Heart Disease

Whatever time of the year the media finds ways of focusing on the latest information for keeping heart disease at bay. It is always important to encourage people to do the things needed to stay heart-healthy physically. Eating right, exercising regularly and managing stress are all steps in that direction. 

There is another type of heart disease the media seldom discusses: the broken heart. Hearts can be broken in so many ways: seeing a child suffer; supporting a spouse or sibling through a long illness; losing a mate; losing a close friend; or having to put down a cherished pet. We’ve all had our hearts broken along the way, in some cases many times. And as the years pile on, we’re bound to have our hearts broken many more times.

But to me it’s when our hearts are broken that we know we have loved, that we have shared life with someone who has enriched us. Having faced the trauma of the emotional disease that is a broken heart, we go on stronger than before. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, the saying goes, and as we know a broken heart doesn’t kill, it makes us more compassionate and understanding when troubles befall others. We can support them because we know that, as I suspect all grandmothers say, the grieving shall pass and the heart will go on much richer.