Betrayal, Open Hearts, and Learning to Trust Yourself Again
Personal Note: I have been having a blocker in my calendar to write a blog post every Friday for 1,5 years. The times I have actually followed up on that blocker, I can count on one hand. Recently through my mentoring with Simone, I was reminded of why I put it there in the first place. It is a journal, an extension of myself, a tool to share my reflections, and as I have come to realize during the process of writing this one today, it is very therapeutic as well. Being the facilitator and guide who recommends journaling to her clients on a weekly basis, I shouldn’t be so surprised, right? Well… I have to say that my practice on journaling has been perhaps too inconsistent and maybe also there hasn’t been such a painful topic come up in a long time. Today, writing about what has been heavy on my heart for the past weeks helped me move through these emotions and also allowed me to let go a tiny bit more. So let’s begin…
I have been moving through a lot lately. My nervous system feels on edge, my heart is heavy. There has been a deep sense of disappointment sitting in my body, together with not just sadness, but also confusion and disbelief. Someone I trusted and cared for deeply, a friend I supported through some of her hardest moments, has hurt me in a way I did not see coming.
What makes this so hard to let go is that it is not even the situation itself that shakes me the most; it is what it brings up in me. A feeling of loss of trust in love. The questioning of my own intuition. The realization that maybe seeing the good in people is not always enough to keep them from choosing to hurt you. I keep thinking about how often I sensed something was off, and still chose to love, to stay, to believe. I wanted to prove that love could heal, and that’s exactly what broke me open this time.
This heartbreak is not just about what happened. It’s about an internal loss of innocence - that part of me that still wanted to believe love can heal all wounds. If I just stay kind, patient, and understanding enough, the other will rise too. I kept seeing the light and the pain in the other, even as my body trembled with unease long before the last drop fell. I ignored the knot in my stomach, the racing heart, the restlessness that came before every meeting, that I felt with every text. My body knew long before I was ready to see the truth.
It’s strange how the body never lies, but the mind keeps negotiating, “This is just acting out of pain”, “Maybe I am too sensitive”, “Maybe this is what compassion means”, but it wasn’t compassion. It was me abandoning myself in the name of love.
What I am left with now is the tension between loving with an open heart and protecting my energy, between wanting to see the divine in everyone and realizing that not everyone acts from that place.
Tantra teaches that love and truth must walk hand in hand - that compassion without discernment is illusion, and discernment without compassion is cruelty. I am learning that balance the hard way.
The truth is, that I am confused.
I keep hearing people around me tell me how big of a learning that was for me, how I will be able to judge better next time, but whenever I am asking myself whether I would do it again the same way, whether I would still choose to see the good, even knowing how it ends… I find a part of me saying “yes”. Of course, there is also this part of me that is tired, that wants safety and peace… but my innermost knowing is that to love fiercely is to live fully, and to live fully means to hurt. There is no love without pain.
I don’t want to become someone who closes her heart just to stay safe. I have been there before - after heartbreak, after loss - and the only way back to life was through opening again. It’s the paradox of being human: the deeper you love, the more it hurts… and yet, the only thing worse than heartbreak is to stop loving altogether.
So I am sitting with it all - the ache, the anger, the confusion, the tenderness. I am letting it move through me slowly, the way grief moves through the body when you finally stop resisting. I am learning that the unconditional trust that I give to others, I first need to give to myself: my intuition, my body’s truth, the quiet voice that always knows before the mind catches up.
Maybe this is the real initiation:
…To stay open when it would be easier to close.
…To hold compassion even when you have been hurt.
…To forgive, not because the other deserves it, but because your heart deserves to be free.
I don’t have a perfect conclusion, only this prayer:
May I learn to love wisely.
May I trust my body as much as my heart.
May I honor the soft place within me that refuses to harden.
And may I never let betrayal make me forget the beauty of believing in people.
This is what Tantra means when it speaks of dying and being reborn, not the death of the body, but the small deaths we experience throughout life. The moments when something we believed in falls apart, when an illusion breaks, when we let go through the body. Every heartbreak asks us to let go of who we thought we were... letting the version of ourselves that needed to hold on, to understand, to control die.
… And then after every surrender, something new is born. A deeper truth. A softer strength. A deeper kind of love. Every heartbreak becomes a small death, and every reopening, a resurrection. The art of living might simply be learning how to keep dying and coming back softer each time.
As life flows, the topic of death has been recurring during some of my 1:1 work recently. I am looking forward to sharing more about the process of letting go, detachment, & rebirth.
