This week our Notable Orthodox Woman is Lyn Breck, a psychologist, nurse, mother, author and the wife of ethicist and theologian, Fr John Breck. Lyn was born the day after Pearl Harbor, in 1941, in northern NJ. She was one of five siblings growing up in a family struggling with alcoholism. After high school, Lyn studied nursing at Cornell University and met Yale Divinity student John Breck, on a double date. The two married and the Brecks moved to Germany– where they started a family while John worked toward a PhD. On a research trip to Switzerland, the couple met Fr Boris Bobrinskoy, a professor at St Sergius Institute in Paris, who introduced them to Orthodoxy. A few years later, Lyn and John and their two sons were chrismated into the Orthodox Church in France. From Paris the family moved to Kodiak, Alaska, where John taught at St Herman’s Seminary, during which time he was also ordained as a priest. While in Alaska, Lyn worked as a nurse in the maternity ward of the Kodiak hospital. In her work, Lyn saw firsthand the struggles the native Alaskan people faced, particularly with alcoholism. Drawing on her own background, Lyn began working in counseling at a local clinic. When the family moved back to France a few years later, Lyn continued to pursue this line of work and got a degree in psychology. Fr John meanwhile taught at St Sergius. In the early 1980s, Fr Thomas Hopko convinced Fr John and Lyn to move to St Vladimir’s Seminary in NY. After moving back to the United States, Lyn became a licensed psychotherapist and began working with people struggling with addiction. She also began speaking about issues facing women in the church, as well as working with priests’ wives. It was during Lyn’s years at SVS, that iconographer Heather MacKean met Lyn. In Heather’s words:
“I met Fr. John and Lyn Breck around 1981 when I was studying iconography at St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
While working at SVS, Lyn and Fr. John recognized that the priesthood could cause a lot of strain on priests and their families. After 12 years they left the seminary and founded the Saint Silouan Retreat Center on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina. Here they created a space where primarily clergy and their families could go on retreat in a beautiful natural setting staying in one of the two simple cottages on the property. This was a place where people could rest, regroup, study, pray, attend services if they wanted to in the little chapel, and deal with some of their issues in a safe environment where Fr. John and Lyn were always available for counseling and help.
For years, every time I would teach an icon painting workshop in Tallahassee, Florida, which was generally twice a year, I would stop by there on my way back to the West Coast for a week or more to spend some time with them.
From her experience, Lyn believed that a lot of people who have had traumatic childhoods try to deal with this pain as adults by going into the helping professions, of which the priesthood is no exception. She understood that if people did not thoroughly face and successfully deal with their childhood trauma, they could not be good pastors. Each of us needs to be in touch with our own woundedness as a person to be an effective counselor for other people, hence the expression ‘wounded healer.’
Lyn felt that St Vladimir’s Seminary could focus more on this when training priests, and avoid much pain as a result. So she and Fr. John promoted this approach at St. Vladimir’s and were a big influence on Fr. Thomas Hopko, who wholeheartedly embraced these ideas during his leadership of the seminary in the 1990s and early 2000s.
She was also an expert on alcoholism and other addictions, and with her husband co-wrote Stages on Life’s Way: Orthodox Thinking on Bioethics. In it, she describes her vision of a recovery-oriented church:
“When problems do occur within a parish community, they need to be addressed immediately. This is particularly true of sexual misconduct within churches, seminaries, and monasteries… Perpetrators, victims, and their families, together with the entire community, are in need of healing when sexual misconduct does occur.
“A significant number of people who were sexually abused in church settings have been revictimized by the Church when ecclesiastical lawyers have advised hierarchs to have no contact with those bringing the allegations. In some cases, victims of sexual abuse and their families have resorted to lawsuits to seek restitution, although, for the most part, they would have been content to receive from a bishop or priest an acknowledgment of the abuse (validation), together with sufficient monetary assistance to cover the costs of therapy. It is standard procedure to require a gag order for victims who settle with the Church out of court. This practice not only reinforces the ‘don’t talk’ rule; it also perpetuates a sense of shame and abandonment in victims and their families.
“As a result of these pressures–denial, enabling, co-dependency–the local church, like the family, can become an unsafe place, unwilling to break the silence, unwilling to take steps toward developing education tools and policies needed to minister adequately and faithfully…
“A recovery-oriented church is willing to establish an open dialogue on any subject that affects its members. It is concerned to protect its children, whatever the cost, by establishing and implementing policies that ensure the safety of all.”
In 1983, while the Brecks were still living at St. Vladimir’s, I attempted to be a nun at a monastery in upstate New York. This did not go as planned, as the monastery had an unhealthy, abusive environment. The Brecks had bought a cottage nearby and used to go there for services when they were in town. Lyn recognized the problems of the community immediately. When they would visit, she used to walk by me and slip little notes into my hand, which helped me to see what was going on and what was happening to me.
Finally, after 4 years, I left. And when I did, Fr. John and Lyn immediately reached out to me. They befriended me and Lyn helped me to find a good therapist. I had been severely abused as a child but had completely blocked it from my memory until I was in my mid-thirties. Living in this abusive environment for four years forced my mind to start unlocking memories of my childhood that I had been burying. Lyn was instrumental in helping me find the help I needed.
Lyn was never my therapist, although I did attend one of her workshops on Wadmalaw Island. She was an impressive therapist. She could help people that nobody else could help because she combined a thorough knowledge of human psychology with prayers for her clients.
I saw a few times where she knew by the Holy Spirit what people needed. She also never stopped growing as a therapist, always seeking out new therapeutic techniques that might be useful.
She herself had a traumatic childhood and she was very thorough in exploring what had happened to her. She knew that if you didn't face the stuff in your history, it not only affects all your relationships and your ability to lead a healthy life as an adult, but it affects you spiritually. She was still on that path the last time I communicated with her.
She also loved to do things that sometimes scandalized people, like taking tap dancing (which people frowned upon because she was the wife of a priest) or taking figure skating or violin lessons. She was always trying to learn new things. She turned one of the sheds on Wadmalaw Island into a little art studio and asked me a few times to teach icon painting workshops there.
She liked to write and published a couple of books of poetry and meditations. She also wrote fairy tales and encouraged others to do so as a way of helping people understand their history. I illustrated a couple of her books that were meditations on different aspects of her life in Christ.
Lyn also played a role in the recognition of one of our American saints. One of her patients, Bess Chakravarty–who was a catechumen at the time–had the first vision of Matushka Olga. Bess lived in New York, far from native Alaskan culture. In Bess’ vision Matushka Olga came to her and, in a gentle Yupik manner, helped her process and heal from sexual abuse. (Bess was also a friend of mine. We had been in therapy together and I had recommended Lyn to her when she was looking for another therapist.)
After her vision, she ordered (sight unseen) an icon of St. Olga, but realized after it arrived that it was not the same Olga that had come to her in her vision. Fr. John had been a priest in Alaska, so when Bess described her vision to Lyn, she suggested it sounded like the mother of one of her students at St. Herman’s Seminary. This family sent Bess a group photo of all the Native Alaskan women standing together to see if she could pick out the woman in her vision. She recognized Matushka Olga instantly, and Olga’s youngest daughter cut a tassel from a pair of mukluks that her mother had made and her brother sent it to Bess so she could hold something of hers. Lyn had immediately recognized that Bess’ vision was genuine. As a result, she asked me to make an icon of Matushka Olga very early on, which she kept in her prayer corner–and her gradual recognition as a saint began.”
Fr. John and Lyn are now retired and live next to the Pokrov Monastery in Bussy-en-Othe, France. They have two sons and three grandchildren.