Patching the Heart

Tearing down and building up. Demolishing and reconstructing. This is what healing looks like, and both energies are equally needed.

Peeling away the layers, taking off the masks, leveling the barriers that were used to protect myself and my heart is the work that opens me up to receive. Bringing honesty to the parts of myself that I hide, recognizing how often I pretend to be okay when I’m not, pushing others out, or turning away intimacy and connection because it feels too scary, too threatening to the parts of me that are wounded and soft – this is the deconstruction of my internal world.

But there’s a patching of the heart that is necessary too, in places where there are too few walls, too few boundaries to keep my life force intact.

I know that the willing baring of my chest for the stabbing, the running into the fire just to feel something, the readiness to drown just to see if someone will save me, the leaking out of energy to people or causes that only take, rather than give – these are the corners of my heart that plead for repair. Without any walls, I invite myself to be sucked dry, spread thin, used and abused, all under the false belief that my giving and submission will bring love and approval. Without any walls, the cup will never fill, forever seeping into chasms that only take and never give back.

My heart has walls, yes, walls I’m learning to take down brick by brick, to let light and love in. But my heart also has holes, openings, floodgates even, where precious life-giving energy has flowed without restraint.

Wisdom is not only knowing which barriers need taken down, but which walls need strengthened, which holes need patched, which channels need rerouted. This is how I create a home of safety within.