Lessons Learnt From A Broken Heart - In Search of Mr Darcy Edition

There are few people on this earth, especially if you are over 40, who can say they've never had their heart broken. It’s almost a rite of passage. Heartbreak has tremendous power. It can hurt, enlighten, destroy, strengthen, shatter, sadden, transform, illuminate, empower and…change lives. It has inspired countless songs that can rip your heart right out of your chest (shout out to Leonard Cohen). It has left poets broken and beautiful, and it has been pretty much the plot in every rom-com I’ve ever obsessively wept over (shout out to Nicholas Sparks and The Notebook.)

I mean, if you are living life, how can you avoid it?

An inevitable boredom seeped in that I just accepted as “age appropriate.”

Truth was, I had stopped growing. I had stopped learning about me…about life… about everything.

But it wasn’t until after a colossal, unpredictable breakup that something extraordinary happened. Not unlike Dorothy’s cyclone, my house, my life…my entire world was lifted up and dropped down hard. I was catapulted out of my comfortable, predictable life and jettisoned into a new, unexplored world.

I was suddenly single…again.

FEAR. That is what I feel every time I ride that first chair lift of a ski trip.

I only learned to ski in my forties so never possessed that fearless, “throw yourself down the hill” childlike freestyle. Skiing was outside my comfort zone and it did not come naturally due my total lack of any inherited athletic ability (or so I tell myself).

Pushing through my fear I learned to ski. It allowed me to experience some incredible parts of the world I would have otherwise missed. All the while creating and redefining my own personal bests. I felt highs that can only come from overcoming fear and emerging out the other side victorious. But fear is multi-purposed. Push through OR beware? As I get older those lines are getting blurred, not nearly as obvious as they used to be. Fear is there to stop you from doing stupid dumbass shit, right?

A-BROAD IN LONDON

A Survival Guide To Life, Travel & Being Sensationally Single

An inevitable boredom seeped in that I just accepted as “age appropriate.”

FEAR. That is what I feel every time I ride that first chair lift of a ski trip.

So How Do You Know What Fear Is Trying To Tell You?

A-BROAD IN LONDON

A Survival Guide To Life, Travel & Being Sensationally Single

An inevitable boredom seeped in that I just accepted as “age appropriate.”

FEAR. That is what I feel every time I ride that first chair lift of a ski trip.

So How Do You Know What Fear Is Trying To Tell You?

A Broad in London