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Love After Heartbreak

Love After Heartbreak

If you’ve followed my journey for some time, you’ve known the story of heartbreak and loss.

You know the story of uncertainty and change.

You know the story of darkness and gloom.

Yet, divorces I’ve concluded are not the end of the world. Nor are heartbreaks or separations or breakups.

Endings don’t necessarily have to be the worst thing that has ever happened to you! And with every ending, there is a new beginning.

With every heartbreak, you sow the seeds for new love to flourish.

Yet this doesn’t happen automatically.  Moving on is easier said than done. How do you let go of the past? How do you move on? How do you open your heart again?

In my new book, Love After Heartbreak, I’ve written a book for all of us to move forward and love again after heartbreak.

 

Who is this book for?

It’s for you if you’ve experienced heartbreak, separation or divorce and have sworn off relationships for the rest of your life.

What will you learn in this book?

You will learn how to let go of the past and heal your heart. You will learn how to reclaim and boost your self-worth after that painful breakup. You’ll learn how to trust again and overcome your fear of commitment.

Will this book guide you to finding the right partner?

Yes! It will give you tips and strategies for landing the right partner. There’s a chapter on how to find the right partner and another chapter on what you can do to increase your chances of finding the right partner.

Does it address fear and rejection?

Fears keep us from moving forward, so, definitely; there are several chapters about overcoming fears. Overcome your fear of commitment, overcome your fear of being hurt again and overcome your fear of rejection.  Learn how to see rejection in a new and more empowering light. Yes, you might confront rejection after heartbreak but learn how to see rejection in a positive light.

How will this book change your life?

This book will only do one thing: change your perspective and way of thinking about love. It will address your fears and objections. It will help you shift your perspective and look at relationships from a new angle. It will encourage you to go beyond your comfort zone, find your courage and go after that relationship that’s waiting for you.

Why this book, and why did you write it?

Honestly? This book is as much for me as it is for you. This is what I’ve learned, this is what I’m learning and this is what I’m doing in my life. Everything I write to you is everything I’m telling myself. Everything I suggest you do, I’m trying to do.

I wrote it for all of us who are stuck in our pasts and desire to move on to new love. I wrote it for all of us who are afraid of loving and opening our hearts again.

Why love again?

You might think that your life was over after your broken heart, your breakup or your divorce. I remind you in this book that your relationship ending could be a true blessing. You have choices, you have opportunities and you have the freedom to create a new relationship from scratch. You can now do it with wisdom, experience and an open (and stronger) heart.

I want to remind you of what Hemingway said: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Where can you purchase this book?

You can pick it up on Kindle books at the Amazon store. If you’re open to love again, click here to pick up Love After Heartbreak today.

How to Open Your Heart to Love After Heartbreak

How to Open Your Heart to Love After Heartbreak

The last thing you want to hear about after heartbreak is love.

After your heart has been shattered, your life turned upside down and your questioning of humanity begins, you wonder if it’s all worth it.

Is it worth it to put your heart out there?

Is it worth it to trust another person again?

Is love worth all the pain that you’ve gone through?

I didn’t think it was for several years after my divorce. Yes, there were highs in marriage, but the lows after divorce were so low that I didn’t think I ever wanted to return to that place again.

I never again wanted to swim in a place of loss, vulnerability and pain.

On my own journey back from this place of darkness, I realized that love is worth it. I realized that #!*!& cliché about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is likely true!

I realized that one benefit of your heart breaking is that it breaks open. Your heart has the capacity to love bolder, stronger and deeper after loss.

Heartbreak won’t just open your heart; it can awaken your soul. There are so many parts of you that were sleeping that were likely shaken up.

Can the tsunami of the heart be your solid ground? Can the depths of despair and rejection be the seeds of new love?

I explore this topic below and at greater length in my new book, Love After Heartbreak, available on Amazon here.

Here are 5 ways to bounce back and open your heart again after heartbreak.

1. Process your emotions

You won’t be able to move on until you experience the emotions of heartbreak and loss.

You must let go of the resistance to feeling uncomfortable emotions.

You might feel denial and resistance is the way to go so you won’t feel the pain, but this will only prolong the time it will take you to heal.

If you grew up in a family that refused to experience emotions or denied emotions exist, this is going to be a life-changing process. I’ve found that emotions will not kill you.

To process your emotions, write it out (through journaling or a diary). Speak it out (to a friend or therapist).

Allow yourself to go to the darkest, most painful parts of yourself.

The intensity of your emotions will taper over time. It may feel unbearable in the beginning, but it does get better. Once you experience the emotional overwhelm, you’ll find you can sit with your emotions more easily.

2. Choose love over fear

Your grief and anger about the breakup will turn to fear at some point. You might think that one strategy to avoid this kind of pain is never to be in another relationship again. Brilliant! Except once you realize that, your colorful world turns to a black and white landscape where you’re barely living. Avoiding love is not the recipe for opening your heart to love.

You must choose love each and every time.

You have to choose to see your past relationship through a loving lens. You have to see your ex through the prism of love. You have to see your heartbreak as love.

You also choose love over fear in opening your heart. You realize that you have two choices: you can build walls and hide your heart, or you can venture out. You have a choice in every decision you make.

You can stay home or go out. You can put up a dating profile or take it down. You can speak to the Harvard woman your family wants to introduce you to or you can pretend you missed the email with her contact Information.

3. Take emotional risks

Loving someone takes a lot of emotional risk. You risk being hurt. You risk opening your life up to pain and suffering. You risk a marriage gone wrong, losing your house and splitting your kids with your ex.

Yes, a lot can go wrong with love, but there’s a lot to gain from love, too.

I’m dubious about love at first sight and loving by jumping all in. I prefer love to be more like how I enter a swimming pool. Some people say, who cares if it’s freezing cold? Just cannon ball in. Jump off the side and plunge yourself into the water. It may be freezing, it may be deep, but after 10 seconds in, you’ll adjust. I prefer not to enter a pool this way. I go in one toe at a time, until my body is immersed in the water.

You don’t have to jump all in after a broken heart. You can take it slow. You can share what you’re comfortable with. There aren’t just two degrees of relationships: superficial and committed. Take smaller risks each day.

4. Trust yourself

You are worried that you’ll make the wrong decision when you love again. You’ll wind up with someone else who breaks your confidence, betrays your trust and breaks your heart.

You have no guarantees or certainties when you open your heart to another person. You can’t trust or believe in anyone else; but oh, you can.

You have yourself. If you really think about it, you always know. When you’ve found the right person, you know. When you’ve found the wrong person, you always know.

99% of heartbreak begins before it starts. A sure recipe for disaster is to stay in a relationship with the wrong person.

You don’t have to trust anyone else. You only need to trust your judgment, your heart and your intuition.

5. Use pain as wisdom

Do you believe that your pain keeps you stuck in the past and prevents you from finding love again?

What if your greatest weakness, your pain, can be your superpower?

Your pain can be see through the prism of loss and heartache, or through the prism of wisdom.

If you survived heartbreak, you understand others and yourself better.

If you survived heartbreak, you know who’s right for you and who’s not.

If you survived heartbreak, your heart’s more attuned to what you want.

In the pain is your wisdom. In your wisdom is your strength. In your strength is your ability to love again.

You can do this.

You can read more about how to open your heart to love again in my new book, Love After Heartbreak. Learn how to let go of the past, bounce back emotionally and love again. Pick up the book on Amazon here.

Why You Need to Love Again

https://youtu.be/bFgZMe7mHgg

Loving can heal. Loving can mend your soul.” Ed Sheeran

It’s officially been four years.

I’m still here. You’re still here.

All of us – survivors of divorce, heartbreak and heartache – are still here and still standing.

Some of us are barely here, but we’re still here!

Over the past four years I had gone out of my way to close off all the personal relationships in my life.

I stayed behind my fort, my moat, my castle of unscalable walls so that I wouldn’t have to open my heart to anyone.

I liked being there – hidden, closed and impossible to hurt.

Until I had an awakening – until I started questioning my beliefs and becoming more mindful of what I was doing.

I had used one dramatic experience in my life – heartbreak and a marriage gone wrong – to make up my mind about all relationships and love in general.

To me, love registered as painful, life-crushing and destructive.

It was my reality, my experience and my journey until I realized – exactly – that it was my experience, my reality and my journey which gave me the power to change how I viewed these past events in my life.

Yes, I could stay in the self-created prison of sabotage and loneliness or I could break through, throw off the shackles of heartbreak and stand up again.

See, when I was a recluse, holed up and walled-in, heartbreak won.

When I decided, by free will and choice, that my past was no longer going to imprison me, love won.

And you know what’s really motivating me to love again?

Why I signed up for those dating sites, why I said okay to meeting women my family has been introducing me to and why I said okay to blind dates? Why I even responded to a woman my brother’s landlord tried to set me up – in another state?

Why yes to love?

Because here’s what I’ve found by opening my heart to love again – as Ed Sheeran points out in this soulful song above, love may hurt but love also has the ability to heal. And mend your soul.

You can do two things after divorce and heartbreak: 1) run away, hide and never love again; or 2) grieve, heal and open up your heart to love again. And in loving, find that you can heal your heart by loving again.

By opening your heart, you allow it to piece itself together. All those broken pieces gather and join back together. Your heartbreak has allowed your heart to grow and become fuller.

So, that’s why I need to love – and that’s why you need to love.

You need to take down the walls.

Let go of all the false beliefs. Let go of the anger and the bitterness you may be harboring toward your ex.

Believe that love is possible again and believe that love can help you heal.

Your heartbreak was experience, and the more you do something, the better you get at it.

The more we learn about what didn’t work, the more we can learn what does.

The more insight we have about ourselves, the more we can share with others.

You don’t have to wait for anyone to love you.

You don’t have to wait for some kind-hearted, compassionate, caramel-skin Indian woman who’s in her 30s, in the five-foot height range, into yoga and working as a pharmacist to fall in love with you – I mean, of course if you know that person and she’s in Southern California, dial the number 909-263-5463 as soon as possible. No, that’s not my personal cell phone number which I’ll pick up in one ring.

What were we talking about?

Oh yeah, you. And love.

And why you need to love again.

You need to love again. It doesn’t have to be romantic love, either. And you don’t have to wait for someone to love you.

Loving again means the following:

1) Making peace with your past.

Forgiving those who hurt you and forgiving yourself for your mistakes in your past relationship.

2) Saying whatever needs to be said for closure.

Don’t say it to your ex – write it down or say all those things you wanted to say but couldn’t, out loud to someone you trust. Say those things that will give you closure and help you move on with your life.

3) Start loving those around you.

The people who are close to you – friends, family, colleagues, neighbors and anyone who needs some love. What does loving look like? Read this post here, which describes ways to cultivate relationships and take action on love. Loving someone doesn’t have to be in the romantic sense – loving is simply giving, sharing and making connections.

4) Confront your disempowering and negative beliefs about love.

You likely have strong love blocks that you should examine. What are those beliefs or feelings that are preventing you from loving again? What are you going to do to work through them and to let go of disempowering thoughts?

5) Practice opening your heart.

Put yourself in situations that allow you to open your heart and give to others. Feel compassion and sympathy for people around you – donate your time or energy to improving their lives.

Practice saying yes to things that scare you when you want to say no.

Visualize what a loving and supportive relationship looks like and be open to that.

Be open to loving yourself – be compassionate to yourself and kind to your thoughts and the demands you have of yourself.

6) Take small steps of courage on the daily to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability is saying that you’re looking for someone new in your life.

Vulnerability is putting up your dating profile. Vulnerability is uploading your photo. Vulnerability is telling someone you like them. Vulnerability is sending an email to someone you’re interested in. Vulnerability is responding to a message. Vulnerability is saying no. Vulnerability is saying yes. Vulnerability is saying yes to coffee. Yes to meeting. Yes to sushi. Yes to a movie. Yes to your friend who’s trying to set you up. Yes to your family who wants to introduce you to a friend’s daughter.

For my book, 10 Sacred Laws of Healing a Broken Heart, click here.