[I] Am Not Broken.

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

- Sam Keen

I've broken open many times. But I am not broken. I'm just alive. 

The same is true for you, too.

I believe our hearts have to break open. The cracks, with all their letting in the lightness/darkness/awareness/lessons, eventually require us to rebuild/repair/heal so that we grow and expand our hearts' very capacity to feel and experience the full breath of life. Later, once they've reached capacity again, our hearts will break open again, ready for the next round of evolution and growth. That's how I think of it, anyway. Sometimes the cracks are subtle, tiny. And sometimes they're big.  Either way, without the cracks it would be impossible to allow either the flood of joy or the flood of grief  (or both!) into our life during meaningful transitions. Falling in love, falling out of love, losing a loved one, giving birth, divorce, aging, losing ourselves, finding ourselves - all moments when our hearts crack open to receive. Maybe it's receiving love, the full experience of it. Maybe it's receiving grief, the full experience of it. And then to rebuild with a new, evolved, deeper, more meaningful way of seeing, believing, loving. 

Either way, the purpose of the cracks is to allow our hearts to receive the full expression of life. 

There is a difference between being broken and being broken open.

The first crack was simply because my heart broke its capacity to receive the magnitude of love that came with I started dating someone that I felt a true, authentic connection for and with.  It was mutual.  It was genuine.  It was a beautiful crack - nothing but love came through. Then, slowly over time, the cracks kept coming, almost like a shattered web, as the lessons/grief/love kept pouring in.  Nearly 8 months in, it feels like I've been rebuilding, healing, nurturing a whole new heart. I've never learned so much in all of my life from tending to those cracks. I'm happy to report that my heart has never felt more beautiful, huge, healed and with a bigger capacity to feel than ever before. Breaking open made it possible. Thank you, cracks.

We're not broken. We're just alive. 

Here's to cracking and building and healing and breathing and growing into our heart's maximum capacity. And here's to having lots of gratitude for our cracks. They are the evidence, like well deserved wrinkles on our faces, of a well lived life.