although not directly related to this incident, is indeed a force for healing in the world. That matters.
And so, I’m going to show up for my work – raw, human, real, tender, loving, strong. There’s room for all of me. And there’s room for you too.
As never before, may we all show up and do our work this week in a way that demonstrates that every act of business can be an act of love.
Are you with me?
And, in that effort, to help nourish and strengthen your heart, I want to share two Remembrances from our Remembrance Library, which is part of our Community offering:
1. When big disasters strike and people need help, and yet you can’t abandon your business
Thank you for sharing with me in this grief and in the healing.
May you be kept safe and your heart cared for.
May the will of Love be done, all-ways.
I’d love to hear how this has affected you in the comments below. Please share, if you feel willing. And, rest assured, I’m okay… I have lots of tools and resources to work with my own relationship and healing around this, so please… no advice or recommended practices. Let’s just share some compassion, empathy, and our hearts. <3 P.S.: Mark wrote a beautiful post about this on Facebook titled, "Silence = Death.” In it, he talks about how Love includes Justice and Strength. I think you’ll find it heart-strengthening too.
P.P.S.: I created this image today, as it’s very much on my mind and heart.
[private_Community membership]
Heart of Business Community Update
As a community member, here’s quick access to resources and conversation!
Don’t miss your opportunity for spiritual nourishment! Come and join us for the Virtual Retreat this Friday, June 17, 2016 – looking forward to ‘seeing’ you soon. Register here.
In our Facebook group yet?
In our Facebook group, here are some discussions happening right now:
- Have the Orlando shootings left you needing to grieve, to share and be witness? Join the conversation with your fellow Community members – support is readily available to you.
- What do you need right now – action steps or heart time? Join the conversation with other Community members and decide what is best for you.
These are just 2 of the many discussions happening every day in our active, compassionate group! Don’t yet have access? Click here.
[/private_Community membership]
36 Responses
“And so, I’m going to show up for my work – raw, human, real, tender, loving, strong. There’s room for all of me. And there’s room for you too.”
Beautiful, Steve. Thank you for showing up.
Thank you, Lure. Thank you for showing up too. <3
“Is love available even here?”… Yes, love will be re-built, even if it’s taken a battering. In this video a UK journalist talks about how love came through after the bombing of a gay pub in Soho. He recently walked off a UK Sky news programme because the (straight) journalists were trying to deny that the Orlando attack was an attack on the LGBT community specifically.
How can we find love even here? We need so much to care for our own hearts first before we can help others, especially those who are our enemies and want to hurt us…
Sending love and healing for us all and thank you Steve for sharing your vulnerability so beautifully. It was helpful.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/video/2016/jun/13/owen-jones-orlando-shooting-massacre-terrorist-will-fail-heres-why-video
Thank you, Hannah. I saw that video yesterday, and really loved it. Love will win. It must. It already has. I also saw the one where he walked off the set, and was cheering him on… some just can’t empathize. That’s okay. It’s all part of the work.
Caring for my heart, and sending care to yours.
Steve, I don´t have the right words for this. So I can only send good thoughts to you, your team, your country.
I can´t understand what sexual preferences mean to some people. I could not care less, please don´t get me wrong. I don´t go to someone introducing myself saying: Hi, I´m Andrea. I live with a men. That says nothing about me. What says something about me, is HOW I live with him. WHAT I do, when we face difficulties.
But I don´t think it´s about sexual preferences. Or colour. Or gender. It´s about not beeing happy in ones own life. Which can be hard to cope with. And one starts to put out, what really is on the inside.
Sending you lots of love. Andrea
Hi Andrea… really appreciating your good thoughts. Thank you.
You bring up a great point… it’s really not about sexual preference… it’s about community. A very specific community was targeted (regardless of what brings them into community – we are community) in this crime. Another word for community – on a smaller scale – is family. I didn’t know these people, but they feel like family to me – because we’ve all, together, in one way or another experienced a marginalization, hatred and violence towards us for precisely who we are as people. It’s something that LGBTQ folks all get at a really base level.
It’s one thing to encourage people to be happy with one’s own life, but when society – major parts of the political establishment – many religions – and others – teach, preach and promote hatred, violence, marginalization, and abomination from infancy – it makes self-love that much harder. This is very likely precisely why the shooter acted out.
That’s why many LGBTQ people find solace, safety and sanctuary in gay-focused spaces, including clubs like Pulse. It’s **usually** a safe place for us to be fully, authentically us – with no need to fear that we’ll be hated because of who we are.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left a club and as soon as I left the building, I stopped holding hands with the one I was with. It has nothing to do with sexuality or whether I like myself. It has everything to do with my own personal safety in a world that (often) doesn’t accept who I am. For people like me – and especially for trans women of color – it’s terrifying. These people are lovely, adoring, wonderful, kind people – that’s what they/we are on the inside – and we are happy to put that on the outside too – and we are historically beaten, compromised, hated, called names, fired from jobs and terrorized for it.
Trust me. If it was up to us, it wouldn’t be about sexual preference, or color or gender either. Society makes it about those things. And hopefully together, we can turn the tide of society and make it about humanity, about hearts, about love. That’s what it should be about. To your point… I wonder if the shooter had experienced some of that kind of love and acceptance from his family, society and religion, if maybe he would have found a way to love himself more. I think that’s where we need to focus too.
Thank you so much for the love, Andrea. Returning it to you with kindness.
Steve, that is horrible and I had no idea that this is the reality in your country. I´m really sorry to hear that.
I fear, I did not found the right words – I meant the people who attack others for their sexual preferences with “some people” – of course not your community. And that people who feel such hate, do have other problems inside themself than the sexuality of others.
Wishing you strength and endless space to be yourself.
Yes… thank you, Andrea! I totally got what you said… you said it well. It prompted me to elaborate a bit on the topic because it’s often not fully understood by many. But, I knew you did. I hear you.
I received your comments with nothing but kindness and love. Thank you for your wishes and love and kindness.
Steve this is a beautiful breath of a post. Thank you for demonstrating how to bring “all of it” forward and into my work today. The work of building a more caring world. Feels like the need is everywhere! Everywhere!!!
Thank you, Chris. So glad it was helpful. Thanks for witnessing me in it, and for your support. You’re so right… we need more caring everywhere.
Thank you, Steve. I haven’t been able to slow down and feel it until this morning. Your post, a potent song and solitude really helped.
Amen, Richard. My heart is with yours in support.
Thank you for sharing, as I feel connection with you. Connection with another who cares. A connection with our humanness.
Thank you, Caron. So appreciating the connection and care and humanness. So healing. May you experience this too today and all-ways.
Thank you for this, Steve.
For showing up so fully…for offering space for sadness, grief, anger and fear. For the reminder that our work is part of the healing–both in our own hearts and the world.
Mmmmm… thank you, Dana. With so much heart…. thank you.
Thank you Steve, for being such a beauty. I so appreciate your sharing around this terrible trauma, and the work you are doing supporting yourself and finding your way (and that is a big piece of work!), staying open and heartful to the experience. It is a great teaching for me that you are sharing, and the piece about this sad and angry and fearful (and everything else) heart experience not being separate from the loving work I do or the loving person I am, is with me. I wanted to keep this short. But. I have an image of gathering love and support sent from all over the world, so much love from so many! gathered and gently woven around those who are so hurt and afraid, a spacious, loving, safe nest, with room for whatever needs to be moved through. More than enough love for all of us, and to support whatever action is needed. Love to you.
Ahhhhh…. thank you Maev. So appreciating that image of a loving, safe nest with room to move things through. Really nourishing. It’s an honor to be “nesting” with you in this space, and in community with your dear heart. Thank you so much for your love. I’m sending mine across the miles to you too.
Thanks for your words of support, Steve. It’s important that we continue to share our experience as LGBTQ+ people to help others understand why this impacts us so deeply, at the core of our inner sense of safety.
I’ve chastised myself for being dramatic, trying to lean into the safety of my safe harbor here in Portland, where it’s one of the safer cities to be out. But the truth is, it only takes one. One deeply ill, hate-filled person, to shatter that safety.
I’m lucky to have a loving, supportive family and community of friends. And I’m seeing stories all over the internet about supposed Christian leaders spewing more hate, Republican leaders advocating separatism and bigotry, and lobbyists digging in their heels.
I keep thinking, “Okay, yeah, love will win. Love will prevail.” I just wish it would hurry up and prevail already. Out there, in the world. Sometimes I’m just not able to feel peaceful while I wait.
My love goes out to you and all my brothers and sisters.
Thank you so much Jan. Thank you for showing up, sharing and being here. I’ve had a similar thought about being dramatic or making it about me. Truth is, we’re community, we’re family, and we understand each other. An attack of hate towards one of us is an attack on all of us.
My love and support goes out to you, too, sister. Together, we’ll ensure that love prevails.
Steve, Thank you so much for sharing your heart with all of its richness. The love the grief… My heart is touched by you today. I send you and all LGBTQI peoples showers of blessings of protection, stability, alignment in truth, grace of being. I send blessings of every kind to those conflicted and deeply wounded human beings that have lost connection to their hearts.
With warmth,
Clare
It’s so nourishing to receive this, Clare. Thank you so much. I’ve noticed what a big deal it is (at least for me) to hear this – especially from straight friends. It’s powerful to speak these words. Thank you for extending yourself and your heart – to me, the this community and also to those who need it most – those whose hearts are disconnected. May we all be a force for unification and reconnection.
Thank you!
This is such an honest post, and so appreciated. What happened in Orlando was a horrible wound to the LGBT community and to all of us – because what happened there is, unfortunately, something that can happen to any group that someone chooses to label “other”. There is this terrible underlying belief in the world that if we can just get rid of the “other” things will be OK. And it’s true, only love can heal that.
Thank you, Sunday. So appreciate that empathy. It totally will happen again if many things stay the same. May the will of love conquer.
Dearest Steve. I just read your post. We live in terrible times. And I’m so saddened for your poor heart and your outpouring of hurt and grief. To all my LGBTQI friends I’m devastated by this demonstration of evil intent and I’m sharing your disbelief that this could happen to innocent people. I hold out my arms to you Steve, feel them around you giving you a big hug.My heart is with you today and I feel your pain. With all my love and care for your well being.
Oh wow, Susan…. this really nourished my heart tonight. Thank you. Feeling the hug – it’s much needed. I so appreciate you being so clear in solidarity with the LGBTQI community and all of us who are affected by this violence.
Thank you for your care and compassion. It’s such good medicine.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Steve. I did my dissertation on AIDS prevention in psychotherapeutic practice at a time when the vast majority of People With AIDS were gay men, and was up to my eyeballs in AIDS-related work for years. Watching the photos of the victims in Orlando go by has been a heartbreaking deja vu-type thing, and knowing that this time the losses are entirely the result of ill will toward the gay community, coupled with the ease of getting hold of semi-automatic weapons, is beyond infuriating.
I’m bisexual and have lived for the last few years in Florida, several hours from Orlando. As a bisexual who can easily “pass” (I’m feminine), whether or not I’m the target of homophobia depends on the gender of the person with whom I’m involved, which kind of shows just how altogether stupid the whole thing is, and keeps me on my toes, as it would be very risky to be as relaxed in public with a woman as I would be with a man. Waking up to this on Sunday morning was like one of my worst nightmares come true. Your reaching out with this post helps heal my aching heart, and I want you to know how much it’s appreciated.
Thank you so much for sharing all of that, Michelle! So powerful. Surprising what things like this can bring back to the surface. And I’m especially empathizing with the need to “keep on our toes” in the world. It’s part of how we live which most can’t comprehend… just like I can’t comprehend what it’s like to live a live as a person of color, or trans. All we can do is hold out our hands in solidarity.
Thank you for doing that with me today. It matters. A ton.
I send my heart to yours with appreciation.
Dear Steve,
As I read many posts on FB and hear from friends I keep thinking to myself that we have to remember this action was not about a community being attacked because that would make that community a victim. To me, it is about a crazy, sick person who for whatever reason choose a specific group of people to unleash his pain on. It could have just as easily been Jewish people, Black folks, women in general or any other group this sick mind could find. It isn’t about your community, even though I realize it feels that way. It is more about one sick individual not being well enough to just live his life encompassing all of mankind. Having been victimized myself for several reason I choose to NOT be that victim and instead to know that it is not about me or my community. WE are the community. That is the way it it is. There is no division in that labor. WE are the community, all of us, regardless. One twisted person could not see that. Sending love to all souls who take the pain of a culture showing that culture who and what they are. NEVER be or see yourself as different or a victim. It just isn’t so.
Much love to your heart and that place where we all connect.
WE ARE and that is the truth.
It is our perception that says we are different or separate. THAT is never the truth. EVER! WE ARE LOVE. That is our truth.
Ria, I hear your point. I hear you wanting to stand in a place of love and strength and empowerment, and to supportively share that with all of us.
And, while I honor your experience and perspective, I do not wish to have it laid over the top of my own experience and perspective. I ask that you please do not speak for the rest of us, just share how it is for you. I think that was your intention, but toward the end of your post the tone changed and felt more absolutist to me.
Thanks, and love, and respect. Your support is of great value. Blessings.
Thank you for speaking this so eloquently and from the heart, Jan.
Ria – I totally agree with Jan’s comments. I think I understand your intention, and I appreciate you showing up to share. I’d like to draw your attention to the close of the article where I wrote, “Please share, if you feel willing. And, rest assured, I’m okay… I have lots of tools and resources to work with my own relationship and healing around this, so *****please… no advice or recommended practices. Let’s just share some compassion, empathy, and our hearts.******
That’s what’s needed right now – emapthy. And so, from what you wrote, what I’m taking away is this beautiful comment, “Much love to your heart and that place where we all connect.” Thank you for that.
Thank you Steve. I hear you. I’m with you on every bit of it. The feelings and the vision, and the belief that our soul-led work matters and it’s OK to just go be in it with the messiness of it all. As you said: “Our work is a part of the healing this world needs. It’s not separate. It’s part of Oneness. It’s holy. It’s healing. It’s helping.”
Thank you.
Thank you, Val. SO appreciate your solidarity with all of this.
Steve, I was very moved by your post when I read it earlier in the week, when I was still feeling so raw. Thanks for your tender heart and for sharing it with me.
Blessed be.
Sue
I’m touched Sue. Thanks for sharing too. 🙂
Gracias, Steve. I’m with you — working amidst alternating waves of grief and functionality, myself.
El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido, and our community’s varied or culture-specific togetherness-es have given me comfort, hope and — yes — Pride.
Much love