Your Pain and Suffering can be an opportunity
If anyone knows the burning sensation of love being ripped from their chest, it’s me. And yet, if done with consciousness a simple shift in perspective allows your pain and suffering to become an opportunity to love more deeply. From this vantage point your love can expand along with your awareness and your life. From this open hearted place, you can experience more love, not less. Your love is not being ripped from your chest, your love is expanding to include your experience.
When in the midst of a broken heart it will be most advantageous to gently remind yourself to return to a place of trust. It’s always in your best interest to ask this question:
If this were the best thing that ever happened to me, how would I respond? What actions might I take? What thoughts might I entertain?
Often, it’s only trust (or faith) in a higher power that will get you through your pain. If you remind yourself that there are forces bigger than you…. forces that are on your side… forces that are delivering you to your best life, then you will be able to rest in your faith. You will be able to take actions even in your pain. You may have to remind yourself often that there is something fabulous waiting for you around the corner. Sitting in the unknown is difficult, but when you have faith then your eyes are at least open to the gifts that are on their way.
Only your open heart allows you to give and receive love.
When you are in pain, you may be inclined to close your heart. Some red flags of a closed heart are as follows:
- Blame and Finger Pointing
- Resentment
- Justification
- Anger (You can have anger with an open heart, but it will be a clean and vulnerable anger that doesn’t include any of the other red flags.)
Closing your heart to an someone you love (or once loved) is very painful and most assuredly prevents you from receiving the gifts of that relationship. You may feel a need for protection, but bring consciousness to your choices around how you protect your beautiful heart. There will be a huge difference in your experience if you choose to close your heart because you hurt too much. The pain may seem to go away, but a closed heart will not have room for love to enter.
Healing your heart is a process–grief is a process! And it will take the time it takes.
Choose to heal your heart from the pain and suffering by mining the gifts, learning the lessons, and making the changes you need to make to align with who you are–with the authentic self that is emerging. The other option is to repeat patterns and end up in the same situation again with the same complaints and the same pain and suffering. How many times do you want to do this? And I don’t mean how many times do you want to open your heart to love… the answer to that should only be… “every time.”
If you are experiencing pain and suffering, then you are receiving an invitation from the Universe to change. You have choices in this process. You can be a victim and wallow in self-pity (which might be alright for a time), but at some point you will need to respond to the call of something bigger than yourself. Heal your heart… notice what is being asked of you… take stock of patterns and beliefs that no longer serve you–and change them.
How open should you keep your heart?
Wide open! Not in naivety, but consciously wide open. If you allow your hurts to close your heart in an attempt to protect yourself, then you will never know the joy of fully loving again. If you have a little opening in your heart, you will be only able to let in love a little bit. If you fill your heart with all the evidence and memories of what has hurt you, then you will have a heart filled with suspicion and fear. That is not a very loving way to be with yourself.
Choose to open your heart completely and be the love that you are. Allow love to permeate your experience… even your experience of pain and suffering… even your experience of a broken heart. Allow your love to transform your pain and suffering into opportunity and growth. You deserve nothing but love, but in order to receive it you must heal your broken heart and open to love. Again and again and again.
If you experiencing pain and suffering from a broken heart, you may benefit from relationship coaching. I have complete and total confidence that I can show you how to heal your heart and open to love! Allow me the honor of supporting and loving you beyond your broken heart.
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I agree from personal experience…The most growth I’ve ever had, on the deepest levels, were when my heart was ripped our of my chest at the ending of a relationship, and I spent months in that raw, naked place…then months in that grey place of endless sameness. Seemingly endless days of feeling nothing with vast infinite spaces turning inside. I was having trouble tasting food at work: everything tasted flat.
It wasn’t until months after that, during a particularly fine piece of theater, that I had a brief moment of joy , courtesy of Mercutio’s wit. I realized that that vast, infinite, empty space inside was my capacity to feel, and it slowly started filling up.
It would have been invaluable to have the special kind of support that is the essence of the coaching relationship during that time: I had to do it alone, and it was the longest, loneliest time of my life.