“There is no instinct like that of the heart.” —Lord Byron

It is nearly midnight and I am lying in my bed with a heavy heart. My boys have been resting in dreamland for hours now—snug in their beds down the hall. My eyes are closed and my left hand is resting on my heart—a habit I developed in my teen years when recovering from a painful hospital stay. My right hand is resting on my abdomen—a practice I learned from one of my teachers—Renee Trudeau—in a seminar at Kripalu last summer. I’m lying uncovered in my bed—my two hands anchoring me, rising and falling with my breath—and I’m floating around the idea of being, “broken-open” as is so often discussed in conversations surrounding spiritual awakening and healing and living. I’m floating around the idea of lingering in this space and noticing what it has to reveal.

Outside my window-filled room, rain falls rhythmically. I am listening to the various notes sounded as the raindrops land melodically on the window sills, on the air conditioner unit, through the trees. I am lying in my bed, noticing my breath and taking in the stillness. Listening so very closely to the rain, I can almost feel the raindrops coming down and landing—each of them—on my heart. My heart is wide open—like a cavern—each drop is landing with a beat inside of me, watering up all of the spaces that are lacking sustenance. Each raindrop feels weighted and comforting. I am thinking about the times that I have felt broken-open before—it happens again and again to some. At times, I have been very aware of the slow yet powerful internal cracking taking place and leading up to the tectonic shifts—like the time I dialed a therapist I’d never spoken to before from the bed of my tiny, NYC apartment on a dreary, Sunday morning. Other times, the breaking open is more sudden—more jolting—like the time in which a long and dear friendship changed drastically over the course of a few days. And sometimes the breaking-open-of-the-heart seems more ordinary. It seems to have to do with difficult transitions and bothersome illness and insufficient support. It never really is about those things, though. It’s about learning where we abandon ourselves and where we abandon others. It’s about discovering the ways in which we act out our fear of judgment and the ways in which we judge. It’s about witnessing all of the ways that we try to protect ourselves from being seen. There is nothing ordinary—at all—about this type of breaking open. It may be the best and most transformative breaking-open of all.

The rain has come and gone a half-a-dozen times since the night of my heart-watering. Our garden is the most lush and green that we’ve had since coming to Maine five years ago. Jonah and Adrian’s legs are covered in scratches and bug-bites—a testament to a summer moving in the right direction. I’m sitting and I’m writing and I’m aware that the gaping opening in my heart from a few weeks ago has been peeled back and massaged and molded into shape once again.