I am dedicating my show Tuesday to Whitney Houston.

LINK to Blog Talk Radio Feb. 14, 2012

On Saturday, the day that she died, I was feeling sad all day. The weather outside was cold and the sky was a gloomy gray that cast a mournful spell over everything. I felt groggy, as if I couldn’t quite wake up. It wasn’t until that night that I heard the news of Whitney’s death. But then my mood made sense to me. Because we have the ability to be as tuned in as we want to be, to anything that is happening on the planet (or off – if that’s the case), and I think I may have tuned into the mournful cries of the angels out in the city of Los Angeles.

And yes, as someone mentioned on Twitter, Whitney Houston and quite a few Syrians died on Saturday. This is not to diminish anyone’s death, but Whitney was an icon of the music industry and her voice and what she did with her life affected millions of people.

I felt very sad about what I presume will be called an accidental overdose. But as I began watching some of her videos, the older ones as well as the newer ones, I realized what happened. Or what didn’t happen, I should say. Because she never got beyond her personality. She didn’t make it to soul consciousness. And then I listened to her song, “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” and I knew it was going to be the right thing to address on my show Tuesday. Where in fact do broken hearts go?

My show is called The Nancy Who Drew, which is the title of my memoir, and the theme is Sacred Betrayal. My motto is, Betrayal is Sacred when the Heart can encompass the Whole. And I mean that. I mean that with all my heart. It’s a deep topic, a complex subject. It’s the kind of consciousness that doesn’t happen overnight. How could it? The heart has to encompass the whole. Which to me means the smaller self has to let go in order to discover the Higher Self. The Higher Self, or the Soul, the part of us that knows everything. That knows why we chose a certain kind of life. Why we chose the particulars of what happened.

We have to see ourselves as powerful beings. We need to develop a healthy ego. That too, is part of our journey. As Whitney sings the lyrics, I will never walk in anyone’s shadow. That was obviously important to her. Part of her knowing the I AM. But she sings about her personality surviving, dealing with setbacks. Sure, the body survived. And the psyche survived, intact in some ways, not so much in others. But unless the higher light is allowed to filter in with all its Grace and Power, and unless the Personality surrenders to a greater force, God, or a Supreme Being, or Source Energy – or whatever you choose to call it – there can be no healing. No getting over it or putting it behind you, because these falls, these betrayals, this pain that seems unbearable, happens for a reason. We have called it to us. As Khalil Gibran so beautifully puts it in The Prophet:

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for you pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

We have called it to us.

It was last week when I decided to call my show The Rose in the Fire. I was looking for material about dealing with the pain of love. I knew my show would be on Valentine’s Day, and since my subject matter is not the usual kind of happy love we like to think of on that day, I went to Marion Woodman’s book, Dancing in the Flames. “The Rose in the Fire” is the title of one of her chapters.

Whitney Houston was a rose in the fire, and she allowed it to consume her. Her beauty and her voice will remain with us always.