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How Does the Heart Know Love? An interview with author Brad Walton by Tim Miejan Dr. Janis Amatuzio writes in the foreward of How Does the Heart Know Love? (Beaver's Pond Press, 2004) of the author, "Brad Walton grapples with his pain the only way he knows: honestly, courageously and head on. His story is eloquently told and painfully honest." It is that honesty, written with a succinct and poetic voice, that makes this 58-page book stand out as something much larger than the sum of its parts. Walton, a late-night talk show host on WCCO Radio 830 AM, suffered a serious cardiac event on September 22, 1999. What made his ordeal even more frightening was the fact that he found himself in the very hospital where his college roommate and best friend, Al, had died three years earlier. Brad's father died 18 months after his friend passed away. Suddenly, he was facing chest pains. He writes, "Admitting to and facing my own chest pain on that evening was the beginning of my healing and an awakening that continues to this day." Synchronistically, I had just been with my father who had open-heart surgery to replace a valve, and I had witnessed how such an event changes people. Not long afterward, I spoke with Brad Walton about the awakening process. You wrote, "I needed to admit to and feel my pain before and after surgery in order to heal." Will you expand upon what you meant by that? Brad Walton: I woke up from a nap and I knew what I was feeling was not right. It was everything I'd heard about what a heart attack is about. You don't want to admit it to yourself. You want to say, "No, this isn't me. This is going to pass. This is indigestion, and whatever." When I finally admitted to myself what it was, then I could deal with it. We have to admit to ourselves when we're feeling pain, because we feel pain for good reasons. It's what let's us know that we have to wake up and take action. Had I not felt that pain or admitted to it, I would have had a full-blown heart attack and I wouldn't have taken my aspirin and I would have been in a completely different place. So, I took the aspirin and admitted to what I was feeling. The other part of that admission was being willing to go to the emergency room. The symptoms backed off, but even while in the hospital, I had to take two nitros while on the emergency room table. How it fits into the rest of the progression of the book is that this personal epiphany actually started within weeks of my open heart surgery. I didn't always have words for it right away. It was very expansive. I began to do research, began to listen to other people, began to ask questions. Based on what I know now from my research on the Heart Math Institute, heart transplant patients taking on the personality of the donor, what I've read about heart intelligence and emotional IQs, there was far more that happened to me during that time than just being cut. Yeah, what you are describing sounds a lot like President Clinton taking action before he had a heart attack. Walton: Absolutely. And, I think often times we get into trouble. We feel pain, and we try to run from it. And then there's the other pain, the emotional pain, which I hadn't even had a chance to process yet. All this was connected. The hospital that I ended up in was the same hospital where three years earlier I lost my best friend, who was like a brother to me. So I went through some survivor guilt, because the three years after his death, here I was in the same hospital. I lived and he died. Just ending up in the same hospital, the kind of synchronicity around that was just a little bit weird. Was that scary, that you thought you might go the same way he did? Walton: When the whole event happened, you don't know where it's going to turn out. The week started out on an optimistic note, with talk about stints and maybe a bypass. Nothing was urgent at the time. But, as the week progressed and I went through more tests, things were not as optimistic. Even at the end when things weren't going well, I went down on Sunday morning, the day before the surgery, and my surgeon at that point was probably as candid as he'd been all week. He goes, "It doesn't look good. I'll do what I can do." And I asked him at that time, "You know, I understand what you're saying. If I arrest on the table, just promise me you'll do whatever you can to bring me back so I can say goodbye one more time." That was important for me because I never had a chance to say goodbye to my friend, Al. At that moment, I wasn't really scared of dying. I know that's not the end. I wanted to go back to my house that I had to leave rather quickly and just put some closure on some things. What surgery did you end up having? What did they have to do? Walton: Open heart and they did bypasses. Actually they did six on me. They grafted five, plus the mammary artery. It was weird because the main left lower descending artery, which is typically clogged, wasn't clogged. It was all my collateral supply that had clogged up, and the rest of the heart was good. Because I didn't have a full-blown heart attack, I didn't have any damage in the heart muscle. I was in surgery for about four and a half hours. I know from a few of the other people that I've spoken with, and in the latest research they're doing, that transplant patients can take on the personality of donors, but with bypass patients, too, there are changes that take place, and more and more people are talking about it. And the more they talk about it, the more they can connect with what they're experiencing and say, "Hey, this is what's happening." Then they talk about it even more. Walton: Absolutely. It's like you think you're the only one experiencing it. THE THORN BIRDS Long Ago, there was a bird who sang just once in its life. From the moment it left its nest, it searched for a thorn tree. and it never rested until it found one. Then it began to sing more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impaled its breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it was dying, it rose above its own agony to out-sing the lark and the nightingale. The thornbird pays its life for that one song and the whole world stills to listen and God, in His heaven -- smiles. As its best was bought only at the cost of great pain. Driven to the thorn, with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, We know... We understand... And still...we do it. Copyright © Colleen McCullough You referred to the Thorn Bird when you write, "Our deepest longing is to be impaled through the heart by love, and yet so many of us run away from having to feel." Is that because of the pain, because we're afraid to feel, and is this experience, perhaps, why we came into human form, to connect with the feeling, of truly feeling love? Walton: Colleen McCullough, with her piece on the Thorn Birds, wrote one of the most powerful statements and understandings about love. The quote is just so powerful. I think our essence is love, and when we talk about loving and being loved, without it we die less than human. With it, we feel unthinkable pain. I think City of Angels also is really very powerful when you talk about what loving is all about. The film? Walton: Right. Love comes with an unmistakable cost, and we haven't done very well with understanding or preparing ourselves or letting ourselves feel what love is about. We run from it. Part of it is a natural, learned response. Open heart surgery itself is rich with metaphor, because the pain of loving is like feeling the pain in your own heart. When they were talking about putting the cover of the book together, they said, "Well, let's use this Valentine's heart," the typical Valentine's heart. I said, "No." I pointed to my heart, and I said, "This is where we feel our pain. This is it." And this connection, as (Gary) Zukav says, is "the seat of the soul." This is where we experience the pain of loving and being loved. Because the pain of loving, or the cost of loving, is inevitable, as Colleen says in her quote, if love itself is that superlative, then the cost that comes with it has to be felt, because its essence is in the heart and it is what makes us human. We're learning a lot in terms of the magnetic field around the heart, about good vibes, bad vibes, and people still want this proof that we can put in a test tube, but you can't put love in a test tube. And yet, we know from testing children that if they're not touched, they die. We know when love's there and when it's not, and we respond to it, and it changes us -- and it's something that you can't put in a test tube. We use the word constantly. It's in every song. And yet, I think we short-changed ourselves by not feeling it, because there's another side that I've discovered. When I feel the pain of a loss that I've known in relationships, I feel that pain of loving. It's not just related to death. It comes from relationships. It comes many times in unexpected ways. The key is to discover and to honor what that love was about, because love stands by itself. You're there and you experience love, you give love, you receive love, and that's something that is apart from anything else in the universe. Love is eternal. Even though you may not live with a person anymore, or that other person may have passed on or died, that special part that you experienced in loving -- that part of you that you share in that loving -- does not end. Colleen McCullough writes, "As its best as brought only at the cost of great pain." Love itself is our thorn. In chapter one, I write, "Love's redemptive cost: To run from or deny it, to deny our hearts the beauty of love itself. We cannot live without love, but the pain of true love is inevitable, and we are called to honor and complete that which we have longed for." Letting ourselves feel the pain that we feel in our loss when that love is no more is completion -- and that's where we so often short-change ourselves. We don't allow ourselves to feel that pain. What does the phrase "dark night of the soul" mean to you? Walton: I think the dark night of the soul is a time in our process when we understand the cost of loving, that we have to embrace the pain of loving, and we can only do that by ourselves. It's a very alone kind of thing, but it's also the only way that we can feel. You can read about it in a book, you can read about grief, you can read about loss, but there comes a moment in time where you realize that you have to embrace the pain, because that's the only way you'll heal in the end. The one thing about love is that it's a little bit like the space shuttle coming back from outer space. By the time you realize that you've both loved and been loved in a way that creates that indelible imprint on your heart -- the metaphor with the shuttle and re-entry -- you know that you can't go back into outer space again. The only thing you can do is find a safe place to land with what you've experienced, because it changes you that much. In the end, there are things that only you can do alone, when you cross that line and allow yourself to love and allow yourself to feel the pain of that love and truly become aware of the depth and the breadth and the distinctive of love. You refer to the experience of letting yourself cry and that tears are the rain that keep the soul from hardening. What is it about allowing yourself to cry and why do we try so hard to keep ourselves from doing that? Walton: Other cultures in different parts of the world have taught us the value of crying. Some years back I interviewed a man by the name of Thomas Stone. He wrote a book called Cure by Crying. Just like the physiology of our heart -- talking about enzymes and different aspects of what they measure in the heart and whether or not we've had a heart attack or our heart is healthy or our cholesterol is up or down -- there's a physiology of tears. They were doing some work at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park on the chemistry of our tears: happy tears, sad tears, tears of grief. Each of our different kinds of tears looks differently. Why do we cry? We usually cry when we feel pain, when we feel loss; and when we're embracing our dark night of the soul, we need to cry. It's a very healthy part of life. We obviously have tear ducts for a reason. Thomas Stone wrote his book because he was dealing with some depression and somebody said, "Have you cried much?" Well, he began to cry. He actually began to do some more research related to tears. The tears actually release the toxins that are very connected to our emotions, and because of that, if we don't cry, then you hold toxins in the body. In his research, he understood that as he was dealing with his own depression, the more he cried, the less medication he needed for his depression. By the end, he needed little, if any, medication for his depression anymore. He would rent a movie that would more or less open the dam for him and he'd begin to cry. Sometimes we all need that. I remember when I had a conversation one night with a friend who truly took the time to listen like I'd never been heard before, and that's when the floodgates opened. There was a clearing at that point within myself that had an ongoing value, like a ripple effect. It was quite profound in terms of my own healing. It was a part of the process, and I don't think it has stopped. I realized that it was the gift of being able to release those tears from the deepest part of my own soul that was a significant part of my healing. That's why I mention in the book both a loving presence and a healing presence. That loving presence allowed me to heal because I could cry there. Tears are a language by themselves. I open a chapter on that with this quote from an unknown source: "If I can come back as anything, it would be one of your tears. What more could I want to be conceived in your heart, born in your eyes, live on your cheeks, and die on your lips?" That's powerful. It's actually at the point when we shed our tears that we realize something of the depth and the breadth of our transformation. It's really a time when the flower's blooming. And, so, in the last chapter I say, "Tears are the affirmation of love's reality. Tears are the soul's voice in a heart made alive by love." It's still hard for me to read some of these things. That experience you just talked about relates to another question, I think, where you said, "How do you know that your heart has been awakened?" Is that part of the process? Walton: Yes. I was aware in the early stages that something was different. Whether we publish or not, I think it's of great value for any of us to write and journal about our experience. Maybe it's just writing on a scrap of paper and throwing it away, maybe it's something you don't want anybody else to ever read again or see again. Writing is a part of the healing process. I have a friend, a grief expert, who says, "Give sorrow words." Give sorrow words. Whether you speak them or write them or both. My friend, Dr. Janice Winchester-Nadeau, taught me a lot about grief throughout the years. We did a series of interviews some years ago about grief and loss, understanding that loss is a wound, that grief is healing and how to make a healthy grief journey. This whole process is from the beginning of our awareness of love's cost to that dark night when we realize the cost of our loving, and in the end having no regrets. We can awaken our hearts without bypass surgery. Walton: Absolutely. Very much so. The other way you can talk about awakening our hearts is to go back to the phrase of some years ago: "Light one candle." Within the last five years, I was in one of the local chain gas stations, and there was a young gal in there who had run out of money. Her father was on the phone. She had no money or credit card for gas and obviously she couldn't buy gas. So, I bought her $10 worth of gas. She got back on the phone and later I got a wonderful note in the mail from her father. There are different ways to awaken a heart. An act of kindness is the most powerful. Maybe it's holding a door for somebody or letting somebody else go first to the stop sign. I think the world we've created wants to dehumanize us. One of many weird ironies that we have to deal with every day is to find a way to stay human in the world that we've created that wants to make us less than we are. For more information on Brad Walton and the book How Does the Heart Know Love? visit www.howdoestheheart.com or e-mail howdoestheheart@yahoo.com. Books are available at Border's, and Bound to Be Read on Grand Avenue, St. Paul. Order them for $10, which includes mailing costs, by check to Brad Walton, Box 120321, St. Paul, MN 55112, or by credit card by calling 1 (800) 901-3480 or (651) 642-9241. Tim Miejan is editor of Edge Life magazine. Contact him at (651) 578-8969, toll-free 1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail editor@edgelife.net Copyright © 2004 Tim Miejan, all rights reserved. Dec 2004