Welcome and overview
Hi everyone, it’s Dr. Dyann Ross here, the love theorist. I'm very pleased to be talking with you and hope you're well and keeping safe and doing something positive and kind for yourself today and somebody else if you can, as well.
I wanted to talk to you about the idea of love and how the lack of love can be heart-breaking. And especially if that lack of love is related to an experience of injustice or trauma caused by someone hurting you. That is, the topic is about understanding love from the point of view of broken-heartedness. And particularly when that broken-heartedness is caused by someone doing harm, especially in terms of unfair treatment, or an act of violence towards you or someone else.
This is a particular way of thinking about broken-heartedness that can cause very deep wounds in our hearts and impacts our ability to survive and flourish in the world. This is because love can’t flourish in unsafe situations. Love is a necessary ingredient for life. The hardest thing is to believe in love in its absence. After some commentary, and to give us all something to hold on to, I want to suggest a gem of hope for love to ourselves or others. Love that comes from that deep wounding and broken-heartedness, is a gentle way to self-heal, and is a potentially revolutionary force outwards in the world.
Preface
I want to preface that main theme of today with a few comments, which I talk about more in my upcoming book, Broken-heartedness, about the physiological dimensions of broken-heartedness more broadly. This is really a kind of prefacing statement around the concept of broken-heartedness just to anchor the experience in our bodies, human bodies, and it also sits in animals’ bodies and Mother Nature's bodies and entities as well. Broken-heartedness for humans can present as heart failures or what we call heart attacks. Chronic heart disease is the number one killer in Australia, and some other westernised countries. What's going on when people have heart attacks at the physical level is complex and not the same for everybody. At the same time, what I'm interested in is the research that shows that heightened stress, especially stress from unfair treatment or trauma where there is violence involved, can have very harmful effects on the actual physical heart, in our bodies. And that this is intricately related with our emotional heart, the two are not separate.
I believe at the same time that our emotions are anchored and located in our hearts and whole body and the aura of our body, not only our physical body. But for the moment I'm just wanting to focus on the physical aspect of where hurt, harm, and violence is done that causes a physical wound that is anchored in the heart. It may manifest as severe and chronic heart conditions, and possibly even heart attacks, and certainly people dying from heart attacks. I'm wanting to make the link between the physical expression of harm to the heart, and the emotional harm that often goes with that. Research shows that there is a direct link between trauma and very severe physiological effects in the body, and in the heart (Resnik, Acierno & Kilpatrick, 2010). In medical terms, it is referred to as takotsubo or stress-induced cardiomyopathy or “Broken Heart Syndrome” where a sudden shock weakens the heart muscle (Harvard Health Publishing, 2022).
Source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy-broken-heart-syndrome
When someone says, ‘a person has died of a broken heart’, I actually believe that's exactly what has happened. When the physical heart is broken, this often aligns with an emotional broken heart. There are deep sad, abiding distressed feelings, which I think is a double whammy of harm to the person's being, that is very hard to survive. Given that there is medical evidence of the link between physical harm to the heart and stressful life circumstances, it is really important to not shy away from the sources of harm and violence. As just two examples, imagine domestic violence situations and sexual assault situations where violence occurs and causes trauma, and there are many others. The person’s physical-emotional heart is a sensitive barometer of their social circumstances that needs its own attention to address broken-heartedness.
Broken-heartedness is a really big indicator of lack of fairness and caring in how a person is being treated. Perhaps we are missing opportunities to recognise that broken-heartedness is how injustice and trauma caused by violence to a person can express itself. There's more I could say about this, but for now, to say I believe lovelessness, that sits behind acts of violence toward a person or toward an animal or Mother Nature, is a really big issue of our times. We kind of know it's an issue but maybe don't give it a name. This is an interesting topic for me as I am wanting to have a think about love as part of building a theory of love, by talking about the absence of love.
About broken-heartedness
As we're getting into this topic a bit more, I do want to acknowledge that broken-heartedness has many facets to it, and that people die of broken-heartedness. But also, people can live for a very long time or periods of time, at least, with a broken heart. And it may not even be recognised by others, may not be called that by the person. Yet it's incredible to me that people can live with a broken heart, and can still be making an amazing contribution in the world.
My interest in this topic is trying to understand what can be done around what I think is one of the hardest ways of mending your heart or helping others who are broken-hearted. The hardest experience is when there's injustice and violence done to people, not always spoken by themselves or recognised by others. What can a person do for themselves, and what can people do to support someone who has a broken heart? And what of non-human animals’ broken hearts and Mother Nature’s broken-heartedness? We need a theory of love to guide us in this justice work and loving dedication to others.
It's a big topic, isn't it?
I won't do it justice today, these are just some initial thoughts that I wish to share with you. If you've heard my first podcast in the series, you will know that my ideas about love are strongly influenced by bell hooks, the internationally renowned black activist writer from America. What she says is that where there is love, there will be no oppression (hooks, 2001). hooks uses the concept of lovelessness, at its most simplest meaning the absence of love, which she ties to systems of domination and violence. Two examples of such systems are sexism and racism. When we're working with the idea of lovelessness, as linked to oppression and injustice, I think we're really getting to a much broader and less recognised understanding of what lovelessness is about. This is what I'm wanting to talk a little bit about today – how lovelessness caused by violence can in turn cause broken-heartedness.
An invitation
I wonder if you would just for a moment like to contemplate my comments so far, and feel free to think this through for yourself as well. I expect we will have some different views and experiences. Let me know what you think about what the lack of love feels and looks like. Maybe you've experienced it in your life.
Love and its absence
bell hooks explains that many of us do not know love, and certainly many struggle to feel self-love, which is the basis for all other love. She says that she grew up in a family that was very caring, but that she did not feel loved. She felt very isolated and not understood and not heard as a child. I'm wondering if any of us ever grew up in a space where we felt all the dimensions of love. hooks would say that love is about caring. Yes, absolutely … and more …. It also includes, nonviolence, responsibility, critical thinking, compassion, and knowledge (hooks, 2001; Ross, 2020).
Brene Brown (2010) explains that self-love involves understanding the power of vulnerability in our lives which she defines as “having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome” that is derived from a sense of worthiness and being lovable. She believes that vulnerability is the “birthplace” of things like love and joy and trust (cited in Jensen, 2019). But we can become numb to being vulnerable which makes it harder to be kind to ourselves and others. [Brown’s ideas are explored further in a separate upcoming podcast dedicated to self-love]. I would say for the moment, that emotions are the messages from our hearts and in unfair or unsafe life situations our ability or willingness to feel or express our feelings can be very fraught even dangerous.
In my family, my mother and father were really amazing, against the odds in caring for us. So that's one component of love. Love is also about having a critical understanding of what's going on in the world and what's happening in the family as well in terms of fairness and how we treat each other. For example, it is about understanding the impacts if we're a member of a minority group or a minority status family, due to our religion or ethnicity, or in my circumstance, lower socio-economic status. I was constantly shamed around being poor as a child, and that can be very harmful and directly led to me not feeling loved. Love is closely dependent on having self-knowledge, knowledge of others and knowledge of relationships and how to build loving relationships. hooks adds it is also about the ability to take responsibility for our actions and to be able to have a purposeful life. These are some of the dimensions of love where love is about how we act. This compares with how many people think about love as a feeling and often a romantic connection in private between people. This matters but for our purposes it's more of an action, often many actions, in the world.
Love absolutely has got to be about non-violence as well as non-harming behaviours toward others. When we really think about love, in that regard, I can say I grew up in a family that was caring, but there was also abuse. There was also neglect and lack of understanding of my needs as I felt misunderstood, unable to speak for my needs. I felt very concerned about others in the family and remember trying to be responsible as one of the oldest siblings. Then getting blamed for not looking after the children properly, when I was a child myself.
What that early childhood experience growing into adolescence meant to me, is that love can't really flourish in an unsafe environment. Lack of love had quite the opposite effect. As a child, I rarely felt safe and was often unable to keep my siblings safe because I grew up in a situation of domestic violence. That's had a formative influence on my ideas around love. I would say I did not feel love as a child. I've been seeking to understand love, to give love to others, my whole life as social worker. It's inspired amazing things and amazing dedication. To be at this time in my life it is a privilege to be pausing to think - what would a theory of love look like? What would my childhood look like, if my parents had the support and knowledge they needed to be fully loving? What would it look like if they kept not only caring, but really met the needs of myself and my siblings and as part of this to really be willing to hear us? Instead, they raised us with the attitude that children should be seen but not heard. This was very much a norm at the time, but it left a gaping hole in my heart. Living with domestic violence that is not declared and addressed, also a norm in my community, is frightening and heart-breaking.
One of the aspects of lovelessness that I grew up with was a strong sense of how unfair it was that my father could be violent and behave however he wanted. There was actually no one holding him responsible. His mates weren't holding him responsible, other people who knew in the community that it was happening, were not holding him responsible to act differently. This always perplexed me how it was left to the children and their mother to try and keep the home place safe against the odds. This is where my sense of the injustice was cultivated but I had to bury it because my survival instincts silenced me to be loyal and keep the secret in the family.
I realised when there was such an abiding sense of unsafety and injustice, to be loved in that situation was always going to be compromised. It was not going to be possible because it was so unsafe with children who were basically too frightened to ask for their needs or protect themselves. These are just some reflections of my childhood that I share with you as a way of anchoring what love in its absence can look and feel like.
Glimmers of hope
I had little glimmers of hope for love mattering as a child, little moments of being heard as a child, being seen and not being ignored. It was very fleeting and it didn't have to only come from within my family. Just someone else recognising who I was and encouraging me on my way kept me going for years. There was a teacher in my fourth grade and I remember her saying to us, and it wasn't only to me, but I've heard it in a very particular way. She said, ‘you can all grow up to be whatever you want to be, you just need to work toward that happening’. And I thought, ‘oh, I think that's a message for me!’. It was just a little glimmer of hope that there could be a future for me and that it could be life without the absolutely depleting, soul destroying effects of living with either violence or the fear of violence day by day. Like many others, someone somewhere needed to show up for me so many other times as well.
For me to be able to believe in love, in the absence of it, is one of the hardest things in the world to do. To be nursing a broken heart from what I've witnessed as a child, in my family and in other families, and to be trying to be loving in the world, is also one of the hardest things to do. Given this, I don’t say the next point lightly. I think the love revolution on many occasions is happening with broken-hearted people who are expressing love out into the world. In so doing they are transforming their broken-heartedness into love energy instead of hate energy. This is one of the secrets of a broken heart, we are experts in the importance of being loving.
Wicked problems in need of love
From childhood, I've lived with a broken heart. It hasn't gone away, even though there's been healing around a lot of my childhood experiences. There are now multiple sources of lovelessness, harm and violence that break my heart anew. The influence of social media is making us more aware of what's going on in the furthest corners of the world. Wicked problems such as the devastating effects of climate change are multi-layered, and interconnected, and not typically amenable to one solution or one person’s actions of love. It is devastating to understand the way that climate change seems to disproportionately harm minority groups in vulnerable countries. For example, low lying Pacific islands are starting to flood from the sea water because of the melting of the ice caps. It is not always an option to move to higher ground. Relatedly, it seems that the highest cost for the impact of climate change is being worn by vulnerable groups of people, animals, and landscapes within impacted countries. Thinking about what's happening in the Amazon, one of the great last lungs of the world, the incredible forests, and the complex competing needs in that landscape and the geopolitics that go with that. The rights of minority people, groups who live in that forest, as far as their daily right to survive, and to be able to use the resources of their place. It just gets overrun by so many other competing interests. All of this is so heart-breaking, as is anything to do with what's happening to Mother Nature that we see in all sorts of contexts.
In Australia, at the moment, we're having devastating floods on the east coast and the loss is multi-layered. One of the most upsetting things and heart-breaking things I saw just last week, is that the floodwaters in the northern part of Queensland have washed out on to the coastline creating a layer of silt and soil that is covering up the seagrass. As a result there's hardly any seagrass left and dugongs, who are just incredible, beautiful, big creatures of the sea, are not getting enough food to eat because the seagrass is covered up. It's just heart-breaking to know that this is happening. There are people trying to do something about it but the scale of devastation of the seagrass beds is so large, that at least in the short term, the loss of dugongs is totally distressing.
Closing comments
From the fragments of my story of what my broken heart looks like, I'm sure if we were talking together, you would have some very powerful personal stories as well. And this is what I'm talking about where there's an injustice located in the broken-heartedness. I think it is a particular kind of lovelessness that requires of us different kinds of healing and actions including self-care, care of each other and care of the planet. This podcast is trying to get an angle and think about what love is by saying what it isn't. I’ve really just given some introductory comments on how broken-heartedness is about how lovelessness is caused by violence. I gave the example of my childhood experiences and some of the wicked problems that are happening in the world.
That means that for each of us, we all I believe, to some extent, are living with a broken heart. I think one of the secrets and little gems of hope that sit within us as broken-hearted people comes from learning how to live with a broken heart. It can give us the fuel and the motivation, to pivot on that broken-heartedness to do good in the world, to be loving, and to refuse to accept violence as an answer in any situation.
Thank you for spending time with me today. I really appreciate it. Please let me know of your thoughts and any great references you might wish to share. I've mainly been drawing on the bell hooks’s work - All about love - which is perhaps still the best book to start with, if you're not familiar with this idea of love, as needed for oppression to be addressed. Further to hooks’s ideas of love and lovelessness, broken-heartedness is an idea that I'm using to enrich my understanding about what the lack of love looks and feels like.
Okay, till next time, all the best love to you,
Bye, Dyann
**
References
Brene Brown (2010). The power of vulnerability. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
Harvard Health Publishing (2022). Takotsubo cardiomyopathy: Broken heart syndrome. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy-broken-heart-syndrome
bell hooks (2001). All about love: New visions. New York: William Morrow.
Erin Jensen (2019). 5 takeaways on vulnerability from Brene Brown’s “the call to courage”. https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/04/19/brene-brown-call-courage-netflix-vulnerability/3497969002/
Heidi Resnick, Ron Acierno, & Dean Kilpatrick (2010). Health impact of interpersonal violence 2: Medical and mental health outcomes. Behavioural Medicine, 23(2), pp. 65-78.
