Surviving a Broken Heart: Moving Forward with Grief

           Remember what the Tin Man said in the “Wizard of Oz” after he finally got a heart….  “Now I know I've got a heart because it’s breaking.”  When someone we love dies, our heart breaks.  Depending on the relationship, that break can be from moderate to intense, from mild hurt to severe pain, from manageable to completely overwhelming.  So, how to you live with a broken heart? The answer isn’t how you fix it or "get over" it.

            The skill is learning to live with your grief in this "new normal".  Your life has been changed.  If the relationship was a close one, such as a spouse or child, your life has been profoundly changed.  Learning to live with the grief is the way you honor your loved one.   

            With enough healing, living with heartbreak can become manageable and perhaps even natural. From my personal experience, I can tell you that as you embark on your healing journey, you’ll start crying a whole lot more.  When I was younger, I worried that I had a "hard heart".  I rarely cried even at times when I thought I should.  Yet, now I cry not just out of pain, but for the simplest of everyday reasons, and out of nowhere.  I've cried over finding a package of Big Red gum, because it was his favorite.  I had bought it for him, and now he was no longer here to enjoy it.  I've cried over rainbows, because I believed it to be a sign from my father on the day he died.  I've cried over sunsets and sunrises, the smell of lemons, and even smaller things. Random things will make you cry.  Grief researchers call these "Grief Washes", and they seem to wash over me at the most uncertain times.   

             The heart is designed to grieve.  It's the love energy releasing itself, because now it has no place to go.  The heart has to grieve to express the love.  It's the price we pay for love. And, the depth of that grief is the depth of love.  I try to remember to be thankful for that love, for that love story. 

              The loss of the life you thought you had, the life you once knew and held so dear.  The loss of a dream you believed was true, but you can also find and feel grief in opening your heart to what the future holds.  It can be so easy to fall prey to our need to be close to them and live in the past.  That's where "they" are.  Yet, life does move forward, whether we want it to or not.  I have often thought that life would be more comfortable and much less complicated if we could just push a pause button when we go through crisis such as grief.  Just stop this Merry-Go-Round called life for a few moments to let us catch our breath.  But, we aren't afforded that luxury. 

              Somewhere along the journey, we have to be willing to feel…..and to live with a broken heart. You are on your own time-line.  Yet, the bottom line is that we can learn to live with our broken hearts by befriending grief.  Just as we chose, embraced and befriended love, we can befriend grief as well.  It's analogous to the idea that we can't appreciate happiness without knowing sadness.  We truly can't appreciate love without knowing grief. 

              You can discover the love that still exists around you…..and share that love with others who are also living with a broken heart.