Celebrating Bettina
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Memories of Bettina shared by WHC Board Member Ann Hooke:
Starting in 1953, Bettina and I went to private school together and became close friends at that point. During summers, I came to Northeast Harbor to visit her while she was staying with her grandmother. On these trips, we often went out to the family fishing camp on Webb Pond near Ellsworth. Later, she married Ted in 1960 and I was in her wedding along with Janet Reno, her roommate from Cornell. I have many memories from school, many memories from Webb Pond, and memories of her wedding but her connection with the Whole Health Center was years in the future.
Over the years, exchanged letters and saw each other at least once a year, often in Maine but sometimes in Maryland. Her friendship with Janet, her other “best friend” was long and enduring. When Janet became the Attorney General, Bettina worked for her at the Justice Department as Janet’s scheduler. As Ted’s alcohol addiction became more and more problematic and my marriage was also in a rocky place, Bettina and I shared our stories and our pain. By the 1990’s, I had found that massage and meditation both brought me some peace and I urged her to explore both. In late 1993, she and Ted were seeing a divorce lawyer but then he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I have always had enormous respect for her as she was able to do a complete 180 in her relationship with Ted: realizing that he had no memory of all the pain he had caused and that he was emotionally in a very fragile place. In a remarkably compassionate way, she brought Ted to their beloved Webb Pond in June; he was in the final stages of brain cancer.
During that last year, I visited her frequently both in Maryland and in Maine. I was increasingly concerned with how tense she had become. As I had recently discovered the benefits of both meditation and massage, I kept urging her to find someone to work with. I had also become active in a 12- step program for adult children of alcoholics which, of course, brought up discussions with her about the “God” thing. She and I felt alienated by the church of our childhoods and these discussions tended to dead-end very quickly until in Maine, she stumbled on Paul, a massage therapist at the Whole Health Center. His work with her quickly expanded into “mat” work which quickly brought her to a deep place of peace, healing, and light. She was stunned and transformed thanks to Paul’s work with her. Very quickly, she was meditating for an hour a day and seeing Paul regularly. As I too had recently begun to experience spiritual openings, we shared these experiences in joyful amazement! Paul invited her to attend his November Intensive and she showed me the flyer and asked, “Can you imagine anything more powerful and transformational than spending 4 days in silence contemplating the question, “Who Are You?” She asked, “Don’t you want to do it with me?” Well, I did. As the Intensive date approached, Ted was failing rapidly and given days to live. She did the Intensive anyway, had a powerful experience, and Ted did not die until the Thursday following the Intensive.
We did several more Intensives together, each having powerful experiences, and opening ever deeper. During that next year, she went to California to complete the Enlightenment Intensive training for monitors, and quickly changed her role from participant to monitor for most Intensives that Paul mastered. However, during that period, she was often a participant as well, and like two old school pals, we had our fun too. On the Saturday afternoon of an Intensive, I picked up a piece of grass and blew on it to make it whistle. Suddenly from somewhere, I heard my whistle being answered by another. Of course, Bettina and I quickly figured out who the other whistler was!
After Ted died, it was an easy decision for her to move to Maine permanently, to become very involved with the Whole Health Center, and to continue her healing work with Paul, including learning and daily practicing Tai Chi and Qigong. From 1996, she became totally devoted to furthering Paul’s work. As she had computer and excellent writing skills, she became Paul’s right-hand person. For the Center, she taught many writing workshops, taking inspiration from the writings of Natalie Goldberg. These workshops supported for many the transformational work that participants experienced working with Paul. Meanwhile, Paul was himself writing more and more but as he shunned computers, Bettina patiently and with great devotion, typed all of his work including all the revisions for the three books that he published.
For the last twenty years of her life, the Whole Health Center, her family, and her meditation practice dominated her life. The Whole Health Center thrived and she helped Paul and the Center to evolve with the times. When she died in 2016, it quickly became clear that the Center was forced onto a new path of transformation.
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Memories of Bettina shared by Paul:
Bettina Dudley was our other "patron saint" over the years. Bettina helped define The Whole Health Center for many, from shortly after her initial involvement in 1994 through her unexpected death in September 2016. Many knew her as a profound and helpful spiritual presence at many of our retreats; from her own writing-for-self-discovery workshops; or as the email voice of The Whole Health Center – often the first point of connection. Bettina passed away peacefully and entirely unexpectedly, sitting alone in her easy chair, Friday evening, September 23. At 78, Bettina had many health challenges, but she had had a happy and active week and there was nothing to indicate she was ready to go. But her body or her soul knew otherwise. This month, September 2021, is the fifth anniversary of her passing.
We sometimes called her the angel of emptiness, dedicated in her spiritual practice to emptying out the self and to being a clear mirror of service and presence. She was deeply committed to our work here since she first found us in 1994, and made good use of our programs for herself. She participated in a myriad of our True Heart, True Mind Intensives; and before long she was trained to help staff and facilitate them. She served us from “both ends” with rare dedication. On one hand she spent most of these years as President of the Board of our non-profit. On the other, she served also as our volunteer administrative assistant for all our communication and office chores. She took us belatedly into the computer and website age. (This was long before I (Paul) knew how to turn on a computer. We most probably wouldn't have lasted this long without her. I once joked to her that if it were not for her, my life would already be pre-maturely peaceful and un-productive.)
We will also remember Bettina as a great naturalist, writer and poet. Her book Flat Rock Waters is an outstanding collection of poems, several of which we will print below.
each morning I wake to poems
pouring forth.
they rise whole, then scatter,
each word alone,
no longer remembering
how together
they could
have told
of my delight.
Bettina’s Poetry
Forming
The forming
is in the silence.,
the final fire,
and the work between.
I have
been built slowly,
coil upon coil,
smoothed
and scraped and
polished
until
I stand naked,
cleansed of dreams and old
desires,
longing only,
first to be fired,
and then to be used.
To Be An Adult
To be an adult is to be, at last, an orphan, even if your parents have been dead for many years.
It is to grieve for
all that will not be
and still go on.
It is seeing life wholly, neither holding nor turning away. It is accepting
that there is no one to protect you in the dark, and that all you love will pass, if it has not already.
It is to surrender all that you once thought you needed and everything you thought you were. Then, finally, you can stand at the window rejoicing.
First Frost
You always knew it would be like this. You would wake
one morning to
frost on the pines, the smell of coffee, the cat by your side. And you would look at the dawn light,
the rising sun framed by silvered trees, and all would be well.
It may be that this love enters cautiously,
so that we may grow gently accustomed to being none
other than nothing,
and be able to put
down our story with ease
at the end, and move gladly towards the blank, illuminated book of our God.