LET YOUR HEART BREAK OPEN.
About a month ago something propelled me to enroll in a yoga retreat at One Yoga, my favorite studio in the Twin Cities, taught by my favorite teacher, Ben Vincent. He said a person’s heart can either break open or break closed. It caught me as deeply profound.
According to yogic philosophy, all of our memories and experiences leave an impression on us. These memories and experiences are stored in a part of the mind called ‘chitta.’ Over time they leave an impression on your mind and heart. Ultimately, that impression starts to create a pattern of how you react with the world around you. You can either lead and react to the world with your heart hardened and broken closed, holding bitterness, pain and fear or you can lead with your heart being broken open, realizing your falliability, vunerability and having the courage to let your true self be seen once in a while. Having your heart broken open means you are open to joy and pain, new possibilities and new experiences, even if that means facing your worst fears or risking your heart being broken closed after you worked so hard to open it up.
…in some ways I barely recognize myself. About a year ago at this time I was frantic, going through the painful process of ending an 8 year long relationship. I was crying a lot, drinking my way into sleepless nights, packing my things and putting them in the basement to make room for the woman who would be subletting my (our) room while I traveled Europe for 3 months…
When I returned to my life in Minneapolis, I set down a path to start investing in real estate. If I was ever worried about never falling in love again, it quickly happened over one look at an 1893 Victorian duplex on a corner lot just outside of Uptown. It was masculine in all the right places from the charming subway tile entrance to the fireplace. It was feminine in its complicated, intricate gingerbread trim and wrought iron fence outlining the garden. Standing there in the blazing summer heat, nothing felt more right and completely terrifying in that moment, but that was my house. So, I offered. The owner countered. I ruminated over it like you would whether or not to text or call after not hearing from someone you have a crush on. I took a leap and offered again. The owner didn’t accept. In the end we were $8K apart, but I couldn’t lose myself over this beauty. So, I let her go.
After a slew of other properties, nothing would measure up. I offered on a few others, the final was a gigantic house in Northeast Minneapolis in an up-and-coming neighborhood I had lived in for two years. As I was in the small backyard imagining all of the wonderful garden parties I could host, a newly wed couple pulled up to look at the house. Suddenly the realization hit me that I was in this thing alone, that summer was ending and it would be me shoveling the driveway in the dead of winter with snow piling up. Hesitations aside, I offered anyway…almost to spite the newly weds and their happiness. I felt at once completely empowered that I had the ability as a single woman to own my own home and scared out of my mind at the same time.
Time went on. I ruminated. The housing search fizzled and I began to question my desires and motives for pursuing this business venture. I visited a friend in New York in October and began lusting over the city as I do Paris. Over Christmas I had an epiphany and realized that I don’t even really like taking out the trash, let alone shoveling snow in the dead of winter. I’m out to dinner, shows or political events after work, getting home with barely enough time to brush my teeth before my head hits the pillow. Owning a home would be crazy for me right now. I am freer in this moment to do anything I want than I might ever be again. What I really want is to live in a cracker-jack-box apartment in a huge city, be it NYC, London or Paris. And I don’t have to give up my dream of owning and managing properties at some point, but that is for another time, not right now.
So, I have decided to move to NYC. As I sit here today I just had a second job interview at Google in Manhattan, I have been invited to interview for the Coro Leadership Institute in March, my friend Nicole and I have started a business & website in under 3 weeks and I’m somehow managing to kick ass at a job that is boring me to tears.
Sometimes you have to let go of one thing you’ve held dearly, to grab onto another. For me, it’s been letting go of the life I had planned to live with someone in order to shape my new life, which as you can see has taken many incarnations in a short period of time. Give yourself permission for a new beginning. Open up to doing what feels good to you, even if it’s in conflict with what you ‘should’ do or what you ‘think’ you should do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to live with an open heart. With an open heart suddenly you are moving through pain and joy - open to both - and truly experiencing them. You are open to your vulnerability and your power, which is terrifying. When you are making changes to your life, it’s a negotiation; you give up one thing in exchange for something else. That means leaving something or someone behind, which is painful.
Last week I came down with a terrible sinus cold and it fucked with my mojo bigtime. It was the first time I have stopped moving or producing something since I decided to set my sights on moving to NYC at the beginning of January. I’m not sure if it was the sinus cold, the literal cold blustering outside of my window or straight loneliness, but it felt like I went into the belly of the beast. I laid around sick, anxious, crying off and on wondering if I’m making the right choices, thinking that maybe I’ll die alone with 1,000 cats (half kidding) and freaking out about getting where I want to be and feeling so far from it.
Stretching yourself isn’t for the faint of heart. Whether you are ending a relationship, scared to start a new one, moving to a different city, leaving a job you hate, dealing with the fallout from past abuse or giving up your life to care for an ailing loved one - it’s not easy. Life is constant whitewater and it hurts sometimes. You will bask in the sun one moment and be shattered on the rocks in the next, but you don’t have to let it destroy your ability to experience happiness. Open yourself up to the reality that you can’t change the past anymore than you can know the future. Your past has shaped you, but it doesn’t have to define you. Sometimes it hurts letting someone get close to you, even a little bit. And that’s okay because guarding your heart for a while can be healing. There’s a difference between guarding and closing off. It hurts letting go of life as you planned, but doing so gives you perspective and builds your power. Let people in your life see you for who you really are, with all of your goofiness and insecurities, that’s what makes us human. If you don’t, this life will seem forever lonely. It takes some getting used to, but the tiniest beam of light shining in feels so good, so healing if you let it. If you can entertain the possibility of a new beginning, there might be something so much sweeter on the other side of a heart broken closed.
