Heartbreak doesn't kill you

“If your heart was broken you would be dead”.

I recently read the above statement. I have overused the phrase that my heart was broken. Are you tired of it? I am, and since I feel pretty good lately, chances are you won’t hear it as much. But I will admit I was peeved that someone would make light of how I felt. Kind of like when I saw a guy wearing a tee shirt that said "Cancer kills grandmas dead" within a month of my grandma dying of bone cancer. Insensitive.


I read a lot. Last fall when I had multiple doctor appointments, I read an article in a magazine in a doctor’s office that didn’t subscribe to Cosmopolitan (don’t judge me) so I read a boring magazine. A news journal type. I read an article on the subject of heartbreak and the article pulled me in.

Interestingly, heartbreak is a real malady and it doesn’t kill you (it can, but it doesn’t always). Feelings of loss and rejection cause overstimulation in an area of the brain (not sure which area) that in turn affects a nerve in the chest (don’t know which one of these either) that can cause nausea (yep, I threw up…a lot), tightness in the chest (I also had trouble breathing) and even chest pain. It doesn’t last forever.

I wasn't going to say anything about this. But as I thought about the two instances of heart break I dealt with last year I thought it was worth talking about.

I raised Nate to be independent and leave me. I didn't raise a momma's boy. I figured he would move away freshman year of college. He turned down scholarships and stayed at home, so I got one more year than I was expecting. I knew 8 months before he moved out that he was moving out. He told me at Christmas he was moving away for sophomore year. I thought I was prepared. I knew it would be hard. Hard does not begin to describe how I felt. The first time he called me and was sick and said "I don't know what's wrong with me" I cried all day, threw up, and physically felt sick myself.

There are still times when I go in his room and have to stop and bend over to catch my breath. I know I'm supposed to be strong and let go. He's almost 20 years old. He's self sufficient. He's good. I told him this last weekend I miss him so much it hurts. And it does. I cried all the way back to the lake after I dropped him at his apartment.

So if I can feel this way over Nate moving out and some marriage difficulty, I can't begin to imagine how it would feel to really experience loss through divorce and death. I thought a few times that I was losing my mind. I was told by an unfeeling, uncaring person a co-worker to get some anti-depressants and get over it.

Please know some of us care. If you are dealing with loss or rejection and feel like life is out of control and you can't deal with it, hang in there. If you feel like your heart is broken, maybe it is. It's a real physical problem. But know that it gets better.

If you don’t believe me, google it. Mayo Clinic will back me up. The Bible talks about it too. King David wrote in Psalms 69:20 that his heart was broken from insults and it made him sick.