If you are grieving over the breakup of your marriage or significant relationship, take heart: When you arm yourself with the tools to get through this crisis, you will find yourself on the other side, happier, healthier, and stronger than you thought you could be. It helps to have strategies and a plan. Here are five ways to soothe your heart after a breakup or divorce.

  1. Remember the bigger picture. We humans grow through pain. (Ugh.) Of course, not everyone takes advantage of the opportunity for growth that our painful experiences contain. More’s the pity. For those of us who lean in to our experience, hold ourselves to account, and ask ourselves, “What am I meant to learn from this? How do I want to be after going through this?” there is a terrific opportunity to become more of the best of what we already are. Reframing your breakup or divorce in this light helps keep things in a healthier perspective.
  2. Take care of yourself. Going through the pain of a breakup or divorce might be the best time in your life to get good self-care: regular massage or facials, to get back to your yoga mat, to try Reiki or Healing Touch or SRT or energy work or energy psychology. Take a class. Paint. Play the guitar. However you choose to do it, make time and commitment to take care of yourself. You deserve it.
  3. Call a friend. But be careful about which friend you call. There are those who talk us off the ledge, and those who make us want to jump. Pick the calming ones. And be sure to ask them about how they are doing. It is so helpful to think about someone else’s problems, instead of our own. And it makes us a better friend.
  4. Be patient with yourself. Healing takes time. Even when you are giving it your best effort, it still takes time. Some days you will feel better, and then on other days you will feel worse again. That’s how it goes. But little by little, your heart is healing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other. You hurt, you cry, and then you feel happy, and you laugh…And that’s how life goes. After the darkness comes the light.
  5. I know, it’s hard under the best of circumstances, and when we are in pain, it seems impossible to connect and sustain our attention. Try anyway. Your Higher Self will appreciate your effort, and you will find that you are sustained by your Source, even if you think you can’t “get there.” The effort is more important than the apparent result. Luckily there are so many great guided meditations available on line today (including a few of mine), you don’t have to work so hard. In fact, this can be a great time to take up the practice, and start to connect more deeply to Who you really Are. Which is pretty cool.

Every crisis contains the seeds for growth and transformation. Going through a breakup or divorce is certainly a crisis: painful, common, and growth-promoting. The practices suggested here are like tilling, watering, and adding sunlight. Do this, and we can grow into something amazing, healthy, strong, and resilient. And that is beautiful.