In my previous post, Is Your Heart Closed?, I mentioned that there is a distinction between a closed and broken heart. In order to choose the heart-healing practice most useful, at any given time, it is crucial to know where you are. Are you starting from a closed or broken heart?

Today we explore, a broken heart. It’s easy to immediately focus on the pain and suffering that breaks our heart wide open; before we do that be aware that there are moments of great connection and Love that also open our hearts more fully and deeply. Here are some examples:

• You receive a card, letter, message filled with Love and appreciation and your heart opens and tears may flow.
• You are in awe of nature’s beauty – a sunrise, sunset, a hike surrounded by trees, mountains, water, and ski – takes your breath away and you feel One with all that is.
• While listening to a great piece of music chills surge through your body.
• While making Love you burst into tears as your whole being is overflowing with Love.
• In the presence of a newborn your heart opens fully as you experience the magnificence and mystery of new life.

Heart-healing shines the light of our conscious awareness on the wounds, pain, and suffering. When we are in the throes of heartbreak our awareness is seduced by the people and circumstances that we blame as the cause of our misery.

My heart broke wide open with excruciating pain when Bo ended our relationship via email five days before he was due home. In the midst of this heart break my ability to put one foot in front of another was an accomplishment!

It was decades of mindfulness and spiritual practice that led me to call dear friends immediately and ask if I could spend the weekend with them. I cried, and cried, and cried some more… I felt safe in the cocoon of their home and loving embrace of friendship as disbelief vied with misery for residence in my consciousness. After three days it was time to return home… or what had been my home.

I was greeted with another email,

I should have been more direct in my previous email.

By saying, “I do not want to share my house with you,” I meant that I do not want you there when I return. I am returning this evening.

Please allow me the space of my home.

Thank you, Bo

Whatever sliver of grounded-ness I had mustered, crumbled. ‘F*#k you,’ I thought, ‘you selfish bastard. I’m not leaving until we have a conversation.’ I was raw. I was broken.

The good news was that my commitment to keeping my heart open gave me the courage to enlist Loving support. Unlike a closed heart that uses protection to ward off pain, a broken heart is open, emotions – sadness, hurt, anger, rage, shame, hope, and even love – flow out and through the broken places, the Love of family, friends, pets, teachers, books, music flows in.

Let me be perfectly clear, this heartbreak was unbearably hard. I was angry. I was furious. I was hurt. And, I loved Bo with all my heart. The night he came home was an emotional roller coaster. Tears, yelling, hugging, and words that bounced off the echo chamber of my mind for months, “I can’t be in a relationship with you and follow my dream. You cannot be my girlfriend. I cannot be your boyfriend.”

If your heart is broken right now, whether due to a break-up, death of a loved one, any ending, any loss, heart healing starts with allowing yourself to feel your feelings which may feel devastation. How do you do this?

• Reach out to someone you trust and feel safe with. Someone who will listen to you, hold you and will not rush to tell you what to do, what to say, or even remind you that there is light at the end of this tunnel. Right now you are in a dark place in the tunnel and acknowledging your feelings is the way to move through… For me it was acknowledging feelings over, and over, and over again…
• Write your feelings, write your thoughts (I have written in a journal for about 60 years and as I write I often think, ‘I am making this right.’) Do not censor yourself, this is for your eyes only, unless you choose to share it. Here’s my first journal entry with a reminder to ask for what you need,

Then, I wrote a letter I sent to friends,​

I am empty and heart-broken today, an empty shell – surrounded by the Love of C & F and their pets…

​No cell phone service here – and I don’t have the energy to talk… other than to write and ask for your Prayers to hold me in the Light that I may see my way clear to living a life of Love, kindness and Joy – filled with a feeling of HOME.

I Love You, Susyn

Wherever you are on your heart-healing path – reach out, be vulnerable, be courageous. It is only by truly acknowledging where we are that we can grow, evolve, learn, and allow Love to flourish in our lives.

Leave comments, questions, suggestions in the Comment Section below.

‘Til next time