Heartbreak is not hopeless.
Living and loving with an open heart despite every romantic disappointment
Like you, I’m utterly flawed and human when it comes to love. Anyone taking a quick inventory of my dating, sex, and relationship stock could, justifiably, label it a hot mess.
Hi. I’m 33, single, and I have a mile long list of men who did not stay.
And in rebellion to society’s idealism, and my personal history, I have a healthy and optimistic relationship with love.
Blueprint of a woman in her thirties sans husband, sans children.
Like nowhere close to husband and children. Currently, my love life consists of a dating app that has gifted me with fun, disappointment, mixed feelings, average sex, and some hilarious stories my friends and I will forever treasure.
Shout-out to the man who attempted to brush my hair on the second date. You the real MVP.
Through my journey, I have loved both decent, and dreadful men. I’ve loved men who abused me. I’ve loved men who tried to love me, but did not love themselves. I’ve loved men who did not love me back. I have loved men who loved me back, but who did not choose me.
A hot mess. Countless nights spent drowning in my tears of unworthiness.
My heart has been broken in all the ways someone can break it. That’s a lie. Surely, a new kind of heartbreak will come for me.
I’m open to it.
Despite the bullshit. Despite all of the men who have gotten to know me and then moved-on. Today I breathe firmly in the belief that love is for me. That I am so capable of giving and receiving love in wholeness.
Arriving at this belief was no easy feat.
You must find teacher’s and you must find practices.
Without the need to dig up our pasts in this moment, we can agree. We all have old traumas and stories. They have shaped the way in which we tragically, navigate love, sex, and relationships.
I am no exception. I have woven a masterpiece of regretful choices when it came to matters of my own heart. I have failed to protect myself time and again. To this day, protecting my heart, is a work in practice.
Work must be done if you want to start accepting and loving where you are.
Find mentors or gurus who are speaking your language. Soak in knowledge from people who have stumbled before, and now lead strongly. Love is a fragile path, requiring guidance.
I sought out advice on YouTube and found Matthew Hussey. He speaks to women about dating with a strong, sexy, sense of self-worth and power.
I turned to TED Talks and searched articles. As I found teachers, I found practices.
I found Jade Alectra on Instagram and participated in several of her virtual, week-long challenges. Her enrichening lessons, and the teachers she introduced into my world, cracked my heart wide open.
These Teachers held space, but it was up to me to do the work. Here’s a few basic practices you can put the work into if you want to better, honor yourself.
- Drink a gallon of water every day.
- Stay off your phone for the first hour of each day.
- Hack your nervous system everyday with movement and breathwork.
- Become painfully honest with yourself and with others.
Sounds simple, but new habits never are.
These practices revolve around the self, rather than an external source of love. Because what is love if it isn’t reaching from the clearest part of your own being?
Want to expand your current perception of love? Read more books. Books that challenge the nicely packaged concept of love, most of us learn as we grow up.
I read The Witch of Portobello, each morning while I neglected my phone for an hour. I was not ready when the words of Paulo Coelho pointed directly at the hole in my chest. His words on page 211 provoked a deep release of something my heart had always clung to.
Over time and then suddenly, my old cycle of heartache and suffering began to leave my body. And what filled its place was so much greater, so much sweeter.
But to feel the sweetness of what is to come, you must first release what is.
Set fire to that perfect love story in your head.
If you’re reading this, hoping to find the secret to getting the love you crave so deeply, sorry, this ain’t it. Rather, I invite you to relieve yourself of the desire you’ve been gripping so tightly, ever since your child-like heart first found love in a storybook ending.
You think love is something the right person will come along and offer you. That one day you’ll finally be able to hold it. And suddenly your wounds will heal.
Those beliefs are limiting. They are robbing you of happiness.
Embrace right where you are in your journey and trust that it is divine. Because guess what? If it was meant to be any other way, it would be. There is no gain struggling against a currant as strong as love.
We cannot force people to love us. We cannot force them to want to stay. But we can absolutely learn to love and accept the journey.
Take a moment to laugh and smile about everything it took for you to get here. No matter how cruel and absurd it seems. Give it a really good laugh. In that small gesture, you are shifting the grip your story has on you.
Question your own narrative about the love you want, need and deserve. Is it really your narrative? Or has your story been shaped by your parents, your friends, your environment, or the people that hurt you?
I guarantee the story you tell yourself now about why you are alone is shitty and mean.
This is an invitation to stop breaking your own heart with stories that do you no justice.
Stop viewing love as something you need to receive and start stepping into the practice of being a channel for love to pass through.
Be brave enough to accept that perhaps your love story is something you can’t even dream up. Maybe you do, but maybe you don’t find “the one.”
Maybe you spend your life loving and being loved by many people, in many moments. Maybe you find a little piece of your soulmate in each person you care for. And when people leave, let them go lovingly. Because it means there’s space for something new to grow.
There is still so much love from within, and from all around waiting to be discovered by you. Awaken to it.
