I wasn’t surprised when she told me she was dealing with feelings of rejection and self-confidence. I asked her what the worst part of all of this was. When we let go of expectation and come into agreement with Truth, we find the source of strength and love and acceptance and joy. What if it is not your circumstances that are making you miserable, like you imagined, but what if what is making you miserable is your resistance to your circumstances?Ĭan you allow the things that are true to be true?Īfter all, they ARE true, whether you allow them to be or not. I want _ but I can’t have it right now.All you need to do is make peace.Ī list of things that are true might look like this: You do not need to fix, change, alter, or grow. When the ONE thing that would bring us peace is to sit still, to be with ourselves and to accept what is true. Why is it that, when our thoughts are spinning and swirling, our first instinct is to DO? Why do we want so badly to perform, hustle, act, go, change, call, drive, fix, control? You simply need to make peace with what is true.” That was such a comfort to my anxious, busy, perfectionistic self.
I once heard Lissa Rakin say, “You do not have to do anything right now. This is the very time to reach out, stay connected, stay with.
When they answered, I told her, she didn’t really need to say anything except maybe, “I’m feeling sad,” or “I’m heartbroken,” or “I’m not okay right this minute…” I’m not sure why our tendency is to isolate when we are feeling heartbroken, but this would be missing the point. I told her to call those friends when she was feeling this way. I told her that she should put her 10 best friends on speed dial-the kind of friends who don’t require her to put on any kind of performance in order to be friends with them, the kind who let her show up wearing the same clothes two days in a row because she was too sad to change. Everyone who has ever lived and loved has felt this feeling. Most of the battle is just reminding ourselves, “this is so normal. It is this lie that keeps us isolated, that keeps us feeling like something must be wrong with us, that keeps us stuck in a pit of shame, rather acceptance and love. We’re the only ones who cry in our beds at night eating a pint of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. We assume we’re the only ones with toxic thoughts, with messed up beliefs, with bad days.
We walk around the world most days, looking at all the people so perfectly dressed and perfectly put together, and assume we are the only ones struggling. Sometimes half the challenge of heartbreak is just reminding ourselves we aren’t crazy. Here’s how you keep moving forward when you are heartbroken. In case it helps, I thought I’d pass it on to you, too. What I told her on our call that day was really what I was telling myself. We talked for maybe 20 minutes, but 20 minutes was all it took. It’s amazing how one minute you can think you’re doing fine and then the next minute you see something you didn’t mean to see online, or the person who was supposed to call doesn’t call, or the pieces of the puzzle of your life don’t fall exactly as you planned-and suddenly you realize how fragile you’ve been all along. Her question came at an interesting time for me, since I had just spent most of my night spinning and swirling exactly the way she was talking about. I got a text from a friend recently that said: “When you are heartbroken, how can you stop the swirling, spinning thoughts that seem to derail you? How can you keep moving forward?”