Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
I am regularly invited to address congregations around the country with a 15-minute pep talk on Sunday mornings, or sermons, as they formally call them, and you would think I would simply have them recorded so I can upload them as podcast episodes for everyone who wasn't there to hear, but I'm not that technologically advanced yet, so I'm working on catching you up on what's been on my mind.
At one of these Sunday services, a woman sang, "I'm like one of those Japanese bowls "where the breaks are mended by filling them with gold, rather than hiding the cracks "they were made to shine, all the jagged lines make them more beautiful and valuable. "And if we don't hide our own breaks, we can be just like those "Japanese bowls, so everyone can see we are not who we used to be."
As is the case with many people, I was raised in a household where we were constantly told never to share with anyone outside the house what was going on inside the house. Which, in hindsight, should have been the first clue that some shady stuff was going on.
I remember grocery shopping with my mother when I was a teenager, just a month or so after moving to San Francisco from Israel, and the grocery cart had one of those advertisements on it, where the baby seat is located near the handlebars; this advertisement had a black and white picture of a child on it, with a toll-free number to report child abuse. Being new to this country, with broken English and little understanding of the culture, I asked my cousin what Child Abuse meant.
She told me it's when parents beat up their children. To which I said, "And... what's your point?" As in, don't all kids get beat up? I had no idea that it was a crime because I assumed everyone's household operated similarly, and we were all told not to talk about it. Because my cousin's parents were going through a divorce at the time, she couldn't help me process this newfound knowledge, so she told her mom what I had shared with her about years of abuse.
Her mom then came over to our house to have a talk with my parents, and I was mortified, thinking, I'm really going to get it now because I told someone about what goes on inside our house. But my aunt told my parents she would not leave until they promise never to lay a hand on me again. For a couple of years after the fact, the physical abuse turned into emotional and mental abuse instead. And then, I ran away from home after an unexpected
and final violent outburst. I contacted my parents after a few days and told them I'm too scared to return home unless they promise, yet again, to never do that. At that point, I wasn't just scared of what they would do, but of how I might react. A few suicide attempts later, and many years of therapy, I remember speaking with Reverend Sky in Hawaii about my childhood, and he stopped me mid-story
to point out that my narrative was still victimized. I was still identifying with that broken, little boy, rather than leaving the past where it belongs. He gently pointed out that moving on is not the same as burying the past or pretending it didn't happen, it's about extracting strength from those experiences and not letting them define who I am today. As Maya Angelou said, "I can be changed by what happened in my life, "but I refuse to be reduced by it."
So just like those Japanese bowls, I no longer hide my past with shame, guilt, anger, resentment, or regret, I openly share what I've been through, and so many of you confirm you've had similar difficulties in your own lives. And just like my challenges aren't unique to me, there is no reason for any of us to feel ashamed of where we have cracked in the past. We are still here.
And as Jewel shared in her memoir Never Broken, "We can rise from the screaming "blood of our losses, of extreme pain, physical, debilitating emotion, "psychological neglect, and apathy, and not merely survive, but thrive. "But believing we are broken is the same as being broken." I have never met a strong person with an easy past, so I would go as far as to say I am grateful for everything I've been through; it's the gold that shines through.
If you find value in this podcast and want to keep it commercial-free, it is available without ads thanks to listeners just like you who donate just one dollar a month through Patreon.com/BuddhistBootCamp. A couple of episodes each month with food-for-thought, reflection, and contemplation. Thank you for walking beside me on this journey. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
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