The Hidden Gift of Heartbreak
Knowing How to Change Your Pain into Power and Purpose
Nobody wants heartbreak. Nobody asks for it. The marriage collapsed, the love died, the kids grew up and stopped visiting. Something ended.
There is an inevitability to the shattering of the heart. It is our one familiar guest.
Can we learn to embrace it?
Sitting here at JFK Airport waiting to catch a flight, I watch as heartbreak unfolds in every direction. Tears from one passenger as they tell their lover goodbye, or another as they walk away from family they don't know if they will see again; a mother waving at her child through the cold window, or someone who is leaving something certain for something unknown, and feel torn between.
And I wonder if life doesn’t really even begin until this experience of being broken, in a way. There is a needed elegance to it. We are cracked open wide, shaking off the things the held us so tightly. Our souls shed some sort of covering up as we are shifted.
And if we’re honest our heart is broken a thousand times a day.
Heartbreak happens the moment we open to another, or even to our own self by being true. It is the tenderness of letting go of control, the losing of our need to coerce reality into what we imagine can be shaped in our own image.
Heartbreak is the surrender to what is, without avoidance or defense.
Anytime we fall in love—provided it’s real love and not only sentimentality or usery-we immediately step into having our hearts broken open. So too when a child enters our life, we find our hearts not only taken hostage but cracked wide. Almost any moment that we truly live fully is a break.
Yet We hold ourselves away from it, forgetting that this is precisely the pathway for opening. For receiving. And for giving.
Routine heartbreak is a good thing. We must cultivate a kind of restless dedication to having our heart broken by beauty. This pries open our hands to give and to build and unshackles our feet to carry compassion to others.
You can always sense a person who has let themselves be torn apart at their center. There is often a soft confidence to them. Their lives speak.
The gift of heartbreak is the opening of your own heart.
I truly love the people who allow life to break them open; who have allowed loneliness, rejection and deep sadness to crack their armors. Their golden hearts are on display. They’re soaked with compassion.
We judge love by its endings. Maybe we should judge love by how much it changed us.
Heartbreak is the acknowledgement that we have released control. Heartbreak is the surrender to what is, without avoidance or defense.
Don’t withhold yourself from heartbreak when it calls your name. Joy is sacred. But so is sorrow. So is grief. Know you’ve been given a gift—the opening of your own heart.
What do we do when we face such pain? Is there anything practical that we can use? I sometimes think we sort of go numb and just let pain wash over us. But the truth is there are things that do in fact help—or at least allow for us to be present to our experience—and that really is what life is for.
Noticing your self, noticing your experience, taking in all of your emotions—including the “bad ones” is vital. And when you face down sorrow, or suffering, or heartache, that’s how you stay open actually. You can practice it now.
Get into a comfortable possession.
Plant your feet firmly on the ground.
Stack your shoulders on top of your hips and square your head on top of your shoulders. Lower your gaze. Notice your breath. In and out. Feel your sensations, on your body. If you get distracted, come back to your breath. If you notice thoughts, make a note of them—what they are—then come back to your breathing. Don’t reject anything right now. Just observe your physical experience. What’s happening in you and around you. This is you. This is your self.
Sitting with your body/mind—what do you notice? What Sensations are most present? What thoughts or feelings are there? What is it like to simply be with your self?
I think this is really ground level. Because if you can be with YOU—in any state—then you can experience the fullness of being alive.
We often think of things like Joy as sacred. But so is sorrow. So is grief. Know you’ve been given a gift—the opening of your own heart.Heartbreak is the opposite of living numb, or being dead to the world. It becomes a key to to unlock new beginnings. It forms a path forward riddled with kindness.
Hey did you know that tomorrow, Wednesday at 6pm PST, The Creator’s are actually hosting a class all about alchemizing heartbreak and turning it into profound creativity and divine power? It’s taught by Kristi Born (who many of you are already familiar with!) And She’s teaching on the one and only Stevie Nicks (GOLD DUST WOMAN: Shattering the Illusions of Love). Don’t miss this event! If you sign up for this limited time, you’ll not only will you receive a discounted summer savings—but you’ll get all the other classes for this month, and the prior ones! DON’T MISS THIS!
You know, the truth is…life will murder us all…
No one makes it out alive. Your strategy for avoiding the end, the pain, the heartbreak, the sadness—it won’t work.
And that’s bad news for many of us. Because we’ve staked our lives on improving ourselves and having more in order to avoid all those inevitable experiences.
But you can’t meditate enough, or work hard enough, or go on enough dates, or connect enough, or feel safe enough, or be attractive enough, or win enough, or be smart enough, or successful enough, or take enough courses, or be tough enough, have enough pleasure ...you’re not going to survive….None of us do. We all live under the doom of fate. It’s settled.
The last minutes of the second half: he’s in. He’s been sitting on the sidelines waiting for his shot. It’s not that he hasn’t had plenty. The whole first part of the game he played, all out. Two zingers in two minutes into the netting. My heart thunders. That’s my son, I yell. I embarrass him. He keeps playing. Drifts to the backfield as a defender, then becomes a midfielder calling where he’ll put the ball. A loop to the right, a swoop to the left. Dive bombing the goal. He’s everywhere. Until they take him out. Sit him on the bench. Fair time is still an issue at his age. And that’s when they start to lose. Badly. One slouched shot after the next. The other team racking. I see my son’s shoulders crumble. A loss he cannot control. Crushing his heart.
As he walks onto the field I mouth the words to him, “no matter what—play your heart out.” It’s not how it ends that matters, especially when the ending is set in stone, it’s how you play. Did you leave it all out on the field? Did you surrender to the moment and the passion? Were you all there?
They loose. And he does not smile. There’s no glory here. Yet the way the sun catches his eyes takes my breath. He’s a hero. All heroes go into the fray knowing they’ll lose. They go anyway.
Tomorrow we will celebrate a new day. But tonight he will remember how he played his heart out and lost. And maybe he’ll get mad and say something rude. This moment, even with its heartbreak, is as good as it gets.
Heartbreak can occur as a kind of initiation. It is a summons into the threshold of surrender. Allow yourself to collapse. Allow yourself to fall apart. Allow yourself to grow very gentle and very still. This is where the healing is. This is where you find your self. RIGHT NOW…
Make magic out of it—as is!
*Currently, I am enrolling for 1x1 mentorship, going into the fall. This is an exclusive offering, and it is not only time sensitive, it is space limited. I am only taking on three individuals this fall.
Mentorship this season looks unique. I have created an all access entry into my teaching curriculum. During our 4 months of working together you will be a part of the mentorship community. You will be involved in the online group of other students. You will receive core on-demand teaching, and dozens of hours of self paced content. You will also work closely with me, through messaging, and through bi-weekly, or weekly times together. THIS IS A TRANSFORMATIONAL JUGGERNAUT….
For people who want to experience deep change—the key ingredients are there. And I want you to be one of them.
SO—I encourage you. Take the leap. Take the step. Apply. Don’t wait. Don’t save the date. If you crave change…now’s the time.
Thanks for being apart of this tribe my friends. And maybe last I’d leave you with a little poem that I wrote the other night as I was looking at the half moon as it rose in the hazy July sky.
I love that autumn is so strong she reaches into the summer and pulls upon the trees and brushes them with her lips and beckons them to drop their garments to the ground. I love living in the light of the half light, the twilight where the shadows meet the receding lights. I love letting my heart grow heavy with questions, knowing that my life will become an answers, as I allow myself to create. I love seeing your face in the sky. And hearing your voice on the water. I love me and you-- even when there is no you and there is no me. I love these hours that are ours.
Be well friends. Do good work. Create your selves, alive.
Rainier