Healing Your Heart, Starts With Honouring Your Body
Your body has held your heart, waiting for the day you were ready for your heart to reveal its pain. The heartbreak you feel today is your delayed healing.
No, your heart is not defective because you are grieving the end of a “toxic” relationship. No, you aren’t “broken” because you are mourning a past lover who hurt and harmed your heart. Your grief is valid. Your mourning is valid, too. You might just be misunderstanding the aches and pains inside your chest right now.
What you might be grieving is the thought that tolerating their harm would eventually lead them to value you. What you might be mourning is the love you imagined they would give you after you endured so much hurt and harm from them. What you might actually be grieving is the belief that love is pain. What you might actually be mourning is whatever has happened in your life that led you to confuse love with pain. You might not actually be in pain about losing them at all.
Pause. Consider that. You might not actually want them back or miss them at all. Despite how much pain is inside your heart right now. You might instead be experiencing the original feelings of heartbreak that led you to believe suffering always preceded receiving love.
It is essential for you to acknowledge that your body holds the memory of all the experiences of harm and hurt you endured with them. Maybe your mind pushed these experiences aside as a way to block the pain. Maybe your life relied on disconnecting from the hurt they caused you. Maybe you needed to pretend everything was ‘okay’ in the relationship just to get through the day.
Even if you did all this, your body was taking notes and creating memories inside of you. Memories that manifest in the tightness you feel in your chest, the heaviness in your limbs, or the knots in your stomach – sensations are your body’s way of expressing the emotional impact of your experiences.
The emotional pain of being in a relationship that does not serve us often manifests physically, and it usually doesn’t present until we are safe enough to feel it. If the pain presented earlier, as it sometimes does, it would overwhelm us.
Your body is wise. Your body will give you cues and signs of what it is holding inside. Your body will hold onto what hurts until you and your heart are ready to heal.
This is why, at the end of a relationship with someone hurtful and harmful to your heart, it might not be heartbreak; it could be your heart healing because your body is healing too. The tightness in your chest may start to loosen, the heaviness in your limbs may lift, and the knots in your stomach might begin to unwind. This is your body releasing the pain it has held onto, aligning with the healing of your heart.
Have compassion for your body and your heart as they heal. Together, they have carried the weight of being hurt and harmed in a relationship. Your body has held your heart, waiting for the day you were ready for your heart to reveal the pain it has held inside. What you are experiencing right now might not be heartbreak; it could be your heart and body finally starting to heal.
Remember that. It doesn’t change the pain. It doesn’t take away the pain. It doesn’t do anything for your pain. But it might let you see it as pain and not love. And that might be the lesson your heart needs to heal.
Journal Questions to Support Your Embodiment Journey:
Where in my body do I notice sensations of release or relief now that the relationship has ended? How does my body communicate this release to me?
How have I confused pain with love in my past relationships, and what beliefs have contributed to this confusion?
What emotions surface when I consider that my body has been holding onto pain, waiting for me to be ready to heal? How can I support my body in this healing process?
In what ways have I ignored or numbed the physical signs of emotional pain? What can I do to become more attuned to my body’s signals?
How can I show compassion to both my heart and body as they heal from past wounds? What practices or routines can I establish to nurture this compassion daily?