The Heart Never Breaks
Last night a friend told me that the heart never breaks; it’s just the shell around it that does. I had never thought about it quite like this, but I love this perspective. What she meant was that every painful loss, every unreciprocated love story, every earnest tear and primal scream of rage cracks the cage around our heart a little more, and through those cracks, we expand. We allow our love to flow with greater force and freedom outward where before it had been trapped inside us. (Are you thinking of the Grinch? Because I am…)
After my ex-husband and I separated, I walked around with this ache I didn’t recognize as love. I had loved him for 11 years, and while ultimately we wanted different things for our lives, that love was still there. It’s just that now, it was no longer welcome to flow where it had been flowing. I tried to find a place for it all to go, a sole recipient who could handle that tidal wave, but I’m a lot to handle for any one person! And in truth, I probably wasn’t ready to receive back the kind of love I wanted most, that uniquely beautiful unconditional love. I felt the resistance to putting my attention all in one place; I felt my heart break again, the force of that love backing up and cracking me open a little further. Through the cracks, I found new places where I could let that love out. I fumbled around in the dark for hearts who were open to my unique brand of weird witchy love, and again and again, I found extraordinary people who opened themselves up to me, who even returned this love in kind.
I found a friend who trusted me to hold her and stroke her hair because my hands were missing the privilege of touching another person. I found a friend who thought my love was worthy enough to link arms in creating a support group for other holistic healers even when I had doubts that what I had was worth sharing. I found a friend who thought my witchiness was fascinating, was even worth learning more about, and who now delights in talking with me about spells alongside his passion work as a psychologist.
I let little streams of love out through the newly formed cracks in my chest, not tidal waves, but gentle currents. I let it flow to my dog, my family, my friends, my co-workers, and I also let that love flow right back to me. I dance to music in my car, allowing myself to love my body through the pleasure of this movement. I have dinner alone at the bar, finding pleasure in the myriad sensory delights and in my own company. I pursue work that sets my soul on fire because I have faith that if it feels this right to me, it must be worthwhile for someone else too.
I stopped trying to hold love back out of fear that I would meet resistance again. I found that the way I learn where my energy is welcome is to send it out and see what happens. Sometimes it isn’t welcome or it isn’t welcome yet, and I feel the ache in my chest again, the familiar breaking open, but now I know that this is just how I find new places for it go. It’s always a risk to let ourselves love, but it’s always a risk worth taking.
It takes great courage to love; in fact, the Latin root of the word courage is “cor” meaning “heart.” Leading with and following our heart is achy and scary and hard, but it is also beautiful, magickal, and the most fulfilling part of being a human I’ve discovered yet. Each day that I ask for courage, that I ask for a channel by which to send my love out, I feel this extraordinary meshwork of streams and rivers and currents grow. I think this is how we find our way back to the infinite sea of love we came from.
One day I know that when my web is vast enough, I will be ready to receive the unconditional love of a partner capable of giving and receiving this kind of love himself. I’ll be able to trust that the love I receive will flow through me and out the many channels I’ve built and nurtured with courage and care. I won’t be afraid of the force of that kind of love getting trapped in a tightly caged ball in my chest and breaking me open. I am never not broken, and therein lies my beauty. Through every break we build a safe place for love to flow.