We are all familiar with the stories of bad relationships falling apart. Their end usually entails a breakdown and often it leaves one or both people resentful and hurt.  But we seldom talk about when great loves end. When things fall apart, it usually entails something was not right, that things were bad.  But when great loves end, it requires an even braver heart to get through it.

Relationships, even when bad and dysfunctional, are mourned.  Even when the relationships are not good, they are still difficult to end.  Imagine when great ones end! It is a time in which we are called to step up to a greater level of faith.  It requires blind faith in the unknown and a resilience very seldom experienced.

I’ve learned that not everything that ends is bad.  Sometimes great loves have to end due to circumstances and that cuts even deeper into our soul.  Relationships are one of the sources of most reward in our human story and due to the duality of our world, also the source of much of our suffering.  Yes, to love deeply is to risk hurting deeply. 

Sometimes great relationships come to our life to give us a glimpse into what is possible.  There are people who have short contracts with us.  There are contracts of disruption that come to our life with the purpose of stirring us, often through painful events to teach us lessons so we can heal parts of us that need attention.  

Other contracts are soulful contracts that come to help us experience possibility. Through those contracts we experience beautiful moments. They enlarge our hearts, they magnify our joy, make us dream, and they connect us to the rightness and the goodness of this world. If you have experienced this kind of contract, consider yourself fortunate. 

Once that contract has been achieved, circumstances are placed on the way and the contract dissolves. The person moves on from our life and we are left feeling an empty hole of the important place they once occupied.  You wonder why something great needs to end.  I am not sure.  It is just life!

I have experienced both sides of those contracts, the ones that come to crack you open so you can learn through the pain you experienced, and those that come to shine their light through the very cracks you have endured and filled the gaps with love. Either way, they are both contracts of evolution. 

When these loving and beautiful contracts end, we feel even more devastated. But sometimes great things need to fall apart as well so room can be made for even greater things to come. 

I know it is difficult to see and believe this in the moment when you are sad, but that is why these contracts came into your life. They came to help you step into your courage.  Courage is an act of faith that pushes you to step into the unknown with grace, acceptance and gratitude for the chapter behind and the one ahead.  

I recently had the privilege to witness one of such soulful contracts right here in my own home.  I have to say that these types of contracts are not usually the first ones you are given.  They are usually contracts that come to restore you after the disrupting-contracts have passed you through.  My guess is that’s the Universe’s way of balancing the scales.  That was the case for me.  I too had an amazing soulful contract. 

But the one I just witnessed came as my daughter’s first contract.  An angel with her soul fully intact, with no cracks to fill or scratches to suit, she is just beginning her journey.  

Yet, she was sent a soulful contract as her first experience. Her first love to experience came not to restore or balance nor did it come to fill and suit the gaps of a broken heart.  My guess is that it came, I believe, to set precedence for what she is to model all her relationships ahead.  It came to provide her with a blueprint of what a conscious, loving and balanced relationship is. 

You see, we often are given relationships and it is through the painful ones that we learn what to look for in the next.  You could say we learn from the fires and from our pain we begin to design a mold, a blueprint of what we want our great love to be like.  It is in the heat that our mold takes shape and then we look for the one who will fit into our blueprint.

Seldom however, are we given the mold from the start.  In my daughter’s case, anything that comes ahead, she now has her mold to guide her.  She won’t need to build it in the painful fire. Hers was shaped from the flames of innocent love, a rare but beautiful occurrence.

A sweet love she has.  Respectful and loving.  A great role model of what healthy relationships need to be. Two kids who give each other the freedom to explore their feelings, the space to grow, the connection to experience love and the friendship that can sustain them towards their next chapter, whichever one happens to be.

We all love being in love.  It is the best feeling in the world and even though to love is to risk heartbreak, we all accept the risk and that is the beauty of life.  Love and pain are intertwined.  If you dare to love deeply you are bound to experience hurt. It is inescapable but that is how our hearts get stronger.  

As Brene Brown says, “We can only love and be loved as much as we are willing to have our hearts broken.”

With Gratitude Waleuska Lazo.