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

Chasing joy...

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive....

Joseph Campbell

Joy Collector

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The great American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in one of his interviews with Bill Moyers for the PBS series, "The Power of Myth," responded to one of Moyers' questions about human search for meaning this way:

         "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of life...so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive." 

The "rapture of being alive"...how many of us have been blessed enough to truly experience that? And how do you go about finding that? Surely we can't all spend our time sitting around "navel gazing" as some have mockingly described the meditative practices that blossomed in the late '60s and early '70s when Transcendental Meditation was all the rage and everyone was looking for a guru to teach them how to reach that state of pure detachment that is "ecstasy" or joy. 

And in truth, we actually can't find it by "dropping out" or complete detachment as some envision it. We find it by the simple act of being truly present to our own lives, to the moments of our lives, being completely aware and mindful of those moments and most of all by being grateful for each one of them. Elizabeth Lesser (Broken Open, 2004) describes it as, "It is a willing engagement with the whole messy miracle of life." By that she means that one cannot find rapture or joy by avoiding the pain or the brokenness in our lives. Quite the opposite - one cannot find rapture without embracing that, looking into the face of our fears and anguish and being grateful for it. It is there, where we would least expect to find it, that we realize and appreciate the joy of living. One cannot appreciate light without darkness, become blissful about spring if there were no winter or dormant period, know love without its lack. 

Here's the lesson in a metaphor - a poem I wrote some time ago called, "The Joy Collector." 

The Joy Collector

Like a lepidopterist, I set out to capture joy in my net,

searching in all the usual, obvious places,

in the garden of blooms I’d planted to be

an enticement for the rare and fragile, wingéd creatures.

And once captured what would I do

with each uniquely beautiful specimen?

Wait for it to finish out its brief life in a jar filled with leaves,

holes in the top and then, when it was living no more…

pin it to the corkboard, fix it under glass,

this now lifeless collection on display,

catalogued and labeled for me to show off my skills

as a butterfly hunter, satisfied, self-congratulatory? 

But true joy can’t be caught like that,

remaining as elusive as a Palos Verdes Blue;

rather it catches you utterly by surprise,

comes from places and events you least expect

and seldom where you are looking for it! 

Don’t chase after it…a butterfly hunter with a net -

and when you are very still, within and without,

perhaps even looking wonderingly another way

at something beautiful that catches your eye

and fills your awakening soul with delight,

she will settle gently on your shoulder, 

flutter in your heart...and live.

  

© Lianne Schneider May 2011

Be grateful for the darkness, for the pain, even for the grief - when you can stand still in the midst of that, then you will find your rapture, your joy. In truth, one of my favorite poets, Khalil Gibran said it best nearly 1000 years ago:

Feeling shipwrecked???

When an inner situation is not made conscious,

it appears outside as fate.

Carl Jung

All That Remains

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Ever feel as if your life is a shipwreck...perhaps just today, or for a week or even months at a time? No matter how well prepared you thought you were for life, for parenthood, for your career, for a relationship...things just seemed to fall apart all at once. It hardly seems fair when you've tried so hard to do it all and do it right. A great many people struggle every day with all kinds of depressive disorders because they felt hopelessly shipwrecked on some deserted island with no help or hope in sight. 

Artists often address this kind of emotional shipwreck in darker paintings perhaps where they can make such pain visible. Poets, of course, have throughout history done the same. As you will see in a moment - I've done both - but not for the purpose of merely expressing the feeling of being abandoned by the fates or the universe or God. Rather it's to offer hope and remind ourselves that courage in the face of hardship is not what we usually think of - a lack of fear - but rather a willingness to stand up and try again, no matter how afraid we are. There's an old Asian saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight." That's pretty much the way it goes...and that's okay. The only possible failure is the failure to try to make something from all that remains after the shipwreck.

ALL THAT REMAINS

At times, all that remains

of the graceful, promising ship

in which we once set sail,

onto which we had bravely loaded

and entrusted our adventurous dreams,

provisioned with the sparkling

citrus of hope, the ballast of reason,

is a rotting hulk cast upon some

lonely shore, beached and broken,

darkening with age and petrifying

with desperate abandonment.

We misread the silent stars perhaps,

encountered reefs that were unmapped,

were blown aground with the violence

of the fierce and unexpected hurricane,

the savage force of events and emotions

that whipped the sea to gray-green foam,

the perfect storm against which our ballast

was of little weight or counter-balance.

Here we’re stranded far from home,

even farther from where we thought we’d be,

our hulls splintered, ribs spread wide,

exposing all that we’d possessed.

But there are always treasures

to be gleaned from every shipwreck,

salvaged from the bones of shattered past.

We reclaim what is essential to survival

convey it all inland bit by bit, to an interior

place away from tides and undertows.

We collect from the jetsam what tools we can

to construct a shelter for the present,

to build a boat for some tomorrow –

keep the unbroken planks of wisdom

as foundation for what we can create,

the pegs of persistence with which

to connect the pieces into some new form,

the coiled rope of quiet courage,

the astrolabe and compass of our values,

with which to do our daily reckoning,

the parchment maps on which to mark

the errors of our previous course,

and with fresh insight plot anew

the way to yet dreamed of destinations

beyond the clouded horizon we see now.

We’ll roll the mainsails for a covering,

yet one day watch them unfurl again

filled with the brisk winds of bright new hope.

And when we go at last from here,

we’ll take with us a different treasure

than the gold we’d brought aboard at first -

new jewels of faith and fortitude,

the valued currency of courage.

We’ll leave behind not some worthless hulk

but a story written on that distant shore

preserved as an art and an architecture,

perfectly fitted into the landscape now

where sand and time will make of it

a home not just for gulls and memories,

but for the record of our redemption.

© Lianne Schneider July 2011

Sometimes, even when we're shipwrecked for a time, there are valuable lessons to be learned, qualities in ourselves to develop, and hope - not that someone will rescue us but that we will figure out how to save ourselves. We are the only ones who can. 

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