Shortly after I started 5th grade, my teacher sent home a note that changed everything. “Mary Helen,” she wrote, “is falling asleep in class. Please see that she gets enough sleep so she is ready to learn.” My mother accompanied me to school the following day, took one look at my last-row desk next to the hot radiator and told me she would find a new school. Weeks later I was enrolled in a private school known for its academic excellence. I’d tested in, so I must have been smart enough ... and by the looks of photos I was happy. But the class bullies descended on me just days after I started and it wasn’t long before the their words had beaten the spunk right out of me. My mother had no idea how to help me so I was left on my own, which is to say I was lost. Alone. You could even say abandoned, if you feel it’s the responsibility of parents and schools to protect their children. Believing that who I was was absolutely notokay, I set about creating a new persona by asking everyone, in one way or another, “who do you want me to be?” As you can probably imagine, that got me into a whole lot of trouble, and trauma compounded. Trauma, you ask? Yes. Bullying creates trauma, and if you need stats to back it up, there are studies galore about how trauma follows and impacts children throughout their lives. That's because if trauma isn’t healed, it compounds. By my early 30s I was angry, rebellious, depressed, and suicidal. I later learned that trauma had sliced a schism between the left and right hemispheres of my brain. And it all began with bullying. Finally, when I was 38, I married Bill Rossi, a man with the wisdom and patience to help me learn about my heart. I was a difficult case because the trauma had become so deeply ingrained, but after decades of work I healed. I have written this book to share what I now know: your heart is your superpower. Call it clichéd, trite, or corny, but I know that if you join forces with your heart, you will be able to deal with whatever life throws your way. Your heart will even heal you, if that’s what you need. I am certain that if children learn to trust their heart early on they can bypass a lot of suffering. Bill used to say that today’s so-called gurus “make a mountain out of a molehill.” To me, learning to trust your heart is the essence of all spiritual paths. The practice I developed with him is a simple, practical, hands-on way to do that, a practice that will lead you to your innate happiness. How to Trust Your Heart When Things Get Hard is (hopefully) the first book in The Magic Heart series to communicate that practice. This practice is based on the teachings of Brahmagna Ma and Ramana Maharshi, saints who taught Advaita Vedanta in the early 1900s - a tradition that states that only the Devine exists. My experience is that this world is simply a process in the Devine; I like to think of it as a process of evolution. I am so grateful to Shri Brahmagna Ma, Ramana Maharshi, and Bill.
