The Blessings of a Broken Heart

Five things I've learned as a happily married, polyamorous death doula.

It's true. I* have been connected to my partner since 1988, and married since 1995. I also seem to find a small group of solid friends wherever I go. Thanks to all this, plus a wonderful mom and extended family, I walk the earth as a woman who's been deeply loved her entire life.

I understand that privilege.

Yet I also know the pain of a broken heart. And as hard as it is to move through it, blessings abound when that pain subsides.

I know this because my husband and I have been “seeing other people” since before we were married. (It’s fine, take a deep breath.) Sometimes, when friends and family members (who are deeply entrenched in our compulsory-monogamy, death-denying culture) try to wrap their heads around this, they’ll ask us, “What can you get from someone else that you can’t get from each other?”

The answer is simple.

“Heartbreak.”

As I get older, and especially in my work as a death doula, I see how a broken heart helped me to become a better person and more compassionately serve…