Skip to content
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Center Staff
  • Board of Trustees
  • Services
    • Sunday Services & Meditation
    • Wednesday’s Wisdom
    • Congregational Songs
    • Archived videos on our Youtube Channel
  • Gallery
  • Media
  • Contact Us
Top Menu

Center for Spiritual Living
Center for Spiritual Living
No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, know that you are welcome here.
  • Programs
    • Animal Kinship Ministry
    • Circle of Love
    • Coming Home – Awakening To Spirit
    • Community Outreach Programs
    • Jewel Tones Choir
    • New Thought Bookstore
    • Shifting Sands
    • Youth and Family
  • Science of Mind Classes
    • Course Descriptions
    • Current & Upcoming Classes
  • Events & Calendar
  • Prayer Ministry
    • Affirmative Prayer: Career and Creativity
    • Affirmative Prayer: Health
    • Affirmative Prayer: Love and Relationships
    • Affirmative Prayer: Spirituality and Consciousness
    • Affirmative Prayer: Wealth
  • Ministers
  • Give
  • Volunteer
  • Blog
  • Programs
    • Animal Kinship Ministry
    • Circle of Love
    • Coming Home – Awakening To Spirit
    • Community Outreach Programs
    • Jewel Tones Choir
    • New Thought Bookstore
    • Shifting Sands
    • Youth and Family
  • Science of Mind Classes
    • Course Descriptions
    • Current & Upcoming Classes
  • Events & Calendar
  • Prayer Ministry
    • Affirmative Prayer: Career and Creativity
    • Affirmative Prayer: Health
    • Affirmative Prayer: Love and Relationships
    • Affirmative Prayer: Spirituality and Consciousness
    • Affirmative Prayer: Wealth
  • Ministers
  • Give
  • Volunteer
  • Blog

How Do You Mend a Broken Heart?

It suddenly dawned on me I have been studying heartbreak for my whole life! I thought I was studying Love but it seems I have devoted much of my attention to the misery of unrequited love!

First, when I was three, Mom was reading Bambi to my sister, and she read the part when Bambi and her mother were in the forest and the worst possible thing happened.

The hunters shot Bambi’s mommy! Bambi was still a “little girl” and she needed her mother! My heart was broken.

In addition to books that led me to feel grief, I also had movie experiences that brought the awareness of deep sadness. The book and movie Old Yeller come to mind. It is a story about a boy becoming a man and his love for his best friend and faithful brave pet. Gone With the Wind also comes to mind. This story in contrast to Old Yeller is about a strong, opinionated woman who kept pushing love away while she was attempting to manipulate people to get things her way.

When I was twelve, my dad’s brother and his wife, a childless couple, lived in a lovely home three houses down and across the street from ours. My uncle was our local dentist. His office was on the other side of the alley from our home. While Uncle Lorne was at work one afternoon, Aunt Isabelle slipped and fell down a steep flight of stairs in their home. She was dead by the time he got home. She had been a jolly, kind and loving woman to me and we all missed her.

But my uncle’s grief was something I had never experienced before and we children got to see a lot of it.

My mom invited him to have meals with us and it was the first time I had seen a real grown man grieving the loss of a loved one. We would be having a meal together and he would choke up during the conversation and start crying. I imagined that everything would remind him of her.

That was close to the beginning of my interest in playing popular music. I found the song “I’ll Be Seeing You,” in one of our Reader’s Digest songbooks. The lyrics seemed to soothe my heart:

“I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day
In everything that’s light and gay
I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you”

During my teenage years, there were plenty of songs that I could use, including Skeeter Davis, “Gonna Get Along Without You Now.” This song included the shallow but helpful lyrics, “Gonna find somebody that’s twice as cute, ’cause I didn’t love you anyhow.”

The number one song for heartbreak for me is the Bee Gees, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?”

“I was never told about the sorrow…
How can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart
And let me live again”
When I was a young woman, the current love of my life, left me for another woman. I was heart-broken. Just as the Bee Gees song implied that the purpose of healing a broken heart is to be able to love again so did Tennyson’s quote.

My dad wrote me a tender letter, in which he acknowledged my emotional pain and quoted Alfred Lord Tennyson:

 ‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all. “
Looking back at all my studies, I see that I have studied heartbreak, but really don’t know how to mend a broken heart, any more than Joni Mitchell had an understanding of love:
“I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really…don’t know love at all.”
Of course, in my spiritual studies and practices, I find that much of what I called love was really lust, infatuation or co-dependency. All of it was quite exciting but it was not without conditions. I have come to treasure love wherever it is and try not to grasp too tightly. I have come to truly appreciate the nature of the Divine is that unconditioned and unconditional expression of spirit, the consciousness of oneness.
As the poet Rumi stated:
Out beyond the field of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field.
I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even phrase ‘each other’
Doesn’t make sense anymore.”
I had been studying heartbreak, but now I am studying love. What have you decided to study? remember what you pay attention to becomes your intention.
Share this post

Author: Heather Clark

Recent Blog Posts
  • Book Study Wednesdays: The Language of Emotion: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You

    Mary Brogdon digging into and discussing Karla McClaren’s book, The Language of Emotion: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You. From McClaren’s website, “Emotions—especially the dark and dishonored ones—hold a tremendous amount of energy. We’ve all seen what happens when we repress or carelessly express them. With The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying…

    March 26, 2023
  • Spiritual Economics: The Principles and Processes of True Prosperity

    Spiritualize Your Relationship with Money All matter and form originate from Spiritual Intelligence including Money. Learn how to work with spiritual laws to create a greater flow of prosperity in your life. Join us for eight weeks of illumination through understanding principles and practices. In-Person MorningsTuesdays, April 11 – 3010:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.Register here…

    March 26, 2023
  • Roots of Science of Mind: New England Fall Foliage & New Thought Tour

    October 12 – 19, 2023 Join Rev. Alice Reid with guest presenter Dr. Petra Weldes for an exciting journey to New England to visit sights where the New Thought movement began. We begin our pilgrimage in Bethel, Maine at the childhood home of Ernest Holmes. We then travel to Belfast, Maine to the home of…

    March 26, 2023
  • Jesus Christ Superstar

    There is an ALTERNATIVE way to look at Easter Palm Sunday service at the Center will feature music from the smash hit musical, Jesus Christ Superstar along with a New Thought narration that draws insight and wisdom from the last week of Jesus’ life on Sunday, April 2, 2023. The service starts at 10:20 a.m.…

    March 13, 2023
  • March 19th Annual Meeting of the Membership

    Our Annual Meeting of the Membership will be held at noon Sunday, March 19th. Snacks will be served before the meeting starts. If you are a voting member, you should have already received a letter talking about the meeting. We will review the highlights and financials of the past year. Rev. Alice Reid will talk…

    March 7, 2023
  • Dr. Heather Clark Gives the March 26th Talk

    Past Senior Minister Dr. Heather Clark will visit the Center and be the speaker on the 26th. Make plans to attend — and bring your friends!!

    March 7, 2023
Categories
  • Blog
  • Classes
  • Events
Tags
Affirmation Affirmative Prayer Audio blog center for spiritual living capistrano valley creativity Darin McClure Darin McClure Dr. Heather Clark Dr. Heather Clark Ernest Holmes Forgiveness gratitude gratitude Jason Silva Joyous Living Journal Joyous Living Journal Juli Isola Juli Isola Lisa McClure Lisa McClure Love Love Meditation meditation Music Oneness Parenting Quotes Rev. Dr. Heather Clark Rev. Dr. Heather Clark Rev. Karyn Allen Rev. Pattie Mercado Rev. Pattie Mercado Science of Mind September Warren September Warren spiritual growth Sunday Service Sunday Service Vidette Vanderweide Vidette Vanderweide Wednesday Wisdom Wednesday Wisdom Youtube
Contact Us
Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley
1201 Puerta Del Sol
Suite 100 San Clemente, California 92673

Phone: 949-240-6463

Other contact options

Volunteers: Please check your assignment schedules here.

Latest Tweets
  • https://t.co/p2YlbiLr6r https://t.co/ntd6y49CHo https://t.co/Lf2a1khIzZ https://t.co/eOnBVpyOx32 days ago
  • Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice https://t.co/7OVMrdvXFp2 days ago
  • https://t.co/p2YlbiLr6r https://t.co/ntd6y49CHo https://t.co/Lf2a1khIzZ https://t.co/idPyvb4KXi9 days ago
  • https://t.co/p2YlbiLYVZ https://t.co/ntd6y4aawW https://t.co/o1SPxRSQkw https://t.co/wVbNfqCcBg16 days ago
  • Remember to set your clocks FORWARD one hour tonight before going to bed. https://t.co/3l7XngqJDW17 days ago
  • https://t.co/p2YlbiLr6r https://t.co/ntd6y49CHo https://t.co/fsqAhV0A3T23 days ago
Latest Facebook Update

Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley

Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley

Season for Nonviolence Day 58: March 28thThe thought for today is CITIZENSHIP. Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General to the United Nations urges, “Use every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend, to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams.” Make a difference in your community by becoming involved. To be a citizen means to help your community be the best it can be. You are a member of many communities: your family, your place of work or school, your place of worship, your city, your country, and the planet. Participation in your community presents an opportunity to model nonviolent action, peaceful resolution, and how each of us can and do make a difference.Today: I will call or write one of my legislators and register my views. I will tell at least three people of my efforts and ask them to do the same.

... See MoreSee Less


Photo

View on Facebook

·
Share



Share on Facebook



Share on Twitter



Share on Linked In



Share by Email

Center for Spiritual Living
© Copyright Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley