Falling out of love takes more courage and emotional maturity than falling in love.

And it is the most powerful and generous affair one can have with themselves.

A decision made consciously to exit out of a relationship is one of the hardest taken in a lifetime.

In a few words, it is the death of a relationship, partnership, dreams, aspirations, love—life as we knew it.

The heartbreak that follows is like a dagger that pierces through you and breaks you into a thousand pieces.

Know that the chosen decision to end a relationship is a walk in the fire that must be sauntered and not hurried—a fire that reduces everything to ashes. From the same ashes, a phoenix is reborn.

In the same way, we have to burst into flames of agony, suffering, and die inside many times to be reborn stronger and wiser.

How to rise like a phoenix after heartbreak is like asking the ocean how to make waves. Just like waves are part of the ocean, and no force can thwart the creation of waves, heartbreaks are part of life that teach us lessons that revive us into a new sentient being.

Here are some of my revelations to go along with that post-breakup, heartbreak, or divorce.

These revelations will help us develop a future we can truly own:

1. Learn to love the dark just a little more than the light. The darkness holds the key to our strength, which is unseen in light. In the long nights that feel like a serpent slithering slowly, we unfold the greatest lessons by feeling the numbing pain that glides through our body, mind, thoughts, emotions, and beyond.

2. Don’t tell the tears to stop, but let them flow. Tears are like a dam of grief that, when held together, is just water, but when released, it can generate the energy to breathe life into oneself. Grieve the life that you once thought of and release the pain in tears to be reborn.

3. Reflect on your past, but don’t live there. Show the past out to let the future in, because if we don’t do that, we live in a crowded place. The past will keep on stepping on the toes of the future if we don’t close the door on our past.

4. Meet your shadow. And uncover the repressed emotions, beliefs, impulses, and wounds. Do the necessary shadow work to live a life that is authentically you. If we don’t do the shadow work, we continue to project our internal wounds externally, with someone, something, or a situation.

5. Always remember what you went through. When a heart breaks into many bits, there is one bit that should be left outside your body, even when the heart is almost whole again. This piece of your heart is the one that will guide and check you in the future, so as not to repeat the past. Forgive, but do not forget—even the bad memories.

6. The past can be noble and kind too. Breathe and linger on the past with fondness and love, and take care of it, but still keep moving on.

7. Try to find solace in the moments you had with the person you loved. Sometimes the death of a loved one will crush your soul, but try to find solace in the understanding that you were blessed to have those moments—howsoever short and fleeting those moments may have been.

There was a cosmic reason to come together, and also one for why it was all taken away in that moment of death. It does seem like injustice, but a beautiful life touched you and there is nothing higher than that in this physical world. We have to let the life of a person go in peace, gracefully.

8. Nature appears to be still outwardly, but internally the work to evolve is in constant motion. If you have ever seen a leaf with microscopic eyes, you notice the beautifully woven intricate details. On the surface, it is just a green leaf.

Our details are the wounds, disappointments, pain, angst, and memories. We have to keep on doing the inner work to evolve with utmost devotion to ourselves. Occasionally, the storms will come, but the calm is only a step behind.

9. Healing has no deadline attached to it. And there are no rules attached or a set method to tell you how to heal. Healing is not linear, but often messy with nights in the dumps and days in bed doing nothing at all. So, take as much time as needed to ground yourself and rebuild through self-care and self-love.

10. A rushed relationship with someone after a breakup is never a good option. It may be an ego boost, a need to rally, or it may fill up a void at the time, but it won’t be fulfilling if you have not first healed the past and grown to make space to welcome a new person. You have to be comfortable with solitude first, before inviting company.

11. Painful experiences are an opportunity to turn inward and to meditate. To comprehend that we are mere specks in this universe. And yet, to also know that our individual experiences and what we make out of them is how we live our lives. Life is too short to let it pass by in misery, so choose bliss always.

Whether we find the love of our life or we live single the rest of our lives, one aspect that should not change is the authentic inner core of you as a human being.

When we find out who we are, we cannot be anything else but our true ourselves.

And this also becomes the key to living a life that is meaningful and worthy of service to us and others. We often overlook that we are love, and love is a quality that does not need a stamp or a label of a relationship. It doesn’t have to be assigned a value from others or and it doesn’t have to conform to any kind of rules or norms.

We have to become love—where love is not separate from us.

May we all live a full life and travel on the path of love and goodness to not only ourselves but to others.

May we rise like a phoenix from our ashes—again and again.

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