Lessons from heartbreak

"Only love can break a heart, only love can mend it again." 

Gene Pitney - lyrics to the song Only Love Can Break A Heart

Avec Tout Mon Coeur

(With all my heart)

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We've all heard the phrase broken heart, I'm sure...and most of us, at one time or another believe we've experienced one. Broken or breaking hearts are the subject of countless novels, movies and most of all, popular songs. The young lead character, Sadie, in Abby McDonald's, "Getting Over Garrett Delaney" poignantly and dramatically proclaims, “You can die of a broken heart — it's scientific fact — and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we're together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.”  Love affairs that don't turn out well, involvement in relationships that are toxic or constantly hurtful can certainly make us feel this way. I've felt it myself several times in my life. Therapists might suggest that such heartbreak comes from an excessive neediness or a feeling of inadequacy or thinking oneself not good enough to merit being loved. Even more likely though, is heartbreak after a loss. Grief is one of the chief causes of heartache. 

But Sadie is right...there is such a thing as a broken heart. Doctors have identified a very real medical condition called "broken heart syndrome" that in most cases is serious but short-lived and from which a person can fully recover in a very short period of time. But broken heart syndrome can actually be fatal. According to the American Heart Association, "Broken heart syndrome may be misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms and test results are similar. In fact, tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances that are typical of a heart attack. But unlike a heart attack, there’s no evidence of blocked heart arteries in broken heart syndrome. In broken heart syndrome, a part of your heart temporarily enlarges and doesn’t pump well, while the rest of your heart functions normally or with even more forceful contractions."

The syndrome is more common in post-menopausal women than anyone else but it can happen to anyone. Also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy, broken heart syndrome is experienced as "sudden, intense chest pain — the reaction to a surge of stress hormones — that can be caused by an emotionally stressful event. It could be the death of a loved one or even a divorce, breakup or physical separation, betrayal or romantic rejection." It could happen after a sudden surge of intense anger too, or other losses that are closely associated with self-image like the sudden loss of one's career, the loss of a child, sometimes even the loss of a beloved pet can trigger actual heart break. And as the American Heart Association reminds us, "It could even happen after a good shock (like winning the lottery.)" The syndrome is also associated with depression and severe anxiety which can be triggers and the New York Times (February 2010) reports many other emotional but also physical triggers of broken heart syndrome. Non-emotional triggers like a sudden drop in blood pressure, a surgical procedure, an adrenalin surge due to fear or adverse drug reactions are just as common triggers. 

And yet, if you can weather the immediate storm of the initial heartbreak, which may definitely require medical treatment, or as in the case of ongoing depression or what I call "slow heartbreak," therapy or counseling, there are countless lessons and precious treasures that can come out of that experience. Friendships are deepened by shared burdens or grief and you learn who will walk with you during the darkest of times. Most of all, you learn more about who you are, what you're made of, what matters to you and you learn to acknowledge your own feelings and needs as "okay." Getting to the bottom of depression - or a broken heart - takes work and commitment but it's worth every second. Ultimately, you'll learn that heartbreak is actually part of the human experience - not just a silly drama. 

In the midst of a heartbreak of my own, I wrote this poem to express my new understanding:

 Hearts Were Meant to Break

Hearts were meant to break.

Love…requited…bursts them wide open

expanding them ever outward with the

awesome power of the big bang,

photon upon photon of love light -

an endless grace, that energy moving toward

the sacred consummation of intimate union.

And when stars cavort and gaily pour

the glittering dust of diamonds

into the space that love has opened

to receive it, a heart so fills with light

that it must split asunder to make room

for the more of love, the overflowing

river of it, the numinous, luminous constellations

of love light dancing through the cosmos.

Love…unrequited…breaks it open wider still…

transforming brokenness into beatitudes,

slivers of past sorrows that now sparkle

like shards of glass catching moonlight.

But the shattered heart remembers,

with deepening gratitude, its shattering,

having tried with such determination

to share its rounded fullness with another

and found it breaking on the hard, square edges

of someone’s heart not open yet.

There is no way to put it back together.

Now broken, it moves ever outward

like the universe,  which is itself

Love’s energy radiant with grace.

Avec Tout Mon Coeur at my website

Of virtual friendships, shared emotions and a tribute

I like to connect to people in the virtual world, exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths.

Demi Moore

Silent Stones
http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-jQdvNJp/A

There is a lot of talk these days about the superficiality of social media - the silly tweets about going shopping or taking a shower or getting caught up in some media/celebrity frenzy that says little of substance about who we are. I've heard some say that virtual relationships are not real - that one cannot trust them because people can assume a persona that is nothing like the person they "really" are. And that's true in some respects. People can pretend to be other than who they really are; people can use social media just as a means of attention-seeking; people can substitute superficial virtual relationships for the real thing because for one reason or another they are detached from the real world.  I don't deny any of that. 

But there is another truth regarding relationships forged and maintained through social media and a virtual environment. I've commented on it before and several of you have told me that  your marriages are a result of "meeting" someone online. I know, too, that some of you have made friendships that have lasted many years and are deeper than some you've had in the "real" world. That is certainly the case for me. Friendship is precious to me - whether it's in the physical world or the virtual one and these days, thanks to technology the line between the two can be very blurry. Skype allows us to see and speak to our "virtual" friends - as does Yahoo voice and video and other such services. I used to speak to a friend in London weekly and I prepared for that in the same way as I might have prepared for her to visit in person - I dressed for company, did my hair and makeup, tidied up the space around me, had my coffee ready to sit down together and be "present" to my friend. 

Emerson once wrote an essay on friendship in which he said, "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time." I feel that way about my "virtual" friends, too. I may choose or be forced into a somewhat isolated life for reasons of health or circumstance, but I honestly believe that my online friends know me, hear me and understand me every bit as well or better than others in the "real" world. 

Which brings me to the reason for posting again on a topic I've spoken of before - the shared emotions in those virtual exchanges. One might wonder how you can actually "feel" someone else's pain or sorrow when you can't look upon their face, or when you are simply reading their posts. And yet who among us would deny that we do. I've had friends who have reached out to me when they were terribly depressed and just needed someone to "talk" to and I've done the same. In this past week or so, friends I met on various art sites have posted on Facebook about personal loss - the deaths of beloved parents, the serious illness or frightening surgery they are facing themselves, the discouragement they feel about their job search or art careers, etc. I think we "write" our emotions more carefully in the virtual world - and express more clearly what it is we feel and need from our friends. I think we are even more generous with support, encouragement, prayers and positive thinking than we might be otherwise. 

This weekend, members of the art site, BlueCanvas, met in a way we used to meet - in a weekend forum where we shared features, poems, music, awards, congratulated and supported each other, talked about our lives at many levels and deepened our regard and appreciation of one another. That "BLUE Lounge" forum has not taken place for over a year - most of us have pursued other outlets for one reason or another, or our lives have pulled us away from that forum because of work or health or caregiving. And truthfully, the person who created that venue, carried too much of the burden of keeping the forum going - something those of you who host groups on other sites can appreciate, I'm sure. Nonetheless, this weekend, at the request of a number of old regulars, the BLUE Lounge opened again for an extended tribute to a FRIEND we lost recently - a friend almost none of us have ever met personally but whom we all loved and cherished. Our sense of loss is real, our grief is real, our desire to share that emotional response with one another, others whom we have never met either but love equally, is real. Thank you to my FRIENDS Berns, Chris and Foti and especially to Rosie for making this tribute to Aldolfo Hector Penas Alvarado possible and for reminding us of just how precious our virtual friendships are.

For Adolfo:

THE SILENT STONES

The lowering sky is mourning

gray and somber above 

the silent stones that mark

your coming and your going.

They speak naught of who

you were and yet still are -

father, son, brother, spouse,

mother, daughter, sister, spouse.

What says the marble slab of

that which only I could know?

The blessing that your were?

The joy that only you could bring?

An eloquent language of silence

drowns out the syntax

of the wind, though it lifts me

upon its transcendent current

to some place above, beyond,

farther still - past all the limits

of time or space or language

itself - past thought or sentience,

in sacred consummation,

in ecstatic communion

with your eternal thou

not bound to ashes now interred

beneath the silent stones

that bear your names. 

© Lianne Schneider 2010

Hope...has eyes

"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle

 Being Temperamental

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/being-temperamental-lianne-schneider.html

Words of despair seem to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’ visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon, however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000 years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly. That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience, compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”

HOPE BREAKS

Hope breaks…upon the rocks –

shattered into droplets,

dashing itself against the

unforgiving, immovable crags,

their remote faces rejecting

the pleading grasp of blown spume.

At the height of the tide,

in the fury of the winter storm,

it might almost seem as if

nothing could remain of hope.

Yet when that futile surge

of lost promise slips away,

rebuilding for a new onslaught,

there is a poignant sense of loss,

a bleak feeling of abandonment.

But then, close to despair, I recall

that it is those storm driven tides

which bring the gifts from the sea –

casting them like so much refuse

beyond the coastal drift line,

tossed atop the beveled berm,

treasures revealed only when

the wave draws out to sea again

exposing the blessings in the sand…

laying there amidst the seaweed,

with other trash the sea has swallowed,

are pearly shells, small and large,

the driftwood, the beautiful stones,

a piece of Kelly green sea glass,

perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,

each with its own story to tell

of the challenging voyage

that brought it finally to this shore. 

©Lianne Schneider