’tears to triumph’: transcending emotional pain brings ... · featuring marianne williamson...

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’Tears to Triumph’: Transcending Emotional Pain

Brings Spiritual Growth Featuring Marianne Williamson

Spiritual Teacher, Best-Selling Author, Lecturer, Mom

Hello, Woman on Fire! It’s Debbie Phillips. I am so honored and excited to bring you this interview with best-selling author and lecturer Marianne Williamson, a woman who changed my life.

Many years ago I was in the midst my own personal “dark night of the soul,” when Kelly Boggs, a wonderfully supportive dear friend and colleague — who is today a Women on Fire member — handed me a beautifully wrapped package with a cassette tape inside. It lived in my car for a while until one day I played it, and I was so intrigued, so inspired that I listened to it over and over. I applied the wisdom, and my life began to change.

The tape was called “Emotional Healing,” and it was a live recording of Marianne Williamson during one of her lectures. I’d never heard anyone like her before.

Her ability to describe what it felt like to be depressed and how to work yourself out of that hole spoke to me like no other. I can still hear her words: “Sometimes there aren’t just cracks in your foundation; sometimes your whole foundation needs to be replaced.” And it was from Marianne that I first learned to not give up before the miracle.

In the years since I first listened to that tape, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and spend time with Marianne.

In this interview, I talked to her about her newest book, Tears to Triumph, in which she assures us that our deepest suffering can lead to our greatest personal transformations.

I know that has been true in my own life.

If you think about your life, what are ways your greatest pain has helped you to become the amazing woman you are today?

Marianne also raises in her book and in this interview some very powerful notions that I hope you’ll listen very carefully to, including on how our suffering has become a nearly trillion dollar bonanza to the pharmaceutical industry.

This interview is so rich in the wisdom of this powerfully direct and brilliant woman. You’ll hear her talk about everything from her own “dark night of the soul” to her personal daily practices.

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Before we listen in, I want to repeat a disclaimer that Marianne makes in the interview: If you are taking an antidepressant, absolutely, positively do not go off of it without your doctor’s supervision. If you are taking drugs to regulate a condition known to be greatly helped by medication, please do not stop taking it.

Marianne is merely making the point that many doctors are quick to offer medication to numb normal emotions from living life, such as grief, sadness and uncertainty. Her advice is spiritual not medical.

And if you live in New York City or are visiting any time soon, I highly recommend that you experience Marianne in person at one of her weekly lectures at Middle Collegiate Church, whose senior minister is another Women on Fire guest expert, the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis. I know many of you really enjoyed her.

Marianne’s lectures at Middle Collegiate are available on livestream each week as well, and I encourage you to spend time on her website, which is simply www.marianne.com.

I hope you enjoy this interview, and I’ll be so eager to hear how you are affected by what Marianne has to say.

Let’s listen in now …

Debbie: Welcome to Women on Fire, Marianne.

Marianne: Hi! How are you?

Debbie: I’m so good. First, I want to say thank you for all the love and wisdom you have given to the world all these years.

Marianne: Well, Debbie, thank you for all the love and the generosity that you’ve shown to me ever since we met. Thank you.

Debbie: I listened to your cassette tape — and it was a cassette — “Emotional Healing” at least a thousand times before I got to meet you in person in 1999. We went to Bali together. Do you remember?

Marianne: I do remember. That was a great trip.

Debbie: It was wonderful. Your little girl was nine years old and such a doll.

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Marianne: She’s 26 years old now, a grown woman with a lot going on in her life.

Debbie: Congratulations for your newest book, Tears to Triumph.

Marianne: Thank you.

Debbie: You’re welcome. I’m so happy that I get to add another Marianne book to my shelf. At my house, you are the only person who has an entire shelf devoted only to one person. It’s labeled “Marianne.”

Marianne: Thank you, Debbie. I’m so honored to hear you say that.

Debbie: We’re going to talk about your latest book, which has amazing strategies to go from tears to triumph. Before we begin, please catch us up a little on you, Marianne. I know you recently moved from Los Angeles to New York. Tell us what you’re up to these days.

Marianne: I lived in New York for about four or five years during my 20s, and off and on during my 30s and 40s, but I hadn’t lived there in quite a while. One morning a few months ago, I woke up and thought, “I’m going to move to New York.” I felt like a new chapter was in order. I love Los Angeles; I feel like it’s my soul’s home in a way. I just needed a new chapter. As I’m talking to you, I’m looking out over the most amazing view. I have an apartment that’s on the grounds of a theological seminary. It looks like I’m in an old college town near a church in England somewhere. There’s an amazing chapel outside.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m in New York, and I’m giving my weekly lectures here at the Middle Collegiate Church. They are livestreamed for free, and people can find out all about that at Marianne.com. The gist of what I’m doing is the same. I’m just doing what everybody else is doing: seeking to live life as best I can.

Debbie: Do you have any practices that you do every day? I know you meditate and pray.

Marianne: Absolutely. I am a student of A Course in Miracles, so doing the workbook on a daily basis is a must. I also do Transcendental Meditation, but I don’t do that religiously like I do the workbook of the Course. Most of the time I do it, but not all of the time.

I think the most important practice is to practice what I preach. The most important practice, for all of us, is to seek to embody the things that we already know. That is why you meditate — so you can forgive more easily during the day; so you can handle your stress more

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easily during the day; so you can stay present and rise to the occasion, practice generosity and mercy, and be available to people and to your own life during the day.

Spiritual exercise is like physical exercise: if you do it, it works. You do physical exercise to hone your physical muscles. You do spiritual exercise to hone your attitudinal muscles. You do physical exercise so you can move more effectively through the world, and you do spiritual exercise so you can remain still and nonreactive and thus be more effective in the world.

I think that’s the most important practice. I seek to monitor how I’m doing and try to be better where I know I’m not being fully available to love. I try to atone for my mistakes when I make them, and to seek to make amends and to improve. I think that’s the most important practice any of us can participate in.

Debbie: Lovely.

I read your book, and as usual, it’s excellent.

Marianne: Thank you.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Debbie: I’ve really come to rely on having your eye on the horizon in my life.

Marianne: Thank you. That’s a lovely thing to say.

Debbie: You know I mean that from my heart. It is why I was very eager to read this book. What are you seeing on the horizon, in this world, that led you to write it?

Marianne: The problem for me was not what I see on the horizon, but rather what I see right in front of me. We have a crisis, an epidemic of over-medication in our country. Most specifically, the one that I feel I have something to speak out about, is the over-prescription of antidepressants. Mental illness is obviously a real problem. When you have diseases — mental diseases such as bipolar or schizophrenia — then psychotherapeutic drugs are known to be beneficial and, perhaps in some cases, life-saving.

But there is a spectrum of normal human suffering. Let’s say you went through a breakup, such as the heartbreak of a painful divorce. Let’s say someone that you love died, or

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you had a professional failure, or you lost a lot of money. These things are difficult, but they’re not mental illnesses. To treat them like mental illnesses is very, very dysfunctional. As a society, we have medicalized human despair. “Situational depression” is actually an official psychiatric category now. That robs us of the deeper transcendent meaning and the real spiritual potential that lies within everyone. It is what Saint John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.”

I have seen this in my own life, and so many people have told me these stories. There were two categories of experience I started with, and now there are three. The first category was my own experience of deeply depressing times and how and why I’ve grown through them.

Second, I’ve had a 33-year career working with people in catastrophic situations. I often say people don’t come to me because things are going well. I’ve worked up close and personal with a lot of people in very desperate, very painful times in their lives.

The third category now is the many people who have said to me since reading the book, “That was my experience, too. The year after my divorce turned out to be an experience that I learned so much from.”

If we just numb the pain or seek to distract ourselves from our heartbreak, whether it is done pharmaceutically or in any other way, we are stunting our emotional growth. Sometimes, it is what we learn in those dark nights. The stars are in the sky all the time, but you see them when the sky is dark. Why, sometimes, is it painful? Well, it’s painful sometimes because you have to face the part you played. If you have a divorce or a professional failure, at first you’re in pain because it’s not what you’d hoped would happen. Second, you’re in pain because you might feel someone did you wrong. Third, you might be in pain because you think things about your own behavior contributed to the problem.

These things are difficult to go through, but, as I said, they’re not a mental illness. In going through those things, we come to the point of understanding what we have to understand. My daughter has been going through something, and this morning she’s telling me, “I’ve got it, Mommy. I really felt like I see what I did wrong. I’ve atoned for my error.” This is how we grow in life. The main growth is inside our own heads. That’s where spiritual

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growth lies. Unless you go through those growth experiences, you are doomed. You will inevitably re-enact the same dramas because you have not learned the lesson yet.

This idea of emotionally flatlining ourselves, rather than experiencing the dark night of the soul, keeps us spiritually stunted. When we’re spiritually stunted, we’re psychologically and emotionally stunted. Thus, the dramas of our lives never quite seem to break through to something more wonderful.

Debbie: Right. In the book, you said psychic pain brings a message, just like physical pain does. I know there are many women listening to us right now who are in psychic pain. They’re wishing for a better life, wishing for a better job — or even to have a job at all — better health, better relationships. What do you say to them?

Marianne: A Course in Miracles tells us that we’re 100 percent responsible for our own experience. There are victims in the world; they’re called children. I think my political activism makes it clear that I understand there is economic injustice in the United States. I understand that the system has become rather horribly rigged in favor of the very richest amongst us in America.

Having said that, most of us, if we are really honest with ourselves, would have to attribute the vast majority of our problems, not to situations in which we have no control, but to situations over which we have a lot of control. As women, sometimes we need to really join in not only not coddling our own sense of victimization, but also in supporting each other and doing what needs to be done to move out of that sense.

Psychic pain is like physical pain. First of all, you don’t just numb it. If you have a broken leg, you don’t just take morphine. You have to reset the leg. If you have psychic pain, you have to reset the thinking that lies behind it. The problem in America today is not that so many of us are depressed, so much as it is that we do not, on the whole, proactively cultivate happy thinking. You cannot see yourself as a victim and be happy. You cannot grasp at the past or at the future and be happy. You cannot withhold forgiveness and be happy.

Also, one of the reasons I talk about Buddha and Moses and Jesus is because the great spiritual traditions have so much to say about this. They all address human suffering. They address the journey that we take out of human suffering to happiness, whether you call it the

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Promised Land, or Nirvana, or resurrection, or inner peace.

Buddha said this in one of his great revelations. One of his great Four Noble Truths is that things of this world can only bring us temporary happiness. Our society is predicated on ideas that repudiate our capacity for happiness and actually set us up for despair. Our society says, “Figure out what would make you happy and then go for it! Get the education and make your dreams come true.” We all go to seminars and blah blah. “If I do this, I can make that happen, and I will be happy.” Here’s Buddha saying that nothing of this world can provide anything but temporary happiness. Our entire construct is that we spend half our time struggling and grasping for that thing that might happen later, out in the future, then we will be happy. Then we get that thing, and as Buddha said, it will bring only temporary happiness, which means the fairy dust will rub off, or the “idol” will fall. Then the next half of the time, we’re in despair, because that which we thought would make us happy did not.

We need to rethink all of this in order to be happy. Once again, just numbing your pain is not the way that is going to happen.

Debbie: Talk a little bit about the hidden costs when we skirt around our pain.

Marianne: The hidden cost, first of all, is that you don’t learn the lesson. You don’t make the changes.

Let’s talk about relationships. I love that Jimmy Buffet song “Margaritaville” and how in the last verse he says, “It was my own damn fault.” Right? I’ve had relationships where, for months at the end of the relationship, it was all about how he did this or he didn’t do that. He was this, and he wasn’t that. Then I notice, around the third or fourth or fifth month, the clouds begin to break, and I allow myself to see, “Excuse me, Marianne, this was your part.” If I don’t ever get to that, then all I will do is go out and manifest the same issue with the next man. How do you ever grow?

Learning Compassion for Others’ Suffering

Marianne: I tell this story. It’s the very deep, dark night of my own soul. It is about when I was in my late 20s. I had what would today be called “clinical depression,” and what I learned

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from that, including the fact that I came out of that experience and went almost immediately into my career.

Something happened during that time. I have read about people who went through trauma, even through comas, and woke up and had talents that they hadn’t had before. I wasn’t a speaker before then. Not only that, but not too long afterward, the AIDS crisis burst on to the scene, and I became extremely involved in Los Angeles. You know what, Debbie, because of what I had been through, I had a capacity to stand in the presence of something that horrific, to stand with people in that much pain, going through that much of a catastrophe. Suffering gives you X-ray vision into the suffering of others. Somebody said to me during that time, “You will one day look back at this as having been a good year.” I couldn’t imagine it at the time, but I lived to understand those words.

Debbie: Marianne, in my own life, I had a five-year period of psychic trauma. During that time, I discovered your work, and it actually gave me so much purpose to learn that I was developing compassion from all my suffering. It gave me the first moment of breath where I thought, “OK, there is some reason to have to go through all of this.”

Marianne: Exactly. When I was going through that period I just mentioned, I remember thinking, “Have other people suffered this much?” I thought very clearly, “Actually they have, and they do. You haven’t noticed. You haven’t had compassion for people because you didn’t know what this kind of pain felt like.” I say in my lectures all the time that it is reasonable to assume that the person to your left and the person to your right have suffered as much as you have. It changes you.

If we desensitize ourselves to our own pain, we are more likely to be able to desensitize ourselves to the pain of others, such as the ease with which we allowed our country to invade Iraq. What were people thinking? They didn’t get what “shock and awe” meant. Where were we in our minds and hearts that we didn’t extend our perception to understand what that really means? It meant that all those millions of people in Baghdad one night — of course it lasted for days — had fire raining down from the sky on men, women and children.

We’re women, so how would you be protecting your children? How would you be protecting your family? How would you be dealing with your own terror when, by the way,

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you didn’t do anything to anybody. You didn’t hurt the United States. All of that.

We have so easily acquiesced to situations that perhaps we would not have so easily acquiesced to. Where is the real problem? If you have 12,000 children starving to death every day on the planet, which we do today, where is the real problem? The real problem is a moral problem. It is in ourselves. Children aren’t starving because of an act of God. God is not allowing children to starve. Humanity, namely the more advanced nations of the world, is allowing children to starve.

I think that there are so many ways in which our experience and our own pain opens our eyes and our hearts. It makes us deeply committed to wanting to ameliorate in whatever ways we can the suffering of other sentient beings, because we know what suffering feels like.

Debbie: I want to be specific about grief. I think it’s such a problem in this country and in our culture that we don’t allow ourselves and others to grieve. I know you have been through so much. You’ve lost both of your parents, you’ve lost your sister, and you’ve lost a best friend. I love in the book where you say, “Being human is not a disease. Grief and sadness can be part of the transformational process, one that should not be automatically labeled.” What do we need to change in our culture about grief? And even worse, talk about the imaginary timetable we have that people going through grief should be over it at a certain point.

Marianne: That imaginary timetable of grief and depression is very much part of our pharmaceutical problem. Many people who are working in institutions are given guidelines that if a person grieves up to this amount of time that’s normal, but if it goes beyond that, treatment is required, which usually means pharmaceutical. Who is to declare how long someone should grieve? When I was growing up, it was understood widows would wear black for a year. This was before we were all wearing black all the time. Today, people act like, “Your mom died two months ago, aren’t you over it yet?”

I know what I’ve learned from the loss of people I love. I knew it intellectually — we all know it intellectually — but I’ve learned viscerally that this ride does not last forever. The spiritual ride does. We lived before we were born physically, and we will live after we die physically. But this glorious adventure, which is this particular lifetime, will not be here forever. Suck the juice out of it. That’s what I’ve learned.

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Depression and Its Treatment

Debbie: Yesterday, one of our Women on Fire members came to see me. She was wrestling with many of the issues that a 45-year-old working mom who struggles financially is wrestling with. She welled up with tears time and time again, and she said to me, “I’m so full of tears. Why am I so full of tears?” I wondered, Marianne, what would you have said to her?

Marianne: Crying the tears will reveal that answer to you. Honor the fact that they’re there. It is in crying them that you will come to understand the message they convey. You are obviously stressed. You are obviously under things. I have a quote from Aeschylus in the book that talks about how, drop by drop, pain falls upon the heart until, against our will, despite our despair, comes wisdom through the grace of God. I would say to her to cry those tears. The question isn’t: How do I get rid of those tears? The question is: What is the meaning of these tears? What are they calling me to understand? I will not know until and unless I allow myself to cry them.

Debbie: Nice. Also in our Women on Fire circle, we have a number of phenomenal physicians, healers, hospice professionals, chiropractors and even healthcare executives. Nancy Schlichting is in our group, and I know you know her from the Henry Ford Hospital system in Detroit. What would you say to these women who are on the front lines of healthcare or have some power? What do they need to do about this crisis of depression and the crisis of over-medication?

Marianne: For those who are doctors, of course, please stop over-prescribing. I doubt that people who are part of Women on Fire are doctors who would be doing that.

Debbie: They’re not.

Marianne: At the same time, if someone is a doctor, they belong to associations. They can write articles in magazines and stuff that you and I do not have the credentials to be able to have a voice within. That’s number one. Change comes from change in conversation for those who act within the medical system.

By the way, this issue is being brought up. Kelly Brogan is a psychiatrist in New York City who has written a book called A Mind of Your Own. There are definitely doctors out

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there who are bringing this up. I think it was Dateline NBC that had a big show about the over-prescription issue and about two-year-olds who are being given Abilify. Abilify is an anti-psychotic drug. It is one of the largest-selling prescription drugs in America. We see its ads on TV: If your first antidepressant isn’t doing the job, maybe you need a second one.

Debbie: You’re good, Marianne.

Marianne: Well, Abilify is an anti-psychotic drug, and it is being prescribed in too many cases, way too many cases, to people who don’t even have a serious mental illness. Once again, a painful divorce is not a mental illness.

People say I’ve been “diagnosed” with depression. First of all, there is no blood test for depression. It’s a questionnaire. To say, “I have clinical depression” just means somebody in a clinic read the questionnaire and said, “Yep, you’re it.” There is not a blood test like for diabetes. Second, when people say, “Depression is different from deep sadness. There are changes in brain chemistry.” Excuse me, but how many people do you know who have been prescribed antidepressants that had their brain chemistry checked first?

Debbie: I haven’t known anyone.

Marianne: For that matter, meditation changes your brain chemistry — the neurotransmitters, the circuitry and so forth.

I also want to say this to anyone listening who is on antidepressants and is beginning, because of this conversation, to think about it differently. Nothing could be more important than this: Please, please, please, do not ever just throw your antidepressants into the toilet or into the trashcan. This is a conversation about our society being far more reflective about getting on them. Getting off of them must only be done under medical supervision.

Debbie: That is important. It’s also important, as you point out in the book, that a lot of times when people get on antidepressants, there’s no discussion about the plan for it. It’s, “You need to have this for life.” Some of the time, that’s the conversation.

Marianne: Oh, absolutely. This particularly is one of the reasons I wrote the book. I’m a mother and have felt greatly upset by this. The FDA, which is not known for heavy regulation anymore, warned that, for people 25 years old and younger, antidepressants can increase, not decrease, suicidal ideation. All these people are talking about the need to take

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antidepressants to prevent suicide, and people allow their children to be put on them. The truth of the matter is with that warning and how many times people have committed suicide who were on antidepressants.

Some adults have talked to me about how they were given antidepressants and felt like demons were in their mind. They started actually thinking about suicide for the first time in their lives, and they knew “this is bad. I’m not going to take these.” If you’re 16 or 17, and Mommy or Daddy gives it to you, you don’t know. I think it’s a story. Let’s not kid ourselves. This is a psychotherapeutic pharmacological industrial complex we’ve got on our hands.

Debbie: It is an industrial complex.

Marianne: Absolutely. By the year 2020, it will be a trillion-dollar business. The propaganda is very strong on this. If you have cancer, the doctor recommends chemotherapy. The doctor doesn’t say, “Chemotherapy is required.” The doctor might say, “It’s recommended, and it’s certainly one of the options for you to consider.” The way people talk about depression now is, “You need meds.”

Think about younger people. First of all, the 20s are hard. They were hard for me. I don’t know anyone who their 20s weren’t hard for. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re starting to go through adult situations, but you haven’t been an adult that long. You’re just starting to learn. It’s hard.

If you’re told, “No, you’re depressed. The fact that you’re having a hard time here means you are a victim of this disease. You are a victim of depression, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders.” Who’s not anxious today? Look at the state of the world. Then when you’re told by that same voice, “Expect to be on these for the rest of your life.” I can see where it works for Big Pharma, but it can be tragic for the people who are scammed into that.

My language is a little blunt here today. Once again, I realize that there are times when psychotherapeutic drugs are helpful to people. But the story that’s being propagated today that has everybody on meds is — considering the huge number of people who are taking them like candy — something for us to think seriously about.

Debbie: I agree. I think I’m going to pull your quote, where you say, “Growing up is hard, but it’s not a mental illness. Divorce is hard, but it’s not a mental illness. Grieving is hard, but

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it’s not a mental illness.” That’s what you’re talking about here, these things that are …

Marianne: … situational despair. This is the dark night of the soul. Buddha said, “Life is suffering.” Moses was sent to deliver the Israelites when they were suffering as slaves in Egypt. Jesus suffered on the cross. All the great spiritual transmissions speak to the human condition as a state of suffering, because it is a state of separation from God. That realization begins the journey. It began Buddha’s journey, culminating in his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and the consciousness of Nirvana. Moses rescued and delivered the Israelites, and then they began their 40-year journey, which was painful, through the desert, and then they were delivered to the Promised Land. Jesus suffered on the cross, and then three days later, the resurrection.

The symbol of that 40 years, the symbol of the three days, the symbol of the time that Buddha wrestled with the demons, that’s the time of the breakdown, of the crisis. This is not a disease. This is a spiritual crisis. Why would we look to a corner of society that doesn’t even factor in the spirit, that doesn’t even acknowledge the spirit in any of their calculations? That is the last corner of the society we should be looking to, to heal what is essentially a spiritual problem.

Finding Comfort Without Medication

Debbie: Would you give some strategies that will give comfort in the dark night of the soul?

Marianne: I have a little bit of a problem with the word “strategy.”

Debbie: That was my word.

Marianne: Strategy is very mental; it’s very self-will. You pray and you surrender your pain to God. I have a whole chapter in the book on forgiveness. You ask yourself who you have not forgiven. You develop a serious meditation practice. Obviously, when you are going through sadness, you have to take care of your diet. You have to, despite your pain, do some kind of exercise. Your body has to be brought into alignment with the process. Those are the strategies. The No. 1 strategy is: I will allow myself to go through this. I will not distract myself. I will not numb myself. I will honor my body.

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We talk about the wisdom of the body. Tears are no different. We do muscle testing. We know that the body speaks to us. Tears are one of the ways that the body speaks to us. We cry for a reason. What are these tears saying? What is it I have to look at? What is it I’m being called to know, called to consider? This is how we grow wise.

The problem is that our society trivializes the search for wisdom today because it doesn’t make anybody any money. Actually, it does make you money, among other things. It makes you a more effective human being in whatever you do to be wise, to know what you’re doing. If you don’t know how to navigate the turbulent waters, if you don’t know how to navigate the more painful times in life, how do you know how to navigate life, given that life is sometimes sad?

Particularly today, one of the things, as you know, Debbie, that I talk about in the book is that a lot of this is collective. One of the problems with the current psychotherapeutic model is that it focuses so much on the individual that sometimes we’re not seeing the forest through the trees. We think it’s all about me, rather than realizing it’s all about us, say, the mothers, women who feel so stressed and overwhelmed. A lot of American women do not realize how few resources are provided for women and children during the early childhood years, compared to that which is provided in European countries. Michael Moore’s film Where to Invade Next is very good on this, on everything from healthcare to…

Debbie: … to what the kids eat.

Marianne: Right. And preschools and maternity leave. We’re one of only two or three advanced democracies that doesn’t have paid maternity leave. If a woman thinks, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me,” there’s nothing wrong with you. The more you’re awake to this, and awake to the fact that other women are experiencing it too, and other fathers, then you are more likely to become active. Where would we be today if the abolitionists had taken the edge off their upset? Where would we be today if Susan B. Anthony had been told to just chill? What if she were told, “Wherever you go there’s so much drama.” That’s basically what we’re being told. We’re being told, “Your upset is inconvenient.”

Somebody told me the other day about a character she’s playing in a movie. She said, “She’s very flawed and troubled.” I said, “Really? Is she flawed and troubled, or is the society

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in which such a sensitive person lives flawed and troubled so then they get to look at her and say she’s flawed and troubled? No, she’s a sensitive being.”

How can any of us be OK with what’s happening to the environment, with things like what happened in Orlando, with the fact that even yesterday the U.S. Congress turned down a gun ban? We can’t even say to terrorists on a terrorist watch list, “No you cannot buy an assault weapon.” Who is not depressed by that? Who is not depressed?

Sometimes we have to honor our sadness, to say, “Maybe I’m not crazy. Maybe the craziness is in all these situations that are making me so sad.” Somebody said to me yesterday, “Then your emotion moves you into motion.” That’s the problem with numbing our pain: It just kind of paralyzes us. We say, “It’s cool,” in times when, no, it’s not cool. Sometimes your neurosis is best described and delineated by what does not make you upset as by that which does.

Joining Forces to Create Change

Debbie: One of our women, Rosemary Nickel, asks a question that is really along these lines: “How do we, as women, help other women find their voices to stand up and fight these things we believe in?” I think that’s a very general question right now in this time of a national political campaign. Women who are listening today are women who want to take action. They are all hard-working, mostly moms, with relationships, and wanting something better for their lives, wanting something better for the world. In their own way, they’re all working on that. What would you say, Marianne, is a way, from a collective standpoint, to join forces?

Marianne: First of all, I have a category in my mind of women with children under five. If you’re a woman with a child five years old or younger, you’re absolved! Every moment that you spend with your child under five, that’s exactly your greater service to the planet. The rest of the people will hold the space until you get here, once your kid gets into school. Early childhood is everything. That’s for the moms who have children five or younger. Reading a story to your child, talking to your child, playing with your child is your greatest service. Don’t even think about any of this other stuff right now. I’m saying that glibly, as something

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that you want to do, but you know my point.

Other than that, let’s take an example. When I read this morning that the Senate would not allow the FBI to give a list to gun manufacturers, gun shops and gun shows that says, “These people are on the terrorist watch list. These are people that we will not allow on to airplanes, therefore we should not allow them to have assault weapons.” The Senate turned this down.

Debbie: I know, I know.

Marianne: I am outraged. Moral outrage is one of love, not anger really. I ask myself, “What can I do?” My first thought was, “Well, maybe we could start a PAC, a super PAC, that would support candidates to run in two years against those people who voted against that bill, or even those running this year.” Then I thought to myself, “That’s probably not it, but what I do have now on my agenda for the day is to get online. There are some very good organizations for gun safety. Gabby Giffords has one. There are a lot of them out there. I’m going to see what they’re all saying. How can an average citizen be of help? It is so outrageous.”

There are so many of the issues that we feel passionate about. Somebody might feel passionate about food and GMOs. Somebody else might feel passionate about sex trafficking, and somebody might feel passionate about the environment or about this or that. I have founded nonprofit organizations, so it’s not like I don’t know the nonprofit world. But sometimes people are like, “We’re going to start a nonprofit” without any real sense of, 1) how hard that is, 2) how expensive it is, and 3) how ultimately ineffective that is, if in fact there’s already an organization doing that work.

For most of the issues that people care about, you can get online and find out what’s happening. Find out what’s happening legislatively and what’s happening in your community. It’s all online. Google it and find out. Whatever it is, it’s more than just putting the issue on your Facebook page.

Debbie: It’s getting involved.

Marianne: It’s getting involved, whether you write letters, sign a petition or go to a meeting — and take your kids with you, by the way. There are a couple of twins and one is a

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congressman and the other is mayor of San Antonio, Texas. I saw their mother being interviewed, and she was asked: “How did you raise these two kids?” She said, “When I was doing all of this, when they were younger, they went with me.” I think that’s the place where, in looking back at my daughter’s childhood, I would do differently. I was so concerned that my life would overshadow hers — which knowing her personality now I didn’t really need to worry about — that I think she was a little bit underexposed.

Debbie: Interesting.

Marianne: I wish I had taken her more places with me.

Debbie: I certainly understand that. I just know a number of times that I saw Emma grow up, or India is her name, and I saw her grow up. You did take her, but I hear you that it may not have been enough. I think that’s so wonderful.

Marianne: I don’t even think it’s a matter of “enough.” I just think that, in general, err on the side of taking your kids with you when you go to that meeting. Not for some topics. Obviously, I wouldn’t take a child to a meeting about assault weapons.

Debbie: Your advice is wonderful about that, and it’s a reminder to all of us that we do have the ability and the power to just get involved.

The Miracle Is Waiting on You

Debbie: I want to start to wrap up here. I’m so appreciative of your time, Marianne, and this is so wonderful and inspiring. At Women on Fire, we quote you often. In fact, one of our aspirations — a really important one — is “Don’t stop before the miracle.” In wrapping up here, would you talk to us, especially for women who are waiting for a miracle, a little bit about miracles?

Marianne: The miracle doesn’t happen in the next moment. When you say women are waiting for a miracle, that’s like waiting for circumstances to become what you want them to be. That’s not what a miracle is. That’s magic. Magic is where you want the universe to do something for you. Miracle is where you place yourself in service to the universe. If you’re waiting for a miracle to happen, that means you’re waiting for something to happen that you

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think will make you happy. That’s your pain right there; you’re stuck in that mental construct. Place yourself in the service of love. That’s the miracle. Ask today, “Where would you have me go? What would you have me do? What would you have me say and to whom? Dear God, use me today. Use me as an instrument of love. If there’s someone I’m not forgiving, I am willing to see them differently.”

Every withholding of forgiveness is a withholding of love. Miracles occur naturally, as expressions of love. You’re going to be waiting for a while as long as you’re holding on to resentment. You’re going to be waiting for a while as long as you’re holding on to a grudge, or holding on to unforgiveness, or holding on to a grievance. A Course in Miracles says you can have a grievance or you can have a miracle. You cannot have both. You’re going to be waiting for a while if you’re living in the past or in the future. You’re going to be waiting for a while if you think the source of your happiness is something other than the love given and the love your receive. You’re going to be waiting for a while if you’re still seeing yourself as a victim, waiting for your miracle.

The very language, “I’m waiting for my miracle.” No, God is waiting for your miracle. You think, “How long, God? How long?” Really, it’s God saying, “How long, you? How long?” I think I’m waiting on God. God is waiting on me. That means, “If at any given moment, you give your life to Me, we’re off and running.” Any given moment that you pledge your life in service of love, you are immediately taken above the turbulence of the mortal clouds that fog our thinking. When we ourselves have not completely surrendered to love and ask that we be used as its instrument, as we hold the idea that we’re waiting for a miracle, where are you going to get the juice? The juice is the love. The miracle rides in on love. That’s the missile that it rides in on.

Debbie: Well, I am the luckiest one in the world, for finding you so long ago and learning so much from you. From that, I created what makes me happy in the world, and that is Women on Fire. Thank you for that. I’m so grateful to have learned long ago that I had to be the one to change.

Marianne: You know, Debbie, I have never been around you, I have never received an e-mail from you, I have never had any experience with you that was anything other than 100

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percent generous and supportive to me. It doesn’t surprise me that your life works. On a spiritual level, we get what we give.

Debbie: Thank you.

Marianne: The question, going back to, “I’m waiting for a miracle.” How about asking, “How can I be a miracle worker in somebody else’s life today?”

Debbie: Nice.

Marianne: You do that — you’ve done it for me — so I’m not surprised that you’re doing it for all the women in your Women on Fire community. They couldn’t have a better priestess. They couldn’t have a better guide. I’m not only happy for them and happy for you, but also really honored that you would give me this opportunity to speak to your community and to your listeners today.

Debbie: We love you. I love you. Thank you so much for being here.

Marianne: Thank you, Debbie. God bless you, honey.

Debbie: Thank you.

Note from Debbie: Prior to the interview, I asked Marianne if she would read a prayer from her newest book Tears to Triumph, and she graciously agreed. This is the prayer she offered:

Dear God, Please make of my life

A beautiful thing. Guide me on an illumined journey

From the darkness of the world To the light that is you. Make of me a conduit

Of good That I might help transform the world.

Set my feet upon a hero’s journey And my heart on an enlightened path.

Amen

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After Interview

Debbie: Hi, Women on Fire. It’s Debbie, and this is the After Interview. Today, my special guest is a dear friend of mine. Ellen Wingard is here. Ellen was an early leader in the world of personal transformation. She’s been an executive coach for more than 30 years. What I love so much about Ellen is she is a champion of women’s issues, of gender equality. She most recently is the past chairman of World Pulse, which is a media company that empowers women globally. And Ellen is also the ultimate Women on Fire sister.

Hello, Ellen Wingard!

Ellen: Debbie! Thank you so much. I’m so honored, after all these years of being a Woman on Fire, to actually be with you in this moment and to talk about these incredibly important issues that came up in what Marianne shared.

Debbie: It is so exciting, and I’m so glad you got a chance to hear the Marianne Williamson interview. What stood out for you in listening to her today?

Ellen: First, it was just so timely. It’s a time when I don’t know anyone who isn’t experiencing a sense of how do we find comfort at a time of — in the words she used for it — “situational despair,” given the gravity of situations in the world, but also in our personal lives. I was struck by the comment, “Suffering gives us X-ray vision.” The notion that through our own suffering and developing empathy we find a way through.

I think what touched me most of all was her acknowledgment of you as someone who has created an environment for all of us to bear witness to each other, to see connection and belonging through Women on Fire. I’m going to start to cry now.

Debbie: I’m going to start to cry! Thank you. That was really very sweet.

Ellen: It’s through that connection I think that we find our way through.

Debbie: Yes.

Ellen: Having a family experience of generations of severe depression that have been helped by drugs, I think it’s so important for people to pay attention to knowing what they need to do from a medical point of view when addressing severe depression. However, I do agree with her premise, and I do find it to be true that suffering itself is what can be lead turned

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into gold. It can be what deepens us as human beings.

I appreciated all of her reflections on the great perennial spiritual traditions of how we can use sadness, grief, loss and outrage and turn them into action. I remember her using a term in one of her books that we need to be “passion bearers” for taking our own experiences and moving it into action.

I think that’s what Women on Fire does. I think that’s what you do. I can think of so many women in the community. I think of Sophfronia [Scott], Linda Neff’s work in terms of her activism, and Janina [Serden Sebesky] and her work in terms of her artistry and creativity and turning her experiences into art. I think of Holly Getty’s work as well. I could go on and on. I can see the faces from when we used to gather at the Women on Fire Teas. So many, so many. Another is Jenifer Madson’s work in mindfulness.

I was also struck by the notion of what is a miracle? I do think that the miracle is this moment, that we are here in it, no matter what’s going on. This is the moment where we transform. That’s the gift we give each other when we bear witness, when we connect, when we belong.

Debbie: I have been so grateful all these years that you have been such tremendous support to me and to all of those women around the table when we met frequently in New York. When I think of those meetings, I always see your face, Ellen. And I thank you for all of the women that you introduced.

Going back to Marianne’s point, I think she was so brilliant in saying that growing up is not a disease. Grief is not a disease. I was so stunned by that figure that, by 2020, antidepressants will be a trillion-dollar business. I want to just reiterate that anyone who is on antidepressants, that is your personal choice. She just is warning us, before we do turn to medication, to think about, as you put it, the gold that comes from a transformation.

Was there a point in your life when you either used an antidepressant or that you wanted to? Did you ever have that time?

Ellen: It’s a great question. In going back to your point about what she shared, I do think compassion fatigue and numbing are tendencies that we have. It can be so overwhelming to witness injustice and horrific experiences and then wanting to go numb. It’s understandable.

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After a particular loss in my life, it was the first time I actually had the experience of considering not wanting to live, which I had never had before in my life. It was an experience when I did consult help, and when I actually attempted to take an antidepressant. But I couldn’t physically tolerate the side effects of it. I thought, “OK, I have to go through this.”

I remember experiencing a kind of disconnection from life that is so terrifying and so isolating. It creates an experience of doubting one’s worth, doubting one’s capacity to ever come out of it, and causes one to lose one’s imagination. I think that the hardest part about going through a depression — losing one’s capacity to imagine a world where there’s recovery, joy, happiness and impact. To me, I have such compassion now, knowing what people go through, people who literally cannot function. That soul crisis is an opportunity. It’s healed through professional guidance, but also through the support of others who can say, “I’ve been there, and you’re going to come out of this. You’re going to be stronger. You’re going to be knitted together, and that brokenness is not going to define you.”

Debbie: Ellen, that is so beautiful, and it is one of the hallmarks of Women on Fire for us to witness each other, in whatever state we are in. I get the comment so often, “I’m not on fire.” That’s the whole purpose of this. It’s to find our places wherever we are in that continuum to be able to be hopeful and excited and happy and, eventually, on fire.

Ellen, thank you so much. I so appreciate your friendship, your support, your love. I wish people could see your beautiful shining face right now, and know how you have come through fires to be able to support so many women. I’m just really honored that you are part of this circle.

Ellen: Thank you, Debbie. I feel that you see the wholeness in each person beyond whatever the circumstance, and that wholeness is the gift that gives us so much strength. You’ve given me so much and I love you. Thank you so much.

Debbie: Aw, Ellen, I love you and right back at you! This is why we’re in this together. All of us! So, thank you for being here.

Women on Fire, thank you so much. I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview with Marianne Williamson. As you know, my dream is for you to have your dream. See you next month.

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