I recently experienced the reopening of a wound in my heart.
Nothing overly dramatic happened. No major further betrayals or abandonment. But, around and around the spiral we go, and I guess it was time for me to come around again to my broken heart.
It’s been quite unexpectedly intense, this revisiting.
From a bird's-eye view, I can see that this return is not random. It is arriving now, after I've cultivated a new baseline of physical resourcing, as though my system finally has the capacity to meet it.
Our Wounding Shapes Us
Our wounding shapes us. It molds us. It creates patterns, personalities, identities, responses, blind spots, and, for the most part, all of these are in place to protect us. They are all protection mechanisms.
If someone you loved hurt you badly, you may develop a belief that love isn’t safe. You may want love, but parts of your protection mechanisms cause you to be noncommittal or subtly or not-so-subtly push a person away or keep them at arm’s length. This would make sense. And if you were interacting with people who might hurt you, this would also be a wise adaptation.
But what about that tender and delicate need for love, intimacy, and connection? What about the nutrient of relationship that us human social animals require? At some point in our journey and growth we start to feel our rigidly held protection mechanisms are no longer supportive, but effectively cut us off from something we need. That need most of the time being some sort of connection or expression or desire.
Protection Mechanisms vs Instincts
I want to be clear, protecting ourselves is not pathological in any way. We need healthy boundaries. We need to be able to say No and hold it. We need to be be able to trust ourselves with ourselves. This is maybe the most important aspect of healing I can think of. Lost or buried instincts can be another place where our “protection mechanisms” paradoxically disconnect us from ourselves and our needs.
If, for some reason, your instincts were overpowered by a yearning or a need for connection as a child or as an adult, you might have learned to devalue your instincts. You might have learned to ignore your instincts in the interest of your need for connection. This is a very real phenomenon in the women I work with and in my own journey.
What I am calling ‘protection mechanisms’ are not instincts. Protection mechanisms are built on top of our experiences; instincts come from a deeper, more primal location. Both of these things are geared toward protection, but one comes from an innate, natural, life-giving place and the other comes from wounding.
When I say I recently experienced a wound being revisited it’s because I am being asked to take down some of my protection mechanisms.
When a protective mechanism comes down we have to revisit the wound that created it. And, simultaneously, we must get reacquainted with our instinctual nature as it pertains to the area of wounding.
We cannot take down a protection mechanism and leave ourselves completely defenseless and open. This type of unguarded opening is not actually in service to any woman’s physiology or thriving. And, ultimately, this type of opening will result in a snapping shut and maybe even potentially more protective mechanisms being put in place in the long run.
This is where I diverge from common spiritual teachings. We are not supposed to be and stay open constantly. Being open all the time is just another version pedestalizing yang/masculine energy. We need closure, too. We need the contraction. We need to restore our instincts, which tell us which thing to move toward. We need the substance and the substrate, which requires an inward rebuilding, not constant outward energy.
We have protection mechanisms and adaptations for a reason. Restoring instinct must be part of the conversation if we’re going to talk about ‘taking down our walls’ and ‘revealing ourselves’ more deeply or we run the risk of further depletion, burnout, and real negative consequences to our bodies and psyches.
Befriending My Broken Heart
Part of my recent process of shedding my stiff protection mechanisms while also reestablishing my innate instincts when it comes to trusting the people I love to care for me is a process I have begun to see as ‘befriending my broken heart.’
My heart has been broken many times in my relatively short lifetime, as I’m sure yours has.
I have tender, vulnerable, aching, and weary aspects of myself, as I’m sure you do. These parts are valuable and beautiful. They are the parts that allow us to access our compassion, true generosity, playfulness, passion, warmth and so much more.
These are the aspects our protection mechanisms are built up around.
And so, if we are going to take down our walls, we must befriend these qualities in ourselves. We must be able to hold them sweetly while we choose to emerge from behind the fortresses of our personal protection mechanisms. We must concurrently have the capacity to use and be connected to our primal, restorative instincts during this process.
I have found, for myself, the most important thing I have is my relationship to the world I carry around inside myself.
We can go through heart break after heart break, challenge after challenge, harrowing decision after harrowing decision, make mistakes upon mistakes, and as long as we know that we are on our own side, we can be ok. We can even not be ok and we’re ok, as long as we have a sense of connection to self.
This is befriending our broken hearts. To know that our hearts are precious. To know that our innate worthiness is intact.
As Sarah Blondin said in her book Heart Minded, “I am love. It is never lacking or able to be stolen from me. I am good enough. I trust life. Life is kind. There is no pain too great not to be fed by my love and kindness. I am strong. My worth is not to be gained. I am already all of the worth I will ever be.”
As I feel I say a lot— living itself is painful. There has never been any guarantee that life will not hurt. In fact, pain is the result of coming into more conscious awareness. It can hurt to see the things we did not see before. So, sometimes we’d rather fall asleep, avoid, numb out, than face the painful truth of our broken hearts. This is ok. It is human.
However, as Rumi said, “The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door opens.”
I believe so much of our prolonged suffering comes from not being on our own side through those painful moments. It comes from not being willing to simply look into our own experience and befriend our own broken hearts.
It seems, this year, I’ve been turning to Rainer Maria Rilke in times of great pain and I given this line today, “In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.”
My broken heart deserves my attention. When I truly have the capacity to stand still with it, it does not result in my collapse, or rumination, or self pity, but, instead, a deeper, more intimate, knowing of myself.
Fearlessness Comes From Tenderness
The unfiltered experience of befriending your broken heart is one of fearlessness.
This is why, when we have the true foundational baseline of physical resource, restored instincts are actually the product of tenderness with ourselves. The more we are with ourselves at this organic, stripped down level, the more fearless we become. Because we know, if we can be with ourselves in our pain, we will never leave ourselves, and this let’s us know, we are safe.
I have been making a practice of feeling my broken heart in all situations. It doesn’t take extra time out of my day. It doesn’t leave me drained on the floor. In fact, it leaves me feeling closer to myself.
While I’m making breakfast for my kids—I’ll sway with my broken heart for a few moments as I flip the eggs. Sitting in the sunshine—let me open the ache and express gratitude for the ability to feel. Driving in the car—I listen to a sad song and let the soft tears fall. It does cause me to slow down a bit. To feel what is happening in my internal world for moment. To be oriented to me.
I can do this because I have built the physical resource and structure in my real life that can hold me and sustain the shifting taking place. You cannot be with yourself on this level without the physical resourcing to sustain it.
There is nothing to fear when we befriend our broken hearts.
