Here and There

Where our heart echoes

“What do you suggest I do with the part of my heart that is still here?” Jessica asked as a tear found a path down her innocent cheek.

By the time her question came, we’d been crying off and on for hours. Two days earlier, she’d told me she was leaving our firm to start a business with her husband, and I was still struggling to make sense of it. We both were.

She joined us out of college, and within weeks, it felt like a match made in heaven. Within months, she’d endeared herself to clients with her old soul and tender warmth. It now felt like a beautiful marriage and seemed longer than three short years. I thought back to our visit to see our oldest client—a 98-year-old widow in San Diego—watching in awe as her conversational curiosity drew out memories of growing up during the Great Depression, raising children in poverty, and pioneering a career in a male-dominated world. Conventional wisdom said I should be teaching her how to engage with clients. Instead, she taught me.

For all of us at the firm, while we valued her technical expertise and planning acumen, her maternal nature crystallized our connection. She’d become a mother of two at home and, without asking, became a mother of ten at work. She initiated new holiday traditions—our favorite being Teamsgiving, a work Thanksgiving before the actual one. She remembered birthdays with gifts that reflected the depth of her seeing. She instilled regular team outings to ensure we etched memories at work, not just at home. If a continuous and loving presence defines motherhood, she embodied it.

We had exchanged vows the way employees and employers do. She said we were her forever firm, her forever family, and said she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. We said she was on track to becoming our youngest partner and entrusted many of our deepest client relationships to her.

Her voice cracked and then failed her. Tears welled in her eyes as she told me the news.

Like a thunderstorm on a clear day, I didn’t see it coming.

Neither did she.

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The morning sun peeked through the drawn shades of the small conference room as the weight of her question enveloped me and settled between us. I bowed my head, searching for an answer equal to its magnitude. I needed it. Just as much as she did. And I wasn’t going to find it in flashes of anger that begged for blame, the frustration that tangled my thoughts, or the false sense of betrayal that tried to rewrite the past. But I might find an answer in the love that refused to leave, the sadness that softened my edges, and the truth that endings don’t erase what was real.

“What do you suggest I do with the part of my heart that is still here?”

I reached inside. What did I do when my heart decided it was time to move from here to there? How did I handle the pain? The discomfort? The disorientation?

I flashed back to my mid-30s when my heart told me it was time to leave the here of a career on the rise, here of my first marriage, here of childhood friends and proximity to parents, for the there of a new job, there of being alone again, and there of more miles from my most meaningful relationships. When asked why by everyone around me, I mumbled, “I don’t know.” And I didn’t.

I flashed back to the summer before my sophomore year of college—the here of Becky; the there of Sharla—and the pain in between. I saw other times when my heart told me it needed to go there, even when part of it still loved being here. I saw how often my mind resisted, demanding evidence, while my heart, content charting a course known only to it, offered none.

My mind returned to our tear-stained cheeks and the raw calm that filled the room. I noticed the spent handkerchiefs on the table beside us, each a testament to her unwavering dedication and devotion. We all loved her. I loved her. It was going to be hard without her.

I glimpsed a future that would no longer come to pass—Teamsgiving without her, the promotion to partner that wouldn’t happen, and our 98-year-old widow, who, along with so many clients, would deeply feel her absence.

I struggled in thought.

She waited.

I saw my backpack on the floor and noticed the black leather-bound journal poking out the top—the one where I capture wisdom from life’s great teachers whenever they visit me. The one with an almost broken spine. The one with frayed pages from decades of new entries and frequent visits to old ones. My head still bowed, I recalled a passage near the front, halfway down a page, written with a dull pencil in cursive, from a time I couldn’t remember.

“God’s first language is silence.” – Trappist monk Thomas Keating

I let go of my thoughts.

Instead, I listened.

I took a deep breath. Then another. Inhaling as much silence as I could.

I exhaled. “Give it space,” I heard myself say, looking up into her blue eyes.

“What do you mean, it?”

“Your heart. Give it space. A lot of space.”

She looked down and tugged at the corner of her tissue, searching for a dry edge.

“Help me understand,” she finally said, looking back up, her eyes meeting mine.

I wasn’t sure I could.

My shoulders rose and fell as I inhaled more silence, hoping it would continue to speak.

“Give it a lot of space. To be here. And to be there,” I said as my chest contracted. “Give your heart a lot of space to be in both. Hearts can live in two places, not just one,” I continued. “Actually, in thousands of places—but only if you let it.”

I heard my words, wondering where they came from. An entry in my journal I’d forgotten about? Somewhere outside? Somewhere within? A depth I hadn’t before inhabited?

Her tears welled up again. She looked into my eyes, searching for understanding. I looked within for the same.

Dust particles floated in the sun’s rays.

“How do I,” she paused, “let it?”

I waited. Stillness refilled the room. I drew some in.

“By allowing your heart to break, even when your pain wants to piece it back together,” I replied. “And by keeping your heart open when every ounce of you wants to close it.”

We sat with the words, feeling their weight. She covered her face with her hands, elbows resting on her legs, and wept. I wept, too.

“But it hurts,” she whispered, her voice catching.

Her anguish made me wish I could say something, anything, to lessen the pain.

“Broken hearts and open hearts are how love spreads—how love grows. As for the pain—it fertilizes the love.”

She whimpered.

I wanted to hug her. Comfort her.

I wondered how her pain felt. I wondered if this was her first heartbreak. I wondered if this was the first time she’d broken a heart to honor hers. I felt pain from my past. When I broke my wife’s heart, calling off our wedding when my heart was scared and stuck here. How, amid the pain, she gave my heart space to get there.

“You can’t separate love from pain. They form the rhythm of the heart,” I said. “And if you keep your heart open and touch lives with your love when you go there, you never really leave here because your love remains, growing in everything and everyone.”

Her lips parted slightly. She paused, letting the silence settle.

“I think,” she said, her voice coming to life, “if love remains behind and I carry love with me, it wouldn’t spread if I never left here for there.”

“Oh… so true.” I smiled. “It takes courage. And faith. And a willingness to befriend the pain.”

We lapsed back into silence. I noticed it felt less raw—more tranquil.

I took another deep breath.

“Here is where we love and learn to let go. There is where we begin again, loving anew,” I said, witnessing the words as they left my lips. “If love and pain form the rhythm of the heart, here and there are the spaces they echo.”

“Ah… I like that. Thank you for giving me something to hold on to.”

I noticed that a twinkle had returned to her eyes, and the smudges of mascara had dried.

“Jessica, I don’t think I’m the one you should be thanking…

Let’s both thank the sacred silence.”

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If you have a story about your journey from here to there and would like it to serve others, please share it in the comments.

If you know someone who could benefit from what the sacred silence had to say, please share freely.

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Thank you, Jessica, for the love you leave here and for allowing me to share our conversation.

Thank you to

Tommy Dixon

for your heartfelt collaboration and superb editing; to

Kathy Ayers

,

Teri Leigh 💜

, and

Rick Lewis

for your valuable feedback; to

Kelly Flanagan

, for your ongoing inspiration; and to

Michael Thompson

for helping me see that a seminal moment can become a beautiful essay.

A final thank you to

Caroline Cala Donofrio

for helping me untangle my thoughts and regain clarity after the shock of Jessica’s news.

If you’d like to read about the space that got me from being stuck here to saying “I do” there, you can find it here (pun intended ☺).

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