Where Love Heals

Piece by piece,
after every heartache,
after every goodbye,
I thought I was losing myself.

I thought love had taken pieces of me,
until I became a woman
made of empty spaces.

So I went looking
for someone to make me whole.

I loved people
who couldn’t love the parts of me
I was still learning to love.
And every time they left,
I counted the loss.

Until one day
I looked inside myself
and thought,

there is nothing left.

But I was wrong.

Beneath the wreckage
was a woman
who had survived every ending.

A fighter.
A lover of love.
A woman who still believed
something beautiful could find her.

So I went searching
for the pieces I thought I’d lost.

They weren’t pieces of me at all.

They were things
I had been carrying
that were never meant to stay.

The anger.
The resentment.
The unforgiveness.
The heartache I mistook for identity.

I had been calling it loss
when it was really release.

And when I let them go,
I didn’t become less.

I became softer
without becoming weaker.

Wiser without becoming bitter.

Whole without anyone else’s
hands holding the pieces.

Because the truth was,
I was never broken.

I was becoming.

The woman I thought
needed someone to complete her
was already complete.

She just had to heal
long enough to see it.

So now,
when I look at the pieces
I thought I lost,
I don’t mourn them.

I thank them.

For every heartbreak
that taught me my worth.
Every loss
that taught me release.
Every darkness
that taught me to recognize light.

And to every person
who thought they were taking something from me,

thank you.

You took what I no longer needed.

And somewhere in the letting go,
I found myself.

Not in someone else’s love.
Not in someone else’s hands.

But here.
Whole.
Healed.

Entirely my own.

Jacque Michele