My heart breaks, my heart mends. How is this so? How after some horrific times my heart, my spirit still beats in my chest and I still go on?

Once I had my daughter I suddenly knew what it was to have my heart live outside of me. Every smile my heart soars, every sniffle or tear my heart dips yet it still swells and grows as the rhythms and the tides.

I had an epiphany one day at the school gate. I did the normal hugs and kisses and off she went with her school bag in one hand and her pack lunch in the other. Walking and talking with her friends and turning around to wave and then carry on. Time froze in that moment and my heart exploded into a million pieces of emotion. Pride, joy sadness “look at her” I told myself growing up, happy not giving me a second glance as she is absorbed into her life. “Look at her” I told my self “my girl is growing so fast and I can’t keep up.” “I want to capture every minute and in that freeze frame moment my heart exploded and flew back together but in a different configuration, this time it felt somehow expanded.

In that moment I took a photograph that has imprinted into my mind. A stop and appreciate moment. Nothing else matters but remembering that time is precious and to remember and enjoy it but it is also important to remember to move on and grow as she grows and as the world changes and develops.

It can be hard to navigate change because sometimes those changes happen much more quickly than we can be ready for and emotionally we may never be ready for them. It is only after the changes, when life has settled that we pick up pieces of ourselves that help us move forward or keep us stuck in the same places unwilling to accept.

When I feel stuck and unwilling to accept change I look to nature to find comfort and it was at such a time that I was sitting on a park bench looking at a branch of the tree.  It had withered but I saw the buds of a new branch starting. And if it hadn’t been for the original branch anything new wouldn’t have grown.

It’s like that with everything in life, as one path ends another begins. New buds have potential to become anything they want if the right conditions are in place. Nurture, Water, soil in perfect balance, these ingredients will help ideas, projects, relationships, and yourself bloom, flourish and burst into the world in all glory.

I was sitting on a park bench looking at the trees surrounding me, full with greenery, abundant with leaves, blossom and life. My mind wondered to the ground on which blossoms had fallen and I thought “how sad their time always ends.”

A time to grieve is important because in that grieving we can find a new path of growth, because an ending means that things will never be the same. Instead a new path will lead to something new and this is frightening because it is a path we haven’t walked yet.

We always know that at a certain time of the year we will see young green shoots growing in place of the ones gone before. We can maybe find trust that if we don’t know exactly where a new path will lead us at least we know we will grow in some way, learn a lesson and even flourish if we give ourselves the right conditions.

We may want to stay on the old path for a while and grieve for what’s gone, but as the tree knows the cycle of life and new blossoms will always come so we know new paths will appear when we are ready to see them.

I know that when I get confused or feel low and don’t know were life is going or am grieving I tend not to do anything because I know that I will make decisions based on my mood.

When the change leads to the heart breaking, we also have faith that it also mends and as it does this it grows larger to encompass all experience, all emotions it has picked up along the way. The heart loves, that’s its job and it is up to us to love it back. This means taking care that when we feel sad it is for a reason, when we feel happy we rejoice.

Diving deep into my heart I often ask it “what do you long for?” often it doesn’t tell me because I have a history of not listening, not taking notice of me. As I change my heart trusts me again as I give it the space and time to talk.

When I ask “what can you give me?” it replies “hope, I always give you hope.” “Hope helps pick you up in your darkest moments, it helps you rejoice in happy times.”