Your heart needs to break open from time to time.

It’s how we transform and grow as human beings.

If you’ve never had your heart broken open by loss and despair, if you’ve never truly been in pain, if you haven’t walked through the fire and back… You haven’t truly lived.

You won’t know what it feels like to be alive until you’ve walked out onto a ledge called Giving Up, wiggled your toes across the brim, looked down at the infinite fall below and then very carefully, taken a step back.

You won’t know. You can’t know.

When we go through heartache we start to feel so much that the limitations of our hearts simply can’t take it anymore. And suddenly… It cracks open.

Sometimes we can even feel it happening inside of our chest. Our hearts may feel that they have burst, and the overwhelming pain that follows could be too much to bear but it never is. The universe never gives us anything that we cannot handle. The thing is, through these cracks, light begins to seep in. Little by little light fills your heart and your heart will start to grow. You realize that your heart is fragile for a reason: it needs to break from time to time so it can grow and we can learn how to love even harder.

We all walk this earth with giant hearts inside of our chests and we all feel so much. We are not alone and our broken hearts, they know this. Light fills us until it overflows and others can feel it, too.

Tragedy makes us warriors. Light bearers. We light up the path for others and together, we stop fumbling through the darkness and start remembering what it truly means to be alive.

Life is a gift, and this pain… It’s all for something. It’s all for something.

Don’t you ever forget it.

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Author: Rachel Brathen

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: courtesy of Rachel Brathen