This is for the Brokenhearted

Via Shawna Turner
on Jan 31, 2017

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This is for the brokenhearted—for those who are here, yet again, wondering if it will ever get any easier.

For those who wonder if they’ll ever have the courage to try again. For the ones who say, “There’s just got to be a point when your heart has been broken too many times to put it back together.”

Before you give up, have one more cup of tea. Before you give up, try cutting off your hair, cleaning your closets, pruning your plants. Nature gives us these beautiful reminders that in order to grow, old leaves and split ends just must go.

I know this hurts. I know it’s already been months, and it’s not getting any easier, and you’re starting to wonder if it ever will. I’m not here to tell you that it will be okay. I’m not here to tell you that you should be shielding your broken heart or rushing yourself to heal to make others more comfortable.

You’re devastated. Disappointed. Angry. Sad. Fearful. I’m sure you’re so full of all of these things that there isn’t any room for joy right now. You cry in your coffee. I know this, because I’m here too.

And this is okay. It’s just got to be okay. I’m not here to tell you any differently.

What I’m asking you is this—before you give up, go for a walk. Go out dancing. Try writing. Meditate. Do something good for yourself, for no other reason than to take care. Because this pain—while it is universal and widespread—in this moment, it is yours alone. No one can take it from you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t dare. Not because I don’t love you, but because I do—and because I love you, I want you to feel it all. Right down into the pit.

Because what we know is this—the barrenness of winter is always followed by the bounty of the spring

I know you’re worried that the harshness you’re experiencing, this wall you’re building, won’t ever fall down and you won’t be as soft as you once were. You may be right. You will be changed—of course you will, sweet darling—as a broken heart breaks more than just the center of your chest. All of you falls apart. And pieces of you are left strewn about the apartment, the streets, the ocean. We leave little bits of our broken selves scattered among the wind.

And this is the way that it must be—to be stripped bare. And not only of the love that you have lost—that person, their smell and smile and every f*cking freckle you can trace on their skin—no, it is not only that loss that you must bear, my beauty, but also a dissolution of all the hopes and dreams that you wrapped this package around. All of the ideas you held so dearly around what it meant to be loved by this one and how this was all supposed to turn out. Because from this depth, from this place of “all is lost,” you get to rebuild. And in this re-building you get to choose. I know it seems scary, but really there is so much freedom for you.

I hope you can see this, and if you can’t see it quite yet, I hope you will at least have a little faith. Out of the depths, there is this beautiful opportunity to rebuild—and in this rebuilding you get to choose. You get to choose what you bring back into your life, which ideas are better left in the ash, and which powers you are ready to cultivate and call your own.

Before you give up, go for a drive, walk along the water, hike into the forest. Let her hold you. You may not feel it quite yet, but I promise you, there is love.

~

Author: Shawna Turner

Image: Author’s own, via Kayla Rocca

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

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