Strong-Hearted Beth and her son Adam Dancing at Her Birthday

I first learned about the 4-chambered heart when we enrolled our son in a therapeutic boarding school. It had been a 14-year journey trying to find help for my struggling child and I was exhausted. As I was beginning to pick up the pieces of my life I also picked up Angeles Arrien’s book, The Four Fold Way. And there it was–in the chapter on the Healer and love and “Paying attention to what has heart and meaning” — the beginning of real healing.

Angeles, a cultural anthropologist, shares that many indigenous cultures feel the Four Chambered-Heart is the source for sustaining emotional and spiritual health. Your heart must be full, open, clear and strong. Where you are not Full-Hearted, you are Half-Hearted. And where you are not Open-Hearted, you become Closed-Hearted. Confusion is the result when you lack a Clear-Heart.

I acknowledged each of these wounded chambers of my heart, but was most saddened to recognize that I had become Weak-Hearted. I had always prided myself on my Strong Heart…especially in my ability to courageously fight for my children. But it seemed I was in heart-failure and I began to seek ways to mend.

It was a “power song” that touched my heart the most. On those down days when I knew that a good cry would cleanse my weary heart, I would play Keep On Strong Heart by Libby Roderick over and over again until I felt restored.

Over the years, I’ve discovered many things that are real and true about the heart. It is resiliant. It can be broken…shattered into a million pieces and, somehow, if we are open, strong, clear and full the heart will heal. And as with broken bones, it will knit together and be stronger than it was before being broken. Keep on, strong heart!

Beth Black is the Founder of Cherokee Creek Boys School, a therapeutic boarding school for middle-school boys, ages 11-15, located in Upstate South Carolina.