10 Best Quotes About Healing After Heartbreak

Healing is not a finish line. It is not a moment when you wake up and don't feel it anymore. Healing is the slow, repeated decision to let the wound do its quiet work. These ten healing quotes come from writers and poets who walked through loss. Save the one that meets you. Come back to it on the days the ache returns.

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Susan Piver on Clarity

Although it is tremendously disorienting on one hand, on another, you will never see as clearly as you do when your heart is broken.

— Susan Piver The Wisdom of a Broken Heart (2010)

Pain is honest. It strips away the things you were pretending to like. The friendships you were forcing. The story you were telling yourself. Heartbreak is awful and accurate at the same time. Listen to what it shows you.

Lesson

Heartbreak hurts. It also tells the truth. Use the clarity while you have it.

Jocelyn Soriano on Being Bread

Greatness is not in being unbroken, but in being a blessing even after being broken, like bread, like a seed that dies yet rises again.

— Jocelyn Soriano Mend My Broken Heart (2014)

You are not less because you have been broken. The most useful things in the world were broken on purpose. Bread. Seeds. The egg before the chick. You are not finished. You are just in the breaking part of becoming useful.

Lesson

Breaking is part of becoming. Don't try to skip it. Don't waste it either.

Rumi on the Wound and the Light

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

— Rumi The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (1995)

Read it twice. The light didn't get in through the parts that were whole. It got in through the crack. The thing you are most ashamed of is probably the same thing that will make you the most useful to someone else who is hurting.

Lesson

Your wound is not your shame. It is your window.

Anne Lamott on Grief Without a Shortcut

You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up.

— Anne Lamott Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (2005)

You won't get over it. That is not the goal anymore. The goal is to live with them inside you. The broken heart is not a problem to be solved. It is the new place they live.

Lesson

You don't get over the people you loved. You learn to carry them.

Vicki Harrison on Grief as Ocean

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.

— Vicki Harrison Widely attributed to Vicki Harrison

Some days you are fine. Some days a song wrecks you. That is not you going backwards. That is just the tide. Learn to read the water. Learn to swim. The waves themselves will not stop coming.

Lesson

Grief is not linear. Stop expecting it to be. Just learn to ride the next wave.

bell hooks on Being Loved

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

— bell hooks All About Love: New Visions (2000)

Most of us run from the empty house, the quiet phone, the unscheduled Saturday. We fill the silence with someone else. hooks said the healing happens in the silence. Sit in it for a minute. The next love you have will be better because of it.

Lesson

Get good at being with yourself. The rest of your relationships will get better.

Glennon Doyle on Walking Through It

First the pain, then the rising.

— Glennon Doyle Untamed (2020)

The order matters. You cannot skip step one. You cannot rise before you have hurt. You can try, but the rising will be fake. Sit in the pain a little longer. The rising is coming.

Lesson

There is no shortcut around the pain. There is only through it.

Maya Angelou on Telling the Story

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

— Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

What you don't say will fester. The journal. The friend. The therapist. The voice memo to yourself in the car. Get the story out. It is not meant to stay inside you. It is too big.

Lesson

Healing requires telling the story. To someone. Anyone. Even just to paper.

Pema Chödrön on Being Tender

Nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched.

— Pema Chödrön When Things Fall Apart (1997)

The armor we built to keep the next wound out is the same armor that keeps us from healing. You have to be willing to be soft again. That is scary. It is also the only door out.

Lesson

You can't heal in armor. You have to be willing to be soft.

Cheryl Strayed on the Possibility of Healing

The healing isn't linear. The healing isn't predictable. The healing isn't easy. But it is, despite all that, possible.

— Cheryl Strayed Tiny Beautiful Things (2012)

Read the last word. Possible. That is the whole thing. You don't have to know when. You don't have to know how. You just have to know it is possible. People with worse stories than yours got through it. So will you.

Lesson

Healing isn't easy. It isn't fast. It is possible. That is enough.

What These Healing Quotes Teach Us

Healing is not a place you arrive. It is a road you walk for the rest of your life. Some days the road is downhill and easy. Some days it is uphill in the rain. The good news is the road keeps going. You keep getting better at walking it. The people in these quotes did it. So can you.

Heartbreak hurts. It also tells the truth. Listen.
You don't get over loss. You learn to carry it.
Time heals when you give it something to work with.
There is no shortcut around the pain. There is only through it.
Your wound is not your shame. It is your window into helping others.

Save the one that hit you hardest. Come back to it on a hard day. Then keep exploring — read more quotes or read more stories.