It came as if in a dream in the middle of the night. I saw myself drawing a heart on a blank page. It was empty, and felt of little significance, and then I looked at it again, it was empty. In that moment I knew something special was about to happen, but I didn’t quite know what.

I have written a lot recently about the terrible struggles I have been having for many months. Living not only with bipolar disorder but a handful of other diagnoses — serious depression, acute anxiety, PTSD — which I have lived with for a lifetime. I am in weekly therapy and have been for years, actually for most of my life. I have been on medication for a very long time but the last year, in the year of Covid, which is now well past a year, something changed. All the medication and therapy in the world haven’t kept me as well as I need to be. Medications have been changed, doses continually changed, still without finding a balanced state in which I could live and feel well in any kind of a sustained way. But today during my medication appointment I had a revelation. I asked the P.A. who has managed my meds for years, a very dear man, a question. I asked, “How much can we expect medication can do in the face of Covid?” And he said, “Precisely.” I do need medication, and my meds were shifted slightly today, but, when in the face of doing everything you can do via therapy and medication you still aren’t well, as many aren’t now despite the best treatment available, what do you do? Simply put you do everything you can, and then you do more. In that moment The Heart Project was born.

I thought back to last night, in the middle of the night, when I saw myself drawing that heart on the blank page. I thought about how our hearts have been so broken in the face of all that has happened in the last year and more, so many lost to Covid, the world situation, the political climate, racial injustice, sexual identity crises, inequality on every level and in every corner of society, and everything else we have endured. In some moments it feels like there is nothing left to hold onto, and yet we are here and if we are to live the best possible life that we can we have to begin to heal our hearts, to recover from what we have been through, what we have lost, and to shore us up for whatever is to come in the time ahead. We have no way of knowing how long Covid will be here, or what will happen thereafter. We need to do something now. And then it came to me.

What if I sent out little notes, teachings, exercises, art, writings, and whatever else came to me to help others rebuild their broken heart, something that they could pass on to anyone and everyone they possibly could. Something not copyrighted, or for sale, just something I give from an open heart? I will be doing other work in my life, writing, art, and perhaps teaching, but this project, The Heart Project, will be centered right here on my website, will go to my Patrons, my mailing list, and all over social media. In this way I will be reaching out a hand to you with no strings attached, simply from a place of love. Are you with me? This is the first thing that came to my mind…

I am back to the moment I drew a heart on a blank page, an empty heart, a heart waiting to be filled. I wondered, how can I fill my broken, aching heart. How can I become whole and well and able to be my best self, living my best life? How might we all? And then I imagined starting by doing an exercise. As I am a creative journal-keeping teacher of 40 years this is my natural medium, but this isn’t a “journal exercise,” though it could be, it is something that I am going to offer to you and you can use it in any way that you see fit, any way that comes to you, writings in a journal, any kind of art making, sewing together patches of hearts to make a heart quilt with each heart having a special quality or image within it, the sky is the limit? And so I drew the heart on a page in my sketchbook, photographed it, and made the graphic above. And now I have drawn another heart, an empty heart, and I will begin to fill it.

How shall I fill it? How shall you fill yours? With anything at all. Make a heart (using writing, art, or any medium that pleases you). Meditate on that empty heart. And now, as you look at it — an empty heart aches to be filled, calls us to fill it — begin to fill it. With words, phrases, quotes, little drawings, collage, glue down tiny scraps of things that feel loving and nurturing, and keep filling it. Every time you think of it, in any way you can. There are no parameters here, no right or wrong, simply whatever arises for you, anything that calls to you. And you can keep it a secret, private project, or you can share it with others, and how lovely it would be to invite others to join you. What if there were circles of people who, for now of course, met virtually in Zoom or some other medium? Or — a radical thought — through actual mail — imagine pen pal type circles where you fill a heart and pass it on? You might be helping someone else with your ideas to fill, to heal, their own heart. You could receive a filled heart (in whatever form) through the mail that might help you. And even holding such a thing in your hands, to your heart, could help heal you in the moment you touch it. I will be sharing mine, as I create and fill them, everywhere. At Patreon first of all, here on my blog, on social media, and wherever else I can think of. Would you like to join me? I’d love it if you did.

And now dear ones I will send out this post, and then begin to fill my first heart. What will it be? What will it say? What will it look like? I don’t know, but I know that it is important that I do so, and now I will begin…

With all the love a heart can hold…. and… Pass it on…