"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen
“The world needs your broken heart,” I heard the trees almost whisper to me a few months ago when I was deep in meditation on my land. (If you sit silently with nature, it will always reveal the truth of things).
I’d been deeply angry and grieving the moment the world is in, our country is in: the cruelty, the chaos, the conflict, the complete disregard for our symbiotic relationship with nature, the extremely uncertain future for my son. I couldn’t figure out how to help, or even truly function.
I innately know how hard this time is for sensitive souls, for the empaths who feel it all (within themselves and the collective), for the ones whose hearts break over and over again with every news cycle (which is every single day). For many of us right now, it is simply too much to take in.
And yet, my land quietly reminded me that heartbreak is a crack —a cracking open— allowing a space for love, empathy, compassion and much-needed light to find its way in during dark times.
The pain and grief we may feel in this moment are also a portal to our love.
To witness destruction, distortion, injustice and deep division—and still choose connection and love—is a spiritual initiation (raise your hand if you’re in it). And not just the softness of love, but the piercing, powerful nature of a love that can contain it all:
fierceness and forgiveness,
rage and reciprocity,
strength and softness,
boundaries and belonging,
hard truth-telling and tenderness.
So when you aren’t sure what to “do” (like me, literally every day), simply connecting to your broken-heartedness can be a pathway to openness.
And allowing our hearts to break open — and to practice staying open to ourselves and each other — is one of the most healing medicines (and acts of resistance) we can offer in times like these.
I wonder if the collective cracking open of all our hearts can unravel the threads that allow us to weave something new, a reminder of our inseparable connection to each other and all things, an unstoppable ripple of loving awareness, and an honoring of the humanity we haven’t yet lost or forgotten.
As Bell Hooks so beautifully wrote, “We do not have to love. We choose to love.” And at a time when the politics of division and hatred are banking on us turning away or shutting down, choosing kindness, compassion and love is not weakness— it is power. May we find a way to choose it— and use it— together.