Maybe It’s Time To Crack Our Hearts Wide Open

We’ve been holding our breath lately, haven’t we?

Self-protection is high; the proverbial walls between us are too. Maybe instead of prioritizing our own comforts, we open our hands and hearts.

What would it feel like if we allowed our hearts to crack wide open? To feel the weight of our grief, to begin to really see each other again? Our individualism is literally killing us, and much of the collective is gasping for breath.

Maybe there’s another way, forged from the caverns of our heartbreak.

Heartbreak isn’t the end, even when it feels like it. Heartbreak is the beginning of deep healing when we allow ourselves to break open. Crisis reveals who we are, who we love, what we stand for, and how our beliefs are practiced within our behaviors.

This season of reckoning has become a powerful illumination of our messy humanity, shining brightly in both revolutionary and revolting ways. Some of us may be holding our breath, yet many of us are indeed gasping for it.

We cannot change what we do not fully accept or feel.

It is deeply true that much is being asked of each one of us right now. No one is immune to the suffering, the anguish, and the fear permeating our culture. What we are witnessing and experiencing isn’t new; it is long-held injustices, pain, and fear rising to the surface. We are collectively being rendered; the churning we feel offers a tidal wave of healing along with it when we look closely too.

Cracking our hearts wide open will take courage in everyday practice; perhaps the deepest kind of practice we’ve ever known. Not just for a day or an occasion but for the long haul until we can all breathe freely again. Maybe we can transform the horror into glory and the vigilance for what we individually want into championing for what we all want.

Maybe through this heartbreak, we can create something new.