Growing Pains of the Heart: 5 Things to Remember

Your heart needs to break open from time to time; it's how we transform and grow as human beings. Even though these growing pains hurt, there’s a silver lining: more light.

Having your heart broken open by loss and despair, truly being in pain, walking through the fire and back… It’s all a part of living. Some say it is the marker that you have truly lived, not just drifted around.

A broken heart forces you to your knees, grounding you into this life and this moment. You are here. Now. The feeling of death brings a whole new spin to what it’s like to feel alive. If you’ve experienced heartbreak, you know.

You know what it feels like to be alive after you've walked out onto a ledge called Giving Up, wiggled your toes across the brim, looked down at the infinite fall below and then, very carefully, taken a step back. That knowing can’t come any other way.

A broken heart is a reset. It throws everything you ever thought you knew or cared about off the table, shattering into a million pieces all over the floor. It’s impossible to mend the broken pieces of all those things that mattered. Now, lying in rubble, you see them for what they really are. Very few pieces are worth kneeling down and gluing back together into their new mosaic interpretations.

When we go through heartache, the amount that we feel becomes so massive that the limitations of our heart simply can't take it anymore. Suddenly... It cracks open.

Sometimes we can even feel the crack happening inside of our chest. Our heart has burst, and the overwhelming pain that follows is too much to bear. That’s what we think, but it never is.

The universe never gives us anything that we cannot handle.

Repeat that to yourself out loud right now: The universe never gives me anything that I cannot handle.

The thing about a heart bursting from pain is, through these cracks, light begins to seep in. Little by little, light fills your heart and your heart starts to grow. Like a crab shedding its shell and finding a bigger one as it grows.

Your heart must grow a new home for your soul, one that is bigger and more understanding of life and death, joy and sorrow, and the mysteries and secrets of existence.

Then, you realize that your heart is fragile for a reason: it needs to break so it can grow and you can know how to love even harder and let go even faster.

We all walk this earth with giant hearts inside of our chests. We all feel so much. We are not alone in this experience. And our broken hearts, they know this. Light fills our hearts until they overflow and others can feel the light, too.

Tragedy makes us warriors. Light bearers. The light in our hearts light up the path for others, and together we can stop fumbling through the darkness and start remembering what it truly means to be alive.

Life is a gift. And this pain you may be feeling right now... It's all for something.

It's all for something. Don't ever forget it.

5 Things to remember during growing pains of the heart:

1. Your heart is shedding its old shell for a bigger, wiser home for your soul.

2. Like morning sunlight finds the cracks in the window curtains and streams through, the healing light of the universe sees your cracked heart and fills it - always. Light will always come.

3. Heartbreak resets priorities and perspective for the better. You will come to know an even deeper love and vitality, and you will be even more capable of giving it and receiving it.

4. You are never alone. Another’s light is shining on you, and yours on them. We heal ourselves to heal each other - with all the light from the universe bursting from our giant, beautiful hearts.

5. You are alive - the pain proves it. You are alive! Give thanks, because it’s all for something magical.

If you need some heart-healing time on your mat, I made this yoga class just for you.

Tell me below, what does your big, beautiful heart know now, thanks to past pain?

X,

Rachel