When the heart breaks open

This morning I woke with a heaviness in my heart that can only be described as heartbreak.

My heart aches for the world and all who suffer – especially the innocent beings caught in the throes of war. And while I recognize that the world's current geopolitical and environmental issues appear insurmountable and would explain this feeling of heartbreak, for me, feeling this deeply is not new. If you've been following me for any length of time, I suspect this is true for you as well.

Even as a young child, I deeply felt the sorrows and the joys of those around me. I was attuned to the intense emotions flowing through me and often overwhelmed by them. My tender heart yearned for everyone to feel the love I sensed beneath all the suffering. This was a love I could not adequately describe, for it encompassed far more than my little world could fathom. Yet to me, it was absolutely real and true.

I was called a sensitive child…overly emotional because I would break down in tears watching others hurt (even if the situation had nothing to do with me). These breakdowns would worry my mother and frustrate my father so much so that they simply told me to stop. While they didn't tell me to stop feeling, they told me to be quiet, to keep my feelings to myself. I recognize now that they were simply living in the pattern that had been played out for so many lifetimes - they did not have the language or means to understand me.

Gradually, in order to seek the love I was yearning for everyone else to feel, I adapted to fit into their idea of what love looked like…I became the good girl, the quiet girl who, when the feelings around me became too much, I distracted myself and turned away from feeling that deeply. I lived in the shallows.

When the ones you love can't meet you where you are, you adapt to survive. Yet the heart continues to resonate at the frequency it was born into.

Despite my best efforts to quiet my feeling body, the messages, the images, the symbols would arrive. Sometimes gently, like a leaf flowing in the wind, landing at my feet. At other times, like a tornado causing disruption and chaos. As I grew older and embarked on my own life, I felt like two people, one connected to a higher knowing that emanated from my heart, the other caught in the mind of logic and analysis. Both are needed. Yet I was swinging between the duality of each aspect of my beingness, and I felt 'crazy'…

It showed up in my life as feeling like an imposter depending on who I was with.

I felt ungrounded in my choices.

I was being shown what needed to change in my life, yet I was reluctant to trust my heart (and let go of my ego's stories).

The crack between my two ways of being in the world was torn open with the rupture of my marriage. In my heartbreak, I was brought back to myself; to remember the truth beneath all appearances…that the LOVE I felt and sensed as a child still held me despite the outward appearance of my life. 

This is LOVE that holds us all - in everything. It is a love that is ineffable yet real. 

I will admit that I sometimes forget this, and I feel ashamed. And it is with the current state of the world around me; I feel the deep agonizing sorrow, the fear, and uncertainty of war, of climate change, and all the ways these events also remind me how precious this life is. How love is still here even if many of us don't see it the way we'd like to, it's still here inviting us back into our heart where we can feel it fully as both sorrow and joy.

Love is not simply Cupid and heart-shaped candies.

Love is unequivocal and tangible by how we bring it INTO the world.

As my heart breaks, I am aware that it is cracking open to remind me to FEEL deeply and to offer my love in devotion to those who suffer. There are those that say love is not enough. I would offer that love is what aligns our feelings into thoughts and actions.  

This universal love comes in many forms. Today it came through in my prayers. It comes through making a nourishing soup for a friend, who is in the initiation of chemotherapy. It comes through in the way I tend my own life to FEEL and SEE with an open heart rather than a shielded one.

In the moments when the world feels overwhelming, when we've forgotten what is real and true…ask yourself, "What would love do?"

What can you do today to be the love you seek in the world?

How can you let your heart crack open to feel more deeply?

Our hearts break and crack open to let love in…this is Divine wisdom.