I have a friend named Lauren. Lauren is inspiring to me in so many ways, but in particular I am in awe of her steadfast ability to bounce back from broken relationships. She has an uncanny capability to keep expanding her heart through pain instead of contracting it.
This girl has been through the wringer. She has dated and dated and dated some more, but has yet to find a person with whom she wants to share her life with. This would be your typical late twenties gal except her scenarios are a bit different because her relationships tend to end very abruptly and not peacefully. She has had a relationship with someone who was verbally abusive to her. She’s had relationships that seemed to be going great and then out of nowhere taken a turn for the worst. She’s had a relationship with an alcoholic and still she manages to always lead with her heart. She dusts herself off again and gets right back up.
Whether or not she knows this about herself, Lauren recognizes that each person she’s with for any amount of time is essential for her growth. She doesn’t look back, she keeps going. This is what makes her beautiful. She doesn’t wrap her identity up with any other human, no matter how much she loved them. This is what makes her beautiful. When a new opportunity presents itself to her, she says yes with an open heart. This is what makes her beautiful.
I see so many young women face the end of a relationship and believe that is the end of the road. They can’t get over their past which in turn destroys their future. Let me help expel the thoughts in your head that are saying, “But I could’ve done it differently. I should have done more for this person, otherwise they wouldn’t have left me.”
Yes. You absolutely could’ve done things differently, you could have said, done, been something that you weren’t but you didn’t and that’s okay. You were exactly who you were supposed to be in the relationship, you did exactly what you were meant to. I firmly believe that what comes into our lives is supposed to be enjoyed with great pleasure, but when it leaves (however it does) it should be let go with the same amount of ease that we welcomed it.
I know this is hard to do because as human beings we become attached and we want things to stay the way they are, but they don’t. Life evolves, that is just a very natural cycle of life and humans change along with it. We can evolve too or we can resist. If we choose to resist we are setting ourselves up for great suffering, but if we accept it as it shows up—that is a wildly powerful thing.
The beauty of my friend Lauren is that she is able to feel great sadness when it shows up, but not cling to it. Of course she’s not smiling when the break-up happens, she feels her grief and does what we all do—overthink ourselves to death. Then little by little she gathers herself up off the floor and rebuilds her life. She finds solitude in herself again and does not identify with her past. And then away she goes on more dates as if she’s never been hurt, venturing off into the wilderness on the hunt for the one whom her soul will love.
Let me tell you, when she finds that person, every past bad experience, every tear she has shed, every moment of pain or sorrow, she will not remember. Because she will be swallowed by the purity of true, authentic love and that is timeless.