How to Mend a Broken Heart

So it’s Valentines month and we are exploring the RELATIONSHIPS Life Theme here at Better Endings. I had a post for Valentine’s Day but was sick with the stomach flu so am just going to let that one go by the wayside. Now that Valentine’s is over this current topic may be more appropriate: How to Mend a Broken Heart. Not that everyone needs this but Valentines Day (or week) allows us to reflect back on both the good and lasting loves of our life as well as the more difficult relationships that need our attention too. Life mapping involves a holistic embracing of your total Self and of your total Life Story, and we can learn often as much or more from past challenges as from  our current success stories.

Troubled relationships from our past (or present) can trouble us for a lifetime, if we let them. It is helpful to nurture yourself with regard to your pain and loss, to help heal these effectively so you can go forward with a more open heart.

The Better Ending sort of story that comes up for me around this theme is a scene from the wonderful movie Steel Magnolias. When I first saw this film I cried for hours, starting in the theatre and continuing after it was over. It touched a deep chord for me about family and friends, along with pets my own closest relations. At the time I was (still am til this August) living far from my family, and this film reignited my love and sense of loss for being so far away.

The scene–I will bet you will have guessed it–that I think can be helpful for anyone to help mend a broken heart is with Sally Field as M’Lynn Eatenton, after the funeral for her daughter Shelby, a diabetic who has died in childbirth. M’Lynn asks “why?!” (click below to view on YouTube.)

This is an amazing scene, beautifully acted of course by the amazing Sally Field along with Olivia Dukakis and Shirley MacClain.  What I love about it is how expressive she is of her feelings. She doesn’t hold anything back! It is wonderful to purge ourselves when we feel grief. Let it out! Release your true feelings. Allow your pain to surface and flow forth into the universe.  Scream out at God if you need to. Why DID this have to happen?  What is left now?

images are from pixabay.com

Healing requires Letting Go, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written of so beautifully in her many books about Death and Dying. And you cannot Let Go until you come to terms with your loss and allow yourself to grieve.

I welcome YOUR Comments and Story!

A Re-Visioning Conversation

This week’s life mapping activity invites you to practice a “re-write” as a form of applying the principle of Better Endings.

Recall a communication Moment from your life that may have marked a pivotal transition in a relationship or situation. What might you have said, that you didn’t? How might you have spoken or replied otherwise than you did? Might it have mattered? How?

Replay this conversation, either by using “active imagination” (in an aware, contemplative, imaginative mode), or by journaling. You could also ask a spouse or significant other to model the other person’s role.

Allow this imagined or re-scripted conversation to become transformational, to achieve a “Better Ending.” For some situations, this might mean reaching a “closure” that was never possible before (my example below). For others it might mean getting to share what you were not able to at the time, or allowing the other to share what you now sense they might have based on what you have learned since then.

“Ellie”

Preface: I LOST my dog of 12 years’ companionship, Ellie. She was a dear, close companion. Yet by nature this sweet, orange boxer-Rhodesian ridgeback mix was timid and afraid of strangers. This proved her demise when I left her with a new friend’s sheltea in a fenced back yard while my friend and her daughter and I went for breakfast. When we returned, Ellie was gone. She had jumped up against the gate, which opened, and she would not allow neighbors to take her in, in a city residential neighborhood totally unfamiliar to her. I looked for Ellie for over six months almost daily, driving from Colorado Springs to Denver to search for her. She wasn’t chipped nor was she wearing a name tag on her collar, as she would never normally be more than an arm’s length from my side.

To Ellie:

L: Oh, my dear, I can only hope that, whatever happened, you always knew in your heart that I love you. I hope and can only trust that you felt somehow Spirit was with you, comforting you as you slept, guiding events in the best possible way they could unfold in the situation.

E: I tried to find you. I never stopped trying.  Do know I loved you, too.

L: I looked for you everywhere I could think of looking. At all the shelters; via Craig’s list; in all of the greenbelts I could walk, over and over. I followed leads, and dreams, that seemed to be guiding me to where you might be, in storms and sun, days and nights. But I could not reach you, my Friend. I held a ceremony for you, with GM and TU; we buried some of your favorite possessions, read spiritual passages for you.

E: I heard you/ saw you inwardly then. I was never without spiritual companions, though I rarely felt them outwardly in the panic that consumed my search.

L: Dear, dear Ellie, I am sorry. I left you alone with another dog in a stranger’s yard. I am sorry I took you at all that day. I should have realized your timidity would not allow you to adapt so quickly to new friends.

E: You wanted a companion dog that could go anywhere with you. I wanted to stay home, safe beside you.

L: I love you, dear Soul. I wish you the most wondrous spiritual adventure as Soul, forever.

E: I needed this push to prepare me for what was to come, in my next life.

L: But I hope that the trauma you felt will not hold you back.

E: Soul grows from all experience. I chose to try to find you and found instead the world is bigger and more full of danger, and care, than I knew.

L: Goodbye, dear friend. If I can ever comfort you, I am always Here, close to your Heart, as Soul. Twenty-four/ seven, times Eternity!

E: I go forward with fresh experience. Thank You.

L: Thank You for  all the Love you gave.

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The poem below is re-blogged (after my initial post of the tribute to Ellie), from Cats at the Bar:  http://tvkapherr.wordpress.com/  :

Remember love?

Impermanent.

Remember joy?

Immeasurable.

What is love,

what is joy,

but knowing

what is you?

By floridaborne twoonarant.wordpress.com

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Thank You to readers and those “liking” this post. Of course it is a difficult story to share but I feel that in using this vehicle, I am sending my heart out along the cosmic sea of Spirit and Divine Love as the opening image betokens…there is no real separation of Soul to Soul, so I do believe.