What is a Broken Heart? I remember the first time I had a broken heart. When I really felt pain inside my heart. It was mild compared to what I’ve felt since then, but I didn’t know that yet. It felt like my world had ended.

I’d just broken off an engagement to a man I would never marry. I cried and cried as I drove my car home from his house. I was thinking I’d never find love again. I knew it was all over for me.

I remember feeling my heart physically ache. It was a pain I’d never felt before. It was so real. It hurt. Even at that time, I felt the capacity of my heart to feel, expanding deeply downward through my toes into the depths of the earth.

All while my mind seemed to be plummeting into the depths of despair. I kept waking up each day. The sun still came up. And little by little, I started finding a new life different to what I had planned before.

My feet were still under me and a whole new world of possibilities lay before me. I picked myself up and kept going. You do that after heartbreak. Getting up and moving is what will transform you. So I did.

I started smiling, living and looking forward. Feeling happy again. It was a new happy. A happy created from knowing more, and choosing what I wanted. I could feel more of that happy than I had before.

I realized that as much as I felt that deep dark sallow feeling of my heart stretching in pain, now on the other side I could feel a new expansion into happy. An expansion lifting me upwards into a heightened awareness of more capacity to feel, not just pain but joy too.

Then I met Grant. It felt like coming home when I was with him. We immediately hit it off and became inseparable once we started to date.

The contrasts then came. Grant brought out my best qualities. That last guy, he brought out my worst qualities. Grant and I could talk for hours and be with each other endlessly. That last guy, I needed breaks from him regularly and our conversations felt disconnected a lot of the time.

Grant and I felt comfortable together. That last guy, it felt strained when we were together. Grant loved me for who I was. That last guy, he loved me for what I did.

And that’s when I started to see the contrast. I had not been aware of the way it was before until Grant was in my life to show me the contrast.

That’s when I realized that without the contrast, without that previous heartbreak. I’d never be able to see, feel, love and appreciate how wonderful it was to be with someone who was everything I was looking for.

I could feel the true joy that comes in the contrasts in our world. How good it feels to KNOW what you have, because you can feel it. When your capacity to feel has increased, so has your capacity to enjoy the opposite, the contrasts.

As much as I hurt before, now I was on the other side, feeling the expansion of joy on the other side. My heart now knew the joy as great as was the pain before. I was grateful. I remember that.

Now, after many years of feeling, growing and learning, I remember that first small little loss. I realized how it became a blessing that replaced its own heartache.

This loss-Grant’s death, has expanded my capacity to feel depths of pain that I didn’t know were possible for a human to feel. I’ve felt the ripping of my heart tissue. The physical pain inside my chest as my heart has broken through this loss. For me, for my children, for the world. And it’s real.

My heart feels so much bigger than it ever has before. And not just emotionally, physically too. It’s expanded. And I remember before, how the depths of pain I felt were expanded into depths of joy equal to and even greater than was my pain. I believe in the truth of this lesson.