Integration Heals the Heart

Have you ever felt like your life has been broken up into pieces and you were not sure how to make yourself whole again?

It’s normal to feel broken, unsure and shattered after a deep and profound loss; whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the loss of something sacred and special to you.

Loss is a life altering experience and with it comes the feelings that life will never be the same, and that is absolutely correct.

But how do you move forward? How do you bring the broken pieces of your life back together again?

THE PUZZLE METAPHOR

Imagine having a puzzle in front of you. Every piece of the puzzle represents a part of your life. The good parts and the bad parts too. Each and every piece is different and brings with it a unique part of your life’s story.

If someone were to take the puzzle and throw it on the ground, you would feel so frustrated, exasperated, overwhelmed in having to put the puzzle pieces back together to make yourself whole again.

That is what going through loss feels like.

I remember having a conversation with a dear friend of mine a year and a half after Mom had died. She asked how I was doing.

At that time, I had begun my bereavement studies and was starting to understand the depth, and meaning, of my feelings around the loss of my mother.

“I feel like my life is in pieces, and those pieces have been thrown onto the floor and I’m left to pick up the pieces and put everything back together again.”

That distinction was very clear for me. And it was the absolute truth about how I felt, and how so many of you may be feeling.

THE PUZZLE IS ALREADY WHOLE

The good news is you don’t have to pick up the pieces. They are not strewn or scattered. You don’t have to find a missing piece or force one piece to fit into another.

The puzzle is already whole.

Take this puzzle for example. Do the following exercise:

Click the image. Print it, and fill it in with your life’s most defining moments. The good things that you experienced and the ones that were the hardest.
As you fill each puzzle piece, you are bringing each piece of your life together. This puzzle represents you, your life experience, your life’s story. It is you, fully you.
If you remove a piece, it is no longer whole. Only because each piece fits perfectly into the other, it is whole. You are whole.

You are whole because of every piece that you experienced.

You are whole because of each moment that has brought you to where you are today.

You are whole because you have lived, and you have lived it fully.