Heartbreak
"Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, it might be asking us to look for it and make friends with it..."
I will not soon forget the first book written for women that I read more than thirty years ago. It was called "Women Who Love Too Much". At the time I worked in a high end men's clothing store and lived in Lake Shore Drive on the 35th floor. I should have known that the reason I was reading this book was because something about loving too much resonated for me and I'd just gotten a divorce from a long term marriage. While on my ride on the bus to work this book became the reason that women could not resist starting a conversation with me and at the very least making a positive comment about the book I was reading. The truth is that I don't recall most of the book but I am sure that it had to do with how women love men who don't love them back or honor them. I too knew what that was like because much of my life that was my story. I was that child who wanted to be loved and would do anything to be loved and accepted. For a long time I carried this myth about how I would be OK if someone would just love me enough. I not only found out differently I found out that heartbreak is inevitable and that as much as I tried to avoid it, I too would be hurt by love and most of all by loss.
When we don't receive the love we should have gotten nor the nurturing parenting we all need we grow up looking to be completed by someone else. Everyone is better than us and more equipped than us in a world where we think ourselves less than others. In this world not only will we experience heartbreak we will select people who will likely hurt us. When we think ourselves less than others this opens the door for others to use us and to play out their own pain and disfunction on us. Although heartbreak is a natural part of life and there will be endings and disappointments along the way there is a difference between normal love and loss and a repeated replay of relationships with people where we are the slave and they are our master. This will happen to us repeatedly until we trust in ourselves and know we are worthy of better.
This being said, normal heartbreak is something none of us will be able to avoid. All of us will experience the start and end of many situations and people in our lives, including our own life, since all of us will die. Nothing we do will avoid some of the necessary losses in our life. We will see loved ones transition and we will lose spouses, sometimes someone who we perceive takes that person from us. Yet in real life we must embrace the fact that our hearts will be injured over and over again and that thing that we can hope for is that we will see it in a way that allows us and gives us permission to continue to live a joyful life. We have heard repeatedly that love hurts and the truth is that it does. The thing about love is that we cannot avoid being hurt because if we choose to love we are always risking some amount of hurt, at times the hurt that keeps us together once we overcome the hurt and we forgive.
If we worry about our heart being broken we may never love in a way that is truly authentic. If we worry about being hurt we might never love again. If we are stuck on the fact that love will end as it sometimes does we will not open our hearts to a love that may motivate us to dance to life. For it is heartbreak that is the one thing we will never avoid whether it involves our children, our co-workers, lovers or friends. It is how we address that pain that will help to propel us forward and allow us to forgive and have a new experience. This is why making friends with heartbreak makes more sense than fighting it. This is a good reason to embrace what is natural in life knowing fully that we will find our spirit again and again.
I will not soon forget the first book written for women that I read more than thirty years ago. It was called "Women Who Love Too Much". At the time I worked in a high end men's clothing store and lived in Lake Shore Drive on the 35th floor. I should have known that the reason I was reading this book was because something about loving too much resonated for me and I'd just gotten a divorce from a long term marriage. While on my ride on the bus to work this book became the reason that women could not resist starting a conversation with me and at the very least making a positive comment about the book I was reading. The truth is that I don't recall most of the book but I am sure that it had to do with how women love men who don't love them back or honor them. I too knew what that was like because much of my life that was my story. I was that child who wanted to be loved and would do anything to be loved and accepted. For a long time I carried this myth about how I would be OK if someone would just love me enough. I not only found out differently I found out that heartbreak is inevitable and that as much as I tried to avoid it, I too would be hurt by love and most of all by loss.
When we don't receive the love we should have gotten nor the nurturing parenting we all need we grow up looking to be completed by someone else. Everyone is better than us and more equipped than us in a world where we think ourselves less than others. In this world not only will we experience heartbreak we will select people who will likely hurt us. When we think ourselves less than others this opens the door for others to use us and to play out their own pain and disfunction on us. Although heartbreak is a natural part of life and there will be endings and disappointments along the way there is a difference between normal love and loss and a repeated replay of relationships with people where we are the slave and they are our master. This will happen to us repeatedly until we trust in ourselves and know we are worthy of better.
This being said, normal heartbreak is something none of us will be able to avoid. All of us will experience the start and end of many situations and people in our lives, including our own life, since all of us will die. Nothing we do will avoid some of the necessary losses in our life. We will see loved ones transition and we will lose spouses, sometimes someone who we perceive takes that person from us. Yet in real life we must embrace the fact that our hearts will be injured over and over again and that thing that we can hope for is that we will see it in a way that allows us and gives us permission to continue to live a joyful life. We have heard repeatedly that love hurts and the truth is that it does. The thing about love is that we cannot avoid being hurt because if we choose to love we are always risking some amount of hurt, at times the hurt that keeps us together once we overcome the hurt and we forgive.
If we worry about our heart being broken we may never love in a way that is truly authentic. If we worry about being hurt we might never love again. If we are stuck on the fact that love will end as it sometimes does we will not open our hearts to a love that may motivate us to dance to life. For it is heartbreak that is the one thing we will never avoid whether it involves our children, our co-workers, lovers or friends. It is how we address that pain that will help to propel us forward and allow us to forgive and have a new experience. This is why making friends with heartbreak makes more sense than fighting it. This is a good reason to embrace what is natural in life knowing fully that we will find our spirit again and again.
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