A version of this essay was originally published in Words for the Journey, the monthly email publication of the Chrysalis Institute.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the Cardiovascular Center of a large medical complex in northern New Jersey, waiting to see my mother, who has just survived open heart surgery.
Two new valves – one cow, one pig – now reside in her heart, replacing the ones that were initially damaged during an episode of strep throat that went untreated when she was a young woman.
Waiting through something like this is hard – knowing your loved one is down a long hallway from you, chest split open, her life literally in someone else’s hands.
But while I could have clamped down in fear this morning, something about the experience instead invited me to risk opening up my own heart.... See More
