Moving gracefully through heartbreak

On surrender and patience

My twenties were an exercise in surviving heartbreak. I had three major relationships that culminated in difficult and protracted endings. I was left raw and disoriented by each one, struggling to rebuild my identity, to make sense of what would happen, to learn the lesson and (eventually) move on.

I suspect this repeated experience was, at some level, intentional. I’ve always been fascinated by heartbreak: by the overwhelming emotions it evokes, how it forces us to grapple with the foundations of our identity, and understand the currents that move us. Love is the primary occupation of human beings and heartbreak is one of its most intense expressions. It’s like being intrigued by the drama of war; you don’t love what it is or what it causes, but you’re fascinated by what it reveals.

Moving gracefully through intense pain is an art form. Heartbreak is so frequently graceless: ugly crying, embarrassing pleading, narcissistic rebounds. It often causes us to take actions we later regret. We show up as a childhood version of ourselves, desperate to be loved, unable to cope without hard proof of our loveability.

But therein lies the opportunity in heartbreak. Each loss carries with it the pain of all the losses before. They’re all connected, the neurons wired together from the shared emotional experience. Our past hurts come to the surface. Old scars open up. And there we have an opportunity to heal, at a deeper level than before.

The child who is screaming for his mother is looking for one message: “you are okay.” He wants to know he is safe and loved, which are the same thing to him. That’s why breakups can be so transformative, in a positive way: we practice the ability to be okay in a more extreme environment. We show ourselves we can handle the momentary scarcity of love. We gain confidence in our ability to provide that love for ourselves.

Heartbreak teaches us a particular approach to life. Forcing won’t work here. All of the embarrassing actions we take in the aftermath: the late night texting, the pleading, the performative Instagram stories, the social media stalking… these are all attempts to force a certain outcome. But they push that outcome farther away. It’s the same effect as when we try to push our pain away, to force our old wounded selves back into hiding. They come back with added intensity. We can’t make anything happen the way we want. For many of us, that’s a hard lesson.

So what tools do we have? Only these: surrender and patience. We can surrender to our pain, and let it expand and take up space and reach its full expression. We can show it that we don’t fear it, that we’re fundamentally safe in its presence. We can surrender to how our life changes. We can surrender to our loneliness, and let it have this time for itself.

And then there’s patience: patience to let ourselves heal at our own pace, patience to allow love to return to us (which it always does). Surrender and wait. Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe they won’t. Maybe this will hurt for a long time. Maybe it won’t. Maybe this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Maybe it’s the best. Nobody knows the answer. Heartbreak is a practice in surrendering to uncertainty. Through that experience, it teaches us to be whole.