Reflections on the Paradox of the Broken Heart

From the earliest days of my awakening, there were people who would come up to me and thank me after I cried my heart out in a 12 Step meeting. At the same time, there were those who avoided me because I triggered and was a mirror for their own buried grief that they weren’t yet ready to know, feel, befriend, and transform.

For years I also was easily triggered and did my best to surround myself with those who wouldn’t blow my cover. Together we engaged in our addictions and lived in the illusion that ignorance is bliss and that vulnerability was to be avoided like the plague.

Now it’s been 36 years since my healing journey began. And I look back upon how lost I was — and I reflect on all who are hurting and trying to cope by pushing their pain away rather than embracing it — with the deepest understanding, empathy, and compassion. Because I’ve been there. And I understand that we will only go as deep as the support we perceive is available to us. For most of us, this business of waking up and healing what we carry in our deepest hearts cannot be done in isolation.

I personally also don’t look upon the ungrieved pain in our hearts as “demons.” I experience our suffering as part of the human experience and I understand that we’re all doing the best we can. And today I understand that our losses and betrayals and all that causes us to suffer also holds the potential for being a doorway into waking up and transforming our lives.

And I understand today at age 68 that there are two ways of coping with suffering, both of which I’ve experienced. One way increases our suffering and the other points us towards the end of suffering.

When we push away our suffering rather than staying with it and going all the way through our painful experience, what happens as we grow older is that we become vulnerable to being more bitter and brittle, more judgmental and empathically impaired, more fearful and angry, more depressed and addicted, more separate and inwardly isolated, more sick and tired, and more stuck in our neglected pain. We contract. And our suffering increases.

When we access the courage, support, resilience, vulnerability, humility, and intention to stay with our pain and over time embrace the roots of what is hurting inside of ourselves, we grow stronger, more expansive, more empathetic and compassionate, more kind and wise and loving.

This is the paradox of the broken heart. It ultimately can kill us, as it did my twin brother in 1978 when he ended his life. Or all of the pain we’ve experienced can be embraced and healed and transformed into something that gifts us and ripples outward in ways which also bless our world. This transformation of our painful human experiences moves us closer to the end of suffering. It’s not that painful experiences cease, but through walking a path of heart we become empowered to transform our suffering rather than get stuck in it.

So much of the violence and heartlessness that we see in our nation and beyond has its roots in hearts that are broken and deep pain that is neglected, denied, and projected outward onto others. May we all heal our broken hearts. 🙏💜🌹Molly