After a Breakup or Loss: Healing is a Journey, Grieving Your Losses

 

Healing a broken heart is a journey. 

From sadness to joy, anger to peace, rejection to acceptance, and brokenness to a greater level of wholeness, the road to recovery is different for everyone. That’s because loss is different for everyone. Indeed, loss is personal. How you get over someone you once liked or loved and how long it takes will vary.

It’s important to note that the healing takes place in the journey, not at the destination. The lessons you learn along the way and the choices you make can change and transform the landscape of your heart. But remember: Healing is a process and it takes time.

One of the most essential lessons I learned in my season of desert darkness was the importance of grieving losses—going through not around the pain. It was a pivotal point in getting into freedom and joy.  

But like springtime— the shoulder between the dead of winter and the glory of summer—grieving lasts only for a season.  

It’s been said that if you don’t grieve well you grieve all the time. While you may put on a good front for friends and coworkers, inside the lingering sadness remains. That’s why it’s so important to grieve losses—to unblock your frozen heart so you can feel better, find joy, and live a life of emotional freedom, serenity and love.

Grieving a loss is not a linear process. There is no right or wrong order in which it must be done.  When the waves of sorrow come, ride them out; they will not destroy you. Eventually the waves that once pounded you so hard will have less and less impact, and finally recede.

What else can you do?

Acknowledge your losses. Getting through this season of grief and sadness begins by acknowledging that a loss has happened. Whether you left, he left, or it was a mutual agreement, something that was there is now gone.

Ask for help. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help you do what you cannot do on your own. With His power, emotions expressed will begin the flow, unclogging your blocked heart.

Let yourself be sad. Tears are a cleansing emotional release from a wellspring deep inside of us that need to get out; they are part of unblocking our inner stuckness and pain.

Recognize what you’ve lost and what remains. It can be helpful to make a list of your losses—and the good things you still have.

Pray. No matter what your circumstances, prayer is powerful. Prayer changes things. And it changes us.

Whether you pray alone, with friends, or a prayer partner, talking and listening with God in a holy dialog is the most important thing you can do to heal your broken heart. It doesn’t have to include elaborate words; it can be simple and heartfelt—as if you were talking to a friend, because indeed you are.