Valerie Plame is the real life protaganist of the new movie Fair Game. Plame is the CIA agent who had her identity revealed by Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby - or he took the fall for it, at least - to get back at her husband, Jo Wilson, who publicly refuted certain claims the Bush government was relying on to justify the invasion of Iraq.

There is a scene where Plame recounts an experience whilst undergoing training for the Agency where she, with a small number of others, was taken, isolated and then tortured - including sleep deprivation and beatings - in an effort to get her to divulge information about her classmates. Their intention was to find her breaking point.

Plame was the only one of the group to keep her silence. This led her to believe that she had no breaking point. She believed this for twenty years.

Until quite recently I would have said the same about myself. I was raised to believe everything could be overcome and healed through the application of Divine Love through prayer. Until I was 47 this was how my life worked. And it worked well.

I had a certain strength, which I took for granted, from being able to manage and direct my life according to my desires and being able to find a significant level of healing and peace in every aspect - relationships, work, money, and health. It worked so well I was fairly convinced that I could pretty much handle anything life had to throw at me.

Then Ian died.

Ian was the love of my life for 20 years. It was my greatest fear to be forced to live life without him. We were both (relatively) young, both healthy and both living well. It never occurred to me that anything would change. In fact when, twelve years ago, Ian expressed his fear that he had cancer - it turned out to be an infection that the doctors had trouble diagnosing - I laughed in his face.

Such was my confidence that I had the prescription for a long, happy and healthy life. I thought I was unbreakable, and I literally laughed in the face of the Grim Reaper that tapped me on the shoulder that day. He went away, but only temporarily. He came to collect on May 7, 2005.

Ian’s sudden and shocking death brought me to my knees - physically, emotionally and spiritually. I had to rebuild myself, my life, and my life philosophy almost from scratch. It has been a slow and gradual process. I have had to face up to stuff in myself I never knew was there. It has been painful, devastating and almost too much to bear.

But now I have constructed a new life, and a new sense of self. Every brick in these new structures has been fired by love, compassion and forgiveness. I now feel a compassion for others that I had never felt before because I could not relate to the pain of others. I had never felt it, till now.

Like Valerie Plame, I now know I have a breaking point. But that’s a good thing, because with the breaking, the light of compassion got in.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on November 30, 2010.