On heartbreak

a journal entry

8/29/24

I didn’t realize heartbreak would pull me awake.

Three hours before I wanted to wake. Three hours before recording three hours of training content that will be listened to by thousands around the world.

That’s alright. My voice sounds better when I’m tired.

There’s a gnawing pit like a hot fist twisting clockwise through my solar plexus.

Heartbreak is a dull ache that starts in my sternum and echoes off the hollow walls of my chest cavity.

It’s grief really. Grief and its stages. It’s the perceived loss of someone, something. An imagined future interrupted by an imagined past.

The mental stories aren’t necessary, but they are there.

They are there distracting me from what’s being asked of me.

To feel this feeling fully. The same way I’ve helped countless others to.

My turn.

This feeling that woke me up, it’s asking to be felt. Like a scared child asking to be loved.

One hand on my chest.

Breathe.

I see you. I hear you. I feel you. And I love you.

And breathe.

And breathe.

I feel it start to release. A soft smile breaks across my lips. I’ve gotten pretty good at this whole integration thing.

Old me would have looked to numb this ache, to cover this hot fist with a cool towel. To drink until it wasn’t hot anymore. I would have reacted a thousand times over the course of these weeks, if I was still him.

He’s still there, he just doesn’t make the decisions anymore.

It’s just a feeling, this molten corkscrew. And there is no feeling I’m incapable of feeling.

And it’s here, asking me to feel it.

And that is what I will do.

Still, sometimes this feeling wants to be expressed as well.

As with all emotions, this feeling is energy in motion and wants somewhere to go.

It wants to be moved.

I wrote a poem last month, sitting in front of a massive painting from Pollock.

Here’s a part of it that illustrates this process.

"I'll be doing alchemy on the black plastic leather bench in a black 
leather notebook, distilling pure energy from grief and turning it 
into words.

Grief to poetry, like copper to gold.

Corn to whiskey.

I will join everything else as energy in motion,
and whatever I write will be an artifact of that

a fossil of something felt."

What is art? A fossil of something felt.

Poetry, writing, painting. My trinity of creative expression.

It’s where I transmute feeling into form.

The emotion gets expressed through the movement. The art itself is whatever that movement results in.

So I’m painting. A lot.

Because little keystrokes and scribbles aren’t big enough a movement for this pain.

Even the biggest canvas I can buy is struggling to contain it.

“Do you have anything bigger?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

I’m getting paint all over the grass and trees. I need a barn. An old barn I can cover.

A barn to make a mess in.

Perhaps I’ll get one in the woods.

Integration. Expression.

And gratitude. Truly.

Gratitude that I’m at this stage in my life. That I’ve done the inner work to prioritize my own emotional maturity and spiritual evolution and be in this place where I no longer numb, suppress, or avoid uncomfortable emotions.

Where I feel them fully, welcome them with open arms, and transform them into art.

Gratitude for this experience, because my soul came here to have it.

Gratitude that I allowed myself to love so deeply that such a grief could be possible.

Gratitude that I have no fear of loss, because I Know that nothing is ever really lost.

And gratitude that fear will never hold me back from loving again.

To follow my heart and find out.

To feel everything fully.

To be true to myself and trust the rest.

These are my intentions.