How to Heal a Broken Heart in 17 Different Ways
Losses and pivotal life changes can make us feel as if our world of familiarity and comfort is crumbling away beneath us, leaving us with a sense of emptiness and shaken emotional instability. However awful these times may seem, they can also offer us the gift of intimately knowing ourselves, and the opportunity to grow and learn.
We are at our most vulnerable, our most creative, and in a sense, our most awake and alive during times of emotional pain. Our sensitivity is heightened, and although many of these feelings are extremely painful, our ability to experience this pain also leaves us open to the possibility of truly feeling everything the world has to offer. Excruciating suffering but also the promise of immense joy.
When we think of healing we often think of taking medications, receiving treatments, or long courses of therapy. We often overlook the importance of the little, comforting things we can do to help nurture ourselves through hard times. Like when an important relationship ends or a loved one passes away. These rituals and small comforts are powerful healing facilitators; we only need the courage to turn to them and to trust that we are on the right path.
Try These 17 Ways to Heal Heartbreak
- Journaling
- Talk to a professional
- Write a letter
- Confide in a family member or loved one
- Read a book or watch a movie
- Get artsy
- Treat yourself
- Self-care
- Letting go
- Try something new
- Get into nature
- Meditate
- Make plans
- Spend time with a pet
- Go with the flow
- Avoid social media
- Trust yourself
About the Author
Sacred Relationships: Beyond Love and Valentine’s Day
Years ago, I taught a class that ended at 9 PM. One night after class, I stopped by a grocery store to buy a couple of items. It was the night before Valentine’s Day and what I saw startled me, but more than that, it made me sad.
Many grocery stores put the greeting card aisle smack dab in the front. Impulse buying is a big part of modern society and very little is as impulsive as buying a greeting card the night before Valentine’s Day. Entering the card aisle isn’t for the meek. An air of tension and fear immediately becomes evident. I always imagine a herd of gazelles, nervously drinking at a waterhole in the middle of lion country. There may not be lions here, but there’s a very real predator, namely, one’s own insecurities regarding love and romance.
Grown men whimper as they desperately search for the perfect card that proves their love, hopefully without offending the recipient. Generations of insidious marketing tactics have convinced most of us that we have neither the time nor the talent, to express ourselves from our hearts, so we pay someone else to do it for us. On more than one occasion, while standing in front of hundreds of homogenized cards, none of them saying what I actually felt, I swore never to stand there again. I came to loathe Valentine’s Day and everything it stood for. I wasn’t alone.
How did a celebration of romantic love and commitment come to mean despair for so many? Certainly, greeting card companies have had a lot to do with this phenomenon, but it really isn’t that simple. Perhaps it has more to do with our insistence at quantifying, institutionalizing, and monetizing something as indefinable, ephemeral, and sacred as love.
The media bullies us into buying diamonds, flowers, new cars, and boxes of chocolates, or risk being labeled as a bad partner. The irony behind all this is that when love is genuine and certain, no tokens are necessary, because hearts communicate to each other in a language as ancient as humanity itself. This is the basis of a Sacred Relationship. Such connections are pure and without conditions implied.
Our ancestors spoke this language fluently and without hesitation. They found no shame in expressing what was within them. Love wasn’t considered a weakness. Rather, it was looked upon as a blessing, a gift bestowed by the Divine as a sacred duty, rite, and gift.
What would the world be without romantic love? It would be inhuman and horribly dull.
Sacred Relationships are the basis of what we think of when true love is expressed. The connection of two souls, united in purpose, is the Alchemical merging of hearts, minds and incarnations. The fiery furnace of passion is the smelter for those who come together to unite as one Sacred Couple, individuals united by the Divine imperative.
Love is a constant, a thread that connects the human experience throughout the ages, like beads of a Mala. It weaves its way through every aspect of our existence, and links us to our ancestors and to those who will follow us on this lovely planet.
