"Healing Your
Wounded Heart with Love"
Healing
from heartbreak is something I know how to do really, really
well.
I've learned
that once you know how to
heal your heart, the process is the same, regardless of the
circumstances.
Marianne
Williamson said, "It is not the love we did not receive in the
past that hurts us. What hurts us is the love we are not
extending in the present."
The place to extend that love
when you've been heartbroken is to yourself.
It took me a long time to learn how to do this. My initial way
of coping was to distract myself and to bury my feelings.
From the time I was 16 and my stepfather came into my
life, I had an eating disorder for the next ten years that did a
really good job of distracting me from the pain I was feeling.
When we've been heartbroken,
one of the things that prevents our healing is resisting what
we're feeling.
In my case, having an eating disorder was a way for me to resist
dealing with my painful feelings.
If I had
known then, what I know now, and had someone to walk me through
the process of healing, I would have saved myself years of
anguish.
It took me a long time to learn
how to embrace and accept what I was feeling,
no matter how unpleasant.
But once I did, it finally allowed me to gradually move
through my feelings and eventually release them.
It didn't happen overnight.
Grieving and healing from
heartbreak is a process,
but it doesn't have to take years, as it initially did in my
case. If you know
the steps, you can recover much more quickly and come out of the
process an even stronger and more loving person than you were
before.
The first step is to bring
yourself to the present moment
and allow yourself to feel whatever it is you're feeling.
John Gray wrote a wonderful book called, "What You Feel,
You Can Heal."
Feeling is the first step in healing.
Allow all your feelings to come
to the surface.
Breathe through
them. If tears come
as well, then let them come.
Tears are very cleansing to the soul and they put us in
touch with our hearts.
Getting in touch with our hearts is a big part of the
healing process, so tears should be welcomed.
The next step is to express
your feelings.
Expressing your
feelings is critical to your healing.
You need to have a space to release whatever is going on
inside of you, without having to be kind, spiritual, or worry
about what someone else is going to think of you.
Through the years, my saving
grace was expressing my feelings in my journal.
Having the outlet of my journal as a safe place to
express all my emotions literally saved my life at times.
Now I have the benefit of a coach as an
additional haven for me to express my feelings.
Only recently have I realized how powerful it is to have
another person acknowledge and witness my feelings and
intentions. Having
that supportive relationship in my life made transitioning
through my last divorce, a thousand times easier than my first
one twenty years ago.
It is essential to have a way
to express all your feelings,
whether that's in a journal or by talking to a friend,
therapist, or coach.
Until those unexpressed, painful feelings are released, you'll
stay stuck.
My grandmother passed away when I was eleven.
It took me ten years to complete the grieving process.
I bottled my sadness up inside me and pretended
everything was fine.
It wasn't until I took two dozen sleeping pills on my 17th
birthday as a loud cry for help that I finally broke down.
I started expressing my grief, releasing what had been
pent up inside me for years, and at last began to heal.
As you become present and start
expressing all the feelings inside you, extend all the love you
have to give, towards yourself.
That is where all your healing begins... with a heart full
of love for yourself.
"You yourself, as much as
anybody in the entire Universe, deserve your love and
affection." - Buddha
