For the Brokenhearted

Unscripted Chapters

“Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”

— Rumi

This was not as fun to write as my other posts. Those pieces flowed easily because they came from wounds I had already healed. This one feels different. It comes from a place still tender, still mending.

I had a desire to reconnect with someone I’d met in passing, and to my surprise, that desire was granted. It filled me with joy and lit up the possibility of a future. But as quickly as it began, it ended — again, to my surprise. What shocked me most was not the ending itself, but the fact that this time I wasn’t the one to walk away. For the first time, I tasted the ache of beginning to love someone, only for them to leave.

The first week was rough. I cried. I replayed moments and asked how? Because for me, it didn’t feel over. By the second week, reflection began to creep in. I noticed my own patterns of negative self-talk toward the end of that connection. And because I deeply believe there is a link between our inner reality and our outer reality, I decided to stop looking outward and begin listening to my inner being.

What came to me was a prayer: Ho’oponopono.

If you’re unfamiliar, Ho’oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian practice, meaning to make right. It’s a process of introspection and forgiveness meant to restore harmony with yourself, others, and the world. It’s rooted in the belief that our experiences reflect our inner state and that by clearing what’s within, we can heal what’s around us.

The practice is simple: repeat the mantra —
I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

For me, this prayer was the beginning of letting go. In those first two weeks, I was holding on tightly. That kind of holding feels like chasing someone else’s energy while abandoning your own. It drags you into lower vibrations, cycles of negative thinking that keep you focused on absence rather than presence. It depletes your spirit.

I’m not saying don’t grieve. I still ache, and there are moments where letting go feels impossible. But in those moments, I turn back to forgiveness, forgiving myself, forgiving him, forgiving the connection. Not because it was okay, but because I refuse to carry pain that doesn’t belong to me.

That’s the beauty of I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. It redirects my focus from loss to release. It shifts me from absence to presence. It reminds me to love myself through the breaking.

Because the truth is, I realized I had cracks in my foundation of self-love. I’ve always said I loved myself, but two years of past abuse had left me fearful of love itself. I stopped believing I could be chosen. I stopped believing love could be safe. Those wounds followed me into this new connection, and when it ended, it felt like my fears were confirmed.

But here’s what I know now: just because something validates your fear does not mean it validates the truth.

I am chosen.
I am safe in love.

This heartbreak has become a mirror, showing me the places where my inner child still aches, still needs reassurance. So I am turning inward. I am building a stronger relationship with myself, one rooted in the knowing that my worth does not depend on who stays or who leaves.

If you are brokenhearted too, this is my gentle reminder: stop looking outward, and begin looking inward. Your healing won’t come from chasing what is left, but from meeting what remains, you. Sit in self-love meditations. Tend to your inner child. Practice forgiveness, not for them, but for yourself.

Because heartbreak is not the end of love. Sometimes, it’s the beginning of turning love back toward the one place it’s always been needed most within you.

Heartbreak may change the shape of your story, but it cannot take away the love that lives within you. That love is yours to return to, again and again not as a replacement for what was lost, but as a reminder that you were whole long before, and you are whole still.

With love,
Laila