Where Love Stays After the Fall

Love has a strange way of finding us — sometimes in joy, but more often in the unraveling. Life, with all its careful plans and promises, can shift in a breath. One moment, you’re steady. The next, you’re staring at the pieces of something you thought would last. And in that quiet wreckage — heart cracked open, hands trembling — love reveals what it really is. I’ve learned that heartbreak doesn’t just hurt. It hollows. It echoes. It lingers in the spaces they once filled — in the silence after laughter, in the absence that follows presence. It takes your breath before you even realize it’s gone. But even in the ache, there is beauty — because to grieve like that means you dared to love deeply. You let yourself be seen, held, known. That kind of love never truly disappears. It leaves something behind.

Pain, no matter how sharp, is temporary — though it doesn’t always feel that way. Sometimes it wraps itself around your ribs and makes a home there. But even then, it is love — not just romantic love, but the fierce, quiet love of friends who don’t let go, the familiar love of family, the sacred love that lives in spirit, and the broken but still-beating love you give yourself — that keeps you breathing. Every hardship is a message written in a language only love can translate. And when everything else is stripped away, love stays. It stays in the memory. It stays in the way you keep going. It stays in you. What I’ve come to understand is this: rising isn’t about pretending you’re okay. It’s not about being unshaken. It’s about choosing love, again, even with hands that shake. It’s about showing up for yourself when you feel unworthy, believing in light even when all you’ve known is dark. It’s about loving yourself not because you’re whole — but because you’re not, and you still keep trying.

So if your heart is shattered, don’t rush to sweep up the pieces. Sit with them. Cry over them. Bless them. Because that brokenness means something mattered. Let it tear you open, not apart. Let it hurt — really hurt. And then, when you’re ready, let love walk you back into the world.

Not the same. Not untouched. But real. And more alive than ever.

It won’t be easy — but it will be worth it.