Why Your Heartbreak Still Hurts

What healing heartbreak has to do with my broken finger in high school…

When I was 16, I broke my finger at a competitive swim meet. I was warming up in the pool and someone pushed hard off the wall where my pinky finger happened to be.

It bent completely back, like to where it almost touched the back of my hand.

Right away, I knew something didn’t feel right. I tried to keep swimming but it started to hurt pretty quickly. 

I got out of the pool and told my coach what happened. He said, “you’re probably fine, keep warming up.” So I got back in the pool and kept swimming while the pain got worse and it got harder to pull the water with my hand.

After the warm up, I knew I had to go to the doctor and shouldn’t swim. The joint at the bottom of my finger was starting to swell. 

But I had made it to the finals and my coaches still thought I was fine and should swim the race. The other parents gave me looks like I was exaggerating the pain. I think my parents may have even doubted my decision to scratch from the event. Even the officials I told when I was scratching the race gave side-eye.

Basically, everyone wanted me to push through.

When I showed up at practice the next week with a cast from my finger all the way down to my elbow because I had broken my finger at the growth plate, everyone on my team was shocked.

I was thinking about this story today because I’m getting ready to do an energy healing program next week for healing from heartbreak.

And I thought about the parallels between my broken finger and how we treat a broken heart.

How many of us have been devastated by a breakup and were then told to “get back out there,”  “just keep moving forward,” or “they’re not worth your tears?”

But this is the equivalent of telling me with my broken finger to keep swimming.

You can’t just walk off a broken heart anymore than you can walk off a broken leg and expect it to heal.

Your heartbreak deserves the same amount of tenderness and consideration as if you had broken a bone.

If we don’t address it with the healing and compassion it deserves, it will scar up and hold you back from moving on, just as if you had never addressed an open wound that was bleeding.

Heartbreak doesn’t just heal itself.

Back then with my broken finger, healing looked like having a cast for a few months, only using my legs in the pool (picture me on a kick board for 2 hours every day), and then once the cast came off, soaking my hand in epsom salt every night for another few months.

When I feel heartbreak now, I do energy healing on myself, put myself in bed, and rest my body because I know it needs it. 

Your way may be different, but don’t let anyone convince you that heartbreak isn’t the same as physical pain that needs our attention and care.

It’s the same, and I would argue, probably even more deserving of our care since the energetic and emotional body has so much to do with our physical health. 

If you’re in pain from heartbreak and want to join my Healing from Heartbreak Alchemy Week (my 6-day long energy healing program), I’d love to have you. 

Tap the button below to learn more and sign up.