Starting Over

With the loss of love, our lives are immediately transformed. Starting over, we are suddenly faced with the rest of our lives, and we have no idea what to do. We are stripped of what is most familiar to us with little knowledge of what comes next. Our minds are filled with questions and our hearts with pain.

Starting over after a divorce, a painful breakup, or the death of a loved one can be the most challenging experience of a lifetime. For most people devastated by the loss of love, it is beyond anything we could have expected, predicted, or imagined.

Our hearts ache as they cry out in loneliness and confusion. We are stunned by our helplessness. We feel lost and abandoned in a sea of emptiness and darkness. Time slows down and the passing of each moment seems like eternity.

It is a struggle simply to fill each empty moment and get through the day. At times the bittersweet pain of loss is replaced by a dull numbness, but then something reminds us of our loss, and once again we long to feel and love again.

Becoming single again is definitely a crisis. Like any crisis, it is a time of danger and a time of opportunity. The opportunity is the possibility of healing and strengthening your heart and mind so that you will move on healthy and whole. The danger is that you do not complete the healing process. Time alone does not heal all wounds. How we cope with the loss of love determines the rest of our lives.

After the loss of a loved one, remembering your past together brings up painful feelings, but it also evokes the love you shared. Reexperiencing this love helps you to heal. This love soothes and heals the pain of loss.

If you are healing from a painful breakup or a divorce and you feel rejected and betrayed, then it may, at first, be hard to grieve the loss or feel the love. You may be too angry. In this case, the challenge of "resetting the heart" is to find forgiveness. Then you will be able to grieve fully.

As a result of resetting our hearts by fully grieving, we are once again able to feel the tender, innocent, and delicate desire in our hearts to care for another and to trust another's love. Without this healing, we may become too jaded to care or to trust once more.

Of all losses, the loss of love is most painful. When we suffer other disappointments and injustices, it is love that comforts the soul and makes our pain bearable. In our daily lives, when we experience loss, rejection, or failure, our minds automatically protect us by remembering that at home we are loved. But when love is lost, there is no way to find relief; there is no comfort or protection. Most often we are not aware of how much we rely on this support until it is taken away.

When we lose a primary source of love, we are suddenly stripped of all our defenses and forced to experience the raw pain of loss, the hurt of deprivation, and the sadness of loneliness. At this point, we not only mourn the loss of our loved one, but we pray for relief and ask, "Why does it hurt so much?"

There is no way we could ever anticipate the agonizing pain and emptiness following the loss of love. Whether we have experienced a painful breakup, a divorce, or the tragic death of a loved one, the result is a broken heart. At first we are stunned. We feel a sudden numbness. Every cell in our body exclaims, "No! It can't be. I won't let it. This is not happening." As we cry out to God, we refuse to accept the loss.

We hope that we can wake up the next day and everything will be back to normal. If only it could be a bad dream. Soon, we realize it has happened, and we can't go back to change it. When we accept our helplessness, reality sets in, and we begin to feel alone. Looking out at the horizon or our life, it is cold and barren. As our numbness gradually thaws, we realize that we are in pain, and it hurts a lot.

It is not easy to let go or to say goodbye to someone we love; we are too attached. To find relief and heal our broken heart, we must first understand the nature of love, dependence, and attachment.

When there is someone to greet us at the end of the day, someone to appreciate what we do, someone who recognizes our worth and benefits from our existence, it gives our life meaning and purpose. We are happiest when someone cares for us, makes us feel special and important, understands our sorrows, and celebrates our successes. As we grow in love, we naturally become more dependent on our partner for love. When we love someone, we depend more and more on his or her presence.

As this dependence grows, an important change takes place. Over time, we stop feeling our basic need to love and be loved; instead we begin to feel a more specific need - the need to love and be loved by our partner. We stop feeling our general need for love, but feel a new need: our partner's love. No one else will do. This shift is called attachment. From depending on our partners for love, we gradually become attached to their love.

When we are attached to a spouse, it is not enough to be appreciated by others. For appreciation to be most meaningful, it must be from our partner. It does not carry the same weight when someone else gives us a compliment or listens to our problems.

When we lose a loved one, to the degree that we are attached, we are emotionally convinced that we will never love again. We feel that without our spouse's love, we cannot get what we need to be happy and for our lives to be meaningful. This sense of hopelessness magnifies the pain of our loss a hundred times. When we lose something that seems irreplacable, it is a devestating experience.

To heal our broken heart, we must release our attachment and open ourselves to giving and receiving love with others. If we do not take the risk to open our heart again, we will either stay stuck in our pain or remain emotionally numb. The process of letting go of our attachment allows us to reset our heart and move on.

Resetting our heart allows us to feel our basic need for love once again. Instead of specifically needing our partner's love, we begin to feel our general need for love. We are no longer dependent on our partner's love, but open to other sources of love and support.

Letting go of a partner is difficult to the degree that we are dependent on him. As we are able to get what we need from our family and friends, our dependence on our partner lessens. As we gradually fill up with love without depending on our partner, we are able to release our pain completely.

To heal our broken hearts, we need first to face and feel the painful emotions that come up. This healing process occurs automatically as long as we keep remembering our partner. By actively creating opportunities to remember our loss, we are actually evoking the love we need to accept the loss and to let go.

Our ex-partner may still be alive, but the relationship we had hoped to have is gone. The person with whom we planned to share our life is no longer present in our lives. For the purpose of grieving and letting go, it is as if they have died. The loss we feel after a divorce can be as real as after the death of a spouse.

In the grieving process, we eventually discover that the love in our hearts continues on, not dependent on our partner's presence. Our future is not as gloomy as we thought. As the knowledge that we can continue loving shifts from a concept to our daily experience, we find peace. Starting over, we feel confident that we will find the love we deserve. We are inspired to share the special love we feel deep in our hearts.

Long before the heart is ready to let go, the mind wants to move on. When we lose love, it takes a lot longer for our heart to adjust than for the mind. The heart does not let go in one step, but rather gradually and in waves. Even if a relationship was unloving and unsupportive, we still have to heal our heart when it ends.

The end of an intimate relationship is a devastating loss regardless of the conditions leading up to it. How we grive that loss will determine the rest of our lives. Whether a relationship ends by death, divorce, or other circumstances, we must take special care to complete the grieving process. Good endings make good beginnings. To move on in our lives and to find love again, we must fully feel and grieve our loss.

By blaming our partner for how we feel, we cannot let go of our hurt unless he corrects his behavior or attitude. Although it is true that our partner may make us feel upset, we must also recognize that we have the power to let go of our pain. When we blame him for our pain rather than for his mistakes, we become caught in our pain. When we are angry or sad that he neglected us, these feelings will pass. When we are angry or sad that we have been hurt, then we become stuck.

If we realize that a relationship is not right for us, then it cannot be right for our partner. The greatest gift we can give someone is the opportunity to find love. If we are unable to get what we need in a relationship, then we can never give another what he needs.

It is never a loving act to allow a person the opportunity to hurt us. If we are not getting what we need, then the most loving behavior is to end a relationship. If we discover that we do not feel our partner is right for us, then it is time to move on.

Feeling hurt is a sign that we have not fully let go of needing the emotional support of our former spouse. For years we have been giving of ourselves, expecting to receive back love and support. To the degree that we have not gotten back what we deserved, a part of us is still expecting something in return. We may feel he still owes us. Somewhere deep inside, we are still expecting a payback. Until we give up depending on him, we will continue to feel hurt by him.

Each day we hold on to hurt, we are missing the opportunities that exist to receive the love and support we need. Letting go of hurt frees us to start over and find the love we need and deserve.

It takes time to heal a loss fully. For each two steps of progress, we may experience one step back. Although it might seem like a setback, it really isn't. We are just getting to a deeper level of healing.

To heal our heart we don't need to change our past, we just need to give ourselves the love and support that was missing so that we can uncover the positive feelings of love, trust, joy, appreciation, confidence, excitement, enthusiasm, and so on that were repressed along with the negative feelings.

God loves you and God has not deserted you. Although you can't imagine it now, you will grow stronger from this and be able to give and receive more love than ever before. You have not been forgotten. You are still loved and you will love again.

If we are heartbroken and our partner is still alive, then for the sake of healing our hearts we need to recognize that the person he was or we thought he was is gone.

While waiting for your best friend to come along, have many other friends. Date around until you find someone very special and then stop dating the others. When you believe that you have found someone who may be your soul mate, then this is the time to have an exclusive relationship.