Heart Healing: The Power of Forgiveness to Heal a Broken Heart

By Susyn Reeve and Ryan Weiss

“This book serves as your personal heart healing coach to . . . free your heart and mind of the wounds of the past.” —Jamie Lynn Sigler, actress on The Sopranos
 
Whatever the cause of your heartbreak—the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, a divorce, shattered dreams, a family feud, a life-threatening diagnosis, career turmoil, or past abuse that repeats over and over again—it is never too early or too late to courageously forgive and let go.
 
Filled with stories, proven exercises, and powerful affirmations to free you from any resentment and anger you are holding towards yourself or others, this book offers potent opportunities for lasting, life-changing heart-healing. The “emotional clutter” of old resentments, grudges, guilt, and shame are blocks to love and a direct call for action. Readers will learn:

• The distinction between a closed and broken heart
• To identify the specific beliefs that continue to activate your emotional wounds and unresolved anger
• How to forgive yourself and others using the Deal-Heal-Forgive Process
• How healing your heart contributes to healing the broken-heartedness in the world today.

 
With wisdom gained from her own heartbreak story and decades of study with Joseph Campbell, Jean Houston, Robert Fritz, don Miguel Ruiz and thousands of clients and students, Susyn Reeve has written a refreshingly honest and practical guide to living a life of contentment, connection, and long-overdue love.
 
“Heartbreak is a painful fact of life. Be prepared to free your heart, because you were born worthy.” —Nell Merlino, creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781633535893

Susyn Reeve

As a teenager, Susyn Reeve wrote in her journal, "What would the world be like if everyone loved themselves?" This question has guided her fierce commitment in partnering with clients to expand their capacity to be mighty expressions of love in the world and live a wholehearted life of passion and purpose.She has had many roles during her 40 years of experience as a transformational coach, educator, corporate consultant, and interfaith minister. She is the best-selling author of The Inspired Life, co-creator of Self-Esteem-Experts.com, and her recent work, as an Elder, focuses on Crafting Your 3rd Act. She lives on the east coast, in the Berkshires and the East End of Long Island.Janet Conner is a popular writer and speaker with a simple message: We all have innate spiritual intelligence; we just need to know how to activate it. Janet is author of the bestseller Writing Down Your Soul and radio host of The Soul-Directed Life on Unity Online Radio. Previously, she created Spiritual Geography, the soul writing system that heals the broken heart. Janet lives in Ozona, FL where she is exploring the ultimate question: What does your soul want? Visit her at janetconner.comKatherine Woodward Thomas is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After.

Book preview

Introduction

Dear Reader,

I love getting letters. I encourage you to read this letter as though it is a personal invitation to heal your heart of heartbreak and wounds of the past. Keep in mind that a healed heart is a whole heart—a heart that has weathered those broken places so the light of Love from within easily flows out, and the Love from outside easily flows in.

I have felt a great responsibility in writing this book. I am an elder. I have sixty-nine years of experience being a human, and I have had the blessing and privilege throughout my life of working with tens of thousands of people who have invited me to guide them through life challenges that had left them angry, hopeless, and filled with regret, shame, the desire for revenge, and resentment. Also, since the time I was a child, close family members and friends have sought my guidance when seduced by anger, wounds of the past, and a deep desire for greater Love, happiness, and peace of mind in their lives.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

—Steve Jobs

The question that fuels my life is one I wrote in my journal as a teen: What would the world be like if everyone loved themselves? In retrospect, I now know that this question, penned by the fourteen-year-old me, was an invitation to my life’s work—my Calling—and the point of view that our relationship with ourselves forms the blueprint for all the relationships in our lives.

These days, I express this Calling through the title of Godmother—this is my way of sharing the wisdom of experience and being a mighty expression of Love. Earlier in my life, there were other professional titles, including organizational development consultant, executive coach, interfaith minister, life coach, and self-esteem expert. Then there are the personal roles: child, daughter, sister, wife, stepmother, single woman, friend, lover, and grandmother.

Through the wealth of experiences that a long life offers, I have come to know that a healed heart—an open heart—is necessary to feast on the gifts of your one precious life, as well as for a more Loving, peaceful, accepting, compassionate, and caring world. There are moments when it seems so simple to me—we are all going to die anyway, so why not enjoy the journey during our brief time on Earth, and heal our hearts, free ourselves of the wounds of the past (personal, generational, and cultural), and commit to allowing Love to illuminate our time here?

Knowing the pain of heartbreak and the opportunity it always presents for healing, I wanted to write a book that would be immediately engaging and ultimately, in my biggest dream, would also be a catalyst for millions of readers to hone their dealing, healing, and forgiving skills and to say, Yes to being mighty expressions of Love in the world.

Even though I had a big dream for this book, it was challenging for me to write. I was very much in Love, and brokenheartedness seemed to have been in my distant past. After being single for 15 years, I was in a relationship that nourished me spiritually, emotionally, physically, and intellectually.

After a few months of dating and feeling at home with this very special man, he invited me to move in with him. My response was an immediate Yes, as every cell of my being was jumping for joy.

We made our home on a beautiful lake, sharing morning walks, mouthwatering meals, and laughter as we imagined dreams we would share together. Being with Beau, I truly felt more open to giving and receiving Love than I had ever before in my life.

Where do I begin? I wondered when more often than not I simply wanted to be with Beau. But a deadline was looming, so in meditation, I repeatedly asked myself, ‘What is heart healing?’ Following the thread of responses I heard, I completed the manuscript as I continued to deepen and expand my capacity to be, give, and receive Love.

As I put the finishing touches on the manuscript, Beau was preparing for a trip to China, in part to explore places for us to live and visit during a year of traveling in Asia that was to begin in January 2018.

On the morning of May 4, 2017, I was excited to receive an email from Beau. I was not expecting my world to change as I clicked to open the email. Hello, heartbreak, I had hoped never to meet you in this relationship.

While my heart healing catalyst was the unexpected and abrupt ending of a loving relationship, there are many other life challenges that trigger heartbreak. This confronts us with the choice of closing our hearts or stepping fully onto the courageous path of not only healing our current heartache, but also freeing our hearts and minds of the wounds of the past.

Whether your heart healing journey has been triggered by the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, a devastating health diagnosis, a financial crisis, addiction, career challenges, or the myriad other circumstances that generate feelings of victimization, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, you can apply the practices of forgiveness that fill this book to open your heart to Love.

It is our heartbreaks that are a direct call for heart healing. And if there is anything that our world is calling for right now, it is Love—in our personal lives, our families, our workplaces, our communities, and the larger world we share with all beings.

Now, if you are ready to heal your heart and open your life to Love, take a full, cleansing, deep breath and say the Prayer for Wholehearted Living aloud as an expression of your commitment to healing your heart and being a mighty expression of love in the world.

With all my Love,

Susyn

Prayer for Wholehearted Living

From The Wholehearted Life

Today I live a wholehearted life. I easily let go of my attachment to thoughts and behaviors that block the inflow and outflow of Love in my life. I know my purpose is to be a mighty expression of Love in the world through expressing and generously offering my unique gifts, talents, and skills for the highest good of ALL. I trust that every experience I have is an opportunity to deepen and expand my capacity to be, give, and receive Love. I ask for and receive all help available to me, visible and invisible, to easily and effortlessly learn from and release habit patterns of fear, blame, and separation, have faith in a Loving future, and live fully and wholeheartedly in the Precious