All of my heartbreaks are relevant to my personal growth and who I am as a woman today.
But the one I’ll share was the most painful. It happened 10 years ago. It gave me the opportunity to go from heartbreak to heart-breakthrough. It’s actually the reason why I became a Love Coach. After finishing grad school and getting the professional training I needed to become a Sex Educator and Sex Therapist, life decided to enroll me in the School of Love Hard Knocks. I swear it felt like the Superbowl and World Series of heartbreaks.
A lot of women say they would love for a man to fight for their relationship and I was one of those women. But what I realized was that sometimes people are fighting to get you to just believe what they’re saying; not to actually be with you. They’re not standing for the relationship. And you’re just waiting for them to. I swear that was it. The going back and forth of our relationship to the point where I couldn’t even call it a relationship. I just called it “things we had between us”. Connection, passion, understanding each other, big visions for what we wanted to do in the world and our community. He was the man I thought was going to be my life partner and we were going to create a family together.
But it finally got to a point where I couldn’t see where he ended and I began. It was a lot of broken agreements in a relationship that I should’ve ended sooner.
I chose to end things (without discussing it with him), because our conversations were me trying to get answers and work things out and him gaslighting. This just leads to what my sister would call “a whole lot of nothing”. And it was evident (at least to me) that it was over. I noticed he was ok with the way things were going; all the back and forth. But I wasn’t. I kept hoping we would go back to the way things were at the beginning of our relationship. I wanted stability, companionship and growth again. In the end, we were just not right for
each other. So I ended it during my last semester of graduate school in April 2007. One night, all alone in my Bronx apartment in the dark. I said to myself out loud,
“I want a family. I want to get married. He’s showing me he doesn’t want those things.
I love him. But I love me more”.
And in that moment, I let go of the dream. The plan we made together for our lives. Then I cried an ocean. Choosing to detach from him felt like an emotional surgery (that I was performing on myself without anesthesia). I was doing everything I could to focus during finals, finishing my internship, decluttering my apartment and my heart. My mother came to visit me and there were times where I just hugged her and cried; not saying much of anything. I was so grateful to have her there. She saw me and just loved me for who I am.
As I healed, I journaled a lot and created activities from it. I became healthier physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I did deep self reflection and reviewed my choices and beliefs about men, relationships and myself. Specifically, where I broke agreements with myself that led to being with my ex as long as I did. I reconnected with my self value by creating my own love values and standards;
all the things that mattered to me in relationships and how I wanted live them with a partner. I started to love by example in order to teach men how to treat me, again. Seeing men for who they truly were based on their consistent patterns of behavior; not their words or sporadic grand gestures. Because I learned they will just fall back into their patterns when they’re back in your good graces. But I didn’t stick around to allow it anymore.
I also began re-learning to say no…again and again. And courageously walking away from men who didn’t honor or agree with my boundaries and the type of committed relationship I wanted and needed.
I remembered that No is not just a word. It’s a muscle. You need to train it, so it stays fit and strong enough to maintain your boundaries.
While healing and doing my own inner work for personal growth, I continued to live a rich fulfilling life and developed amazing healthy relationships. I never gave up on me, love and men, before and after that relationship. I reconnected with my power by taking responsibility for my choices. Not punishing myself in any way. But instead recognizing my power in my ability to respond in challenging situations that didn’t align with my emotional well-being. Rather than choosing to be passive and behave as if life just happens to me.
This is how I healed. And since then, I practice what I preach and teach what I practice. I became more me again.
And I promise you, you can become more you again.
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