Stitching Your Heart Back Together
After a loss, it’s not uncommon to feel like your heart has been broken.
How you think about and respond to a broken heart can make a big difference. According to grief counselor Alan Wolfelt, the word he uses to describe the healing process is reconciliation as opposed to words like recover or resolve.
“Reconciliation is the term I find most appropriate for the healing that develops as you work to integrate the loss. We as human beings don’t resolve or recover from our grief but instead become reconciled to it.” — Alan Wolfelt
Integrating your loss into your life isn’t easy and takes time but it gives a pathway to follow that eventually brings healing.
Intentional Mourning is the Process of Stitching Your Heart Back Together
Your heart has been broken, maybe even torn into a million pieces. Active, intentional mourning is the process of stitching it back together. As you approach reconciliation, your heart will become whole again. But it will be a patchwork heart. The seams where it’s been sewn together will always be apparent to you, and they will twinge and ache sometimes. The wounds will be healed, yet the scars will always remain. - Alan Wolfelt, Understanding Your Grief
To experience reconciliation involves active, intentional mourning. Mourning defined as “grief gone public” or “the outward expression of grief.”
When I think of my own journey of moving towards reconciliation and the integration of my loss into life, I would say I grieved (internal) and mourned (external) in several ways.
I talked with empathetic witnesses
I let my tears fall alone and with other safe people
I wrote in my journal
I shared my writing with others
I read and pondered ideas and stories of courageous people
I celebrated and remembered special days alone and with others
I validated my own grief and heard that validation from others
I exercised by myself and experienced joy and sorrow together
I exercised with others and processed even more
The Wounds Will be Healed but the Scars Will Remain
Physically, I have multiple scars on my body because of my motorcycle accident and the 10 surgeries that followed. I feel a tinge of pain on cold days, see the scars, but am grateful for the healing I’ve experienced.
Emotionally, I carry the scars from the loss of Vicky on my heart. I don’t constantly hurt like I once did rather feel a tinge of pain once in a while. I have integrated her loss into my life and grown on the inside where I’ve kept room for her memory to live on.
I’ve learned to dance with a limp physically and emotionally.
“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly, that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” Anne Lamott
