The Relationship That Breaks Your Heart Open Is Rarely the One That Created the Wound
The Women Who Break Us Open to What We Couldn't Feel Before
There are heartbreaks we expect.
And then there are heartbreaks that arrive through doors we never would have even thought to guard.
One of the most devastating heartbreaks of my life did not emerge through romantic betrayal, divorce, or the collapse of my marriage.
It emerged through a relationship with a woman.
Not romantic in the conventional sense.
Not easily categorized in any way I have seen modeled for me.
But deeply intimate in the way some relationships become when they bypass time, space and performance and reach the nervous system directly.
And I know now that I am far from alone in this.
Over many years holding and guiding women as a healing ally, women have quietly shared with me that some of the most profound heartbreaks of their lives were connected to other women they considered soul sisters or elders, or both.
Deep friendships that felt like soul kinship. Mentorships. Healing spaces or villages filled with chosen family. Communities where they finally felt like all of them could breathe. Creative partnerships. Relationships that became emotionally formative in ways they did not fully understand until something ruptured.
And often, what made the heartbreak so disorienting was not simply the loss itself.
It was the somatic realization that something much older had been touched underneath it, rising up in ways that felt disorienting.
That they felt unprepared for; that brought them to their knees in ways that still impact them when they speak of it.
I understand that now in a way I didn’t before.
Because what surfaced for me through that relationship was not only grief connected to the relationship itself, which given that I held it so close and in such high esteem, would have been enough.
It was grief that seemed to belong to many timelines at once.
Ancient grief.
Wordless grief.
Grief my infant body had organized around long before I had language for it.
And the longer I have sat with that experience — both personally and while witnessing so many women move through healing, intimacy, rupture, attachment, and transformation in their own lives — the more I have begun to notice something I can no longer entirely unsee.
That many of us process our deepest core wounds with the masculine through relationships with the feminine first.
Not always.
Not universally.
Not simplistically.
But often enough that I think it deserves careful attention.
Because our pain tends to move through the safest available channel. And for most of us, women are the safest available channel.
A woman may never fully confront the father who abandoned her.
She may never fully cut ties with the brother or cousin who abused her.
May never fully express her white hot rage or devastating grief toward the partner who betrayed her very understanding of reality.
May never allow herself to feel the depth of what certain masculine dynamics cost her emotionally, relationally, spiritually, or physically.
May never hold any of them accountable for any of the harm they created in her body or her experience.
Not because she is weak.
But because some part of her nervous system still believes full contact with that pain could destabilize belonging, safety, identity, attachment, or survival itself.
And it is possible, at times, that nervous system is right, and the cost feels too high to manage.
But then somewhere on her healing path, she enters a relationship with another woman whose shape matches that of her unresolved pain; where something softer becomes possible.
Presence.
Witnessing.
Attunement.
Emotional reciprocity.
Trust built over time.
The feeling of finally being deeply emotionally met.
An intimacy that she wasn’t even aware was possible.
A safety that allows her to breathe into a fuller, more expansive version of herself.
And suddenly something deep and ancient and previously locked away begins to thaw and stir and stretch.
Begins to exit the room hidden in the basement in her and walk up the stairs, in service of her healing, her liberation and freedom.
Not because something has gone wrong, but because up until this point, something has gone profoundly right.
Not necessarily because the woman in front of her is responsible for creating the original wound.
But because the relationship finally became safe enough for the wound to emerge and find resolution in a way that frees her from the same repeated patterns in her life.
And this matters deeply.
Because if we do not understand this, we can easily mistake the activation site for the entire wound.
Now before I go further, I want to say something equally important about the tendency of women to process their wounds (often around the masculine) through “safe enough” relationships with women..
This does not mean women are merely projection screens for all unresolved pain with the masculine.
It does not mean all feminine rupture is displaced masculine grief.
It does not mean healing spaces are automatically safe.
And it certainly does not mean women cannot deeply harm one another.
They can and do.
There are real power dynamics present in relationships between women, especially as they are healing together:
attachment,
idealization,
projection,
competition,
dependency,
social conditioning,
trauma reenactment,
financial exchange,
authority,
race,
gender expression and identity,
socio-economic class,
belonging wounds and rejection sensitivity,
and the deeply human longing to be chosen, seen, and emotionally held.
Some relationships and environments DO become unhealthy.
Some communities do become coercive and manipulative.
Some leaders misuse their power for their gain.
Some ruptures require distance, accountability, grief, boundaries, or ending entirely.
Our discernment matters profoundly.
But I also think many of us have inherited relational frameworks that make it difficult to remain conscious once pain enters the room, because we idealize one another, and hope rupture can’t permeate these relationships.
And when there is rupture, we have become so accustomed to feeling seen, loved, known, and so much permission to be exactly who we are, that it can feel scary when we realize we are all still capable of harm. It can suddenly feel like we are unsafe inside of what felt like a womb.
Sometimes “I don’t feel safe anymore” is the closest language we have for something far more layered happening inside the nervous system.
Sometimes what we mean is:
“Something deep is surfacing and I don’t yet know how to stay present with it.”
Or
“This dynamic or the presence of this woman is activating emotions that feel overwhelming, disorienting, or conflicting.”
Or simply: “ need support to move through what this is bringing up in me.”
Learning to distinguish between true danger and intense emotional activation is part of relational maturity.
And human relationships are almost never going to provide us with a sense of safety 100% of the time.
We are on the only ones that can provide that for ourselves through earning secure attachment with how we treat and care for ourselves under and after emotional stress.
Especially when intimacy has become emotionally significant.
What I have observed — in myself and in many women — is how easily feminine relationships begin carrying symbolic weight far beyond the relationship itself.
Because genuine intimacy between women can destabilize the architecture patriarchy built inside us.
Patriarchy taught many women to survive through:
comparison,
self-abandonment,
performance,
scarcity,
hyper-independence,
pleasing,
emotional suppression,
and distrust of one another.
So when a woman finally experiences deep resonance, emotional safety, nourishment, or belonging with another woman, it can awaken not only healing — but terror.
Terror of disappointment.
Terror of dependency.
Terror of loss.
Terror of discovering how hungry we have actually been for this kind of connection.
And when rupture happens inside that kind of intimacy, it can feel catastrophic.
Not because women are inherently fragile.
But because the body is often metabolizing much more than the current moment alone.
I have watched women hold women to extraordinary standards for emotional fluency, repair, communication, accountability, and self-awareness while extending enormous understanding toward the men in their lives whose actions caused and continue to cause deep harm.
And I understand why.
Disappointment and heartbreak with women cuts differently.
Because somewhere inside many of us lives the hope that women might finally become the place we could fully rest.
The place we could stop performing or hiding any parts of ourselves.
The place we could finally be fully seen and known and validated.
But that is not what human relationships are.
And when that fantasy collapses, it can unleash profound grief and anguish and rage. A feeling of “It has all been a lie and I can no longer trust.”
I know because I have experienced this myself, and I have seen women process their original pain through the bodies of other women in every container I have ever been a part of, held or led. I have heard about it in countless others, even those that are considered the gold standard of feminine healing.
Through the relationships that for a time offered them a new level of relative safety, love and attunement.
But I also feel this is where the deepest healing can begin.
Not by bypassing harm.
Not by tolerating abuse.
Not by abandoning discernment.
But by becoming more conscious and of and curious about what is actually happening inside us in relationship with one another.
By learning to pause long enough to ask:
What is this relationship touching inside me?
What feels threatened here?
What feels unfinished?
What belongs to this moment?
What belongs to older survival patterns?
What expectations or symbolic roles did I unconsciously place onto this person?
What have I been longing for?
What have I been protecting?
Because rarely is the relationship in front of us the origin of the wound it is swamping to the surface.
Sometimes it is simply the first place our body believed she might survive feeling what had previously been unbearable.
Beginning to feel what was in my own basement, through experiencing rupture and heart break with another woman changed me and humbled me profoundly.
Not into someone with fewer boundaries.
Not into someone who tolerates harm in the name of compassion or goodwill or sisterhood.
Not into someone incapable of discernment.
But into someone with far more humility about what happens inside human hearts when they finally soften enough to feel what has been stored away.
Into someone willing to take responsibility for what is rising up instead of misdirecting it unconsciously.
Because women waking up will still absolutely hurt one another sometimes.
We will fuck up. A lot.
We are still human.
Still conditioned.
Still disentangling ourselves from survival strategies inherited long before we consciously chose them.
What if we learned to expect this as a part of the process, especially as we get closer and closer to one another?
And no — none of us are responsible for sacrificing ourselves for another woman’s healing.
Ever.
In fact, that is what so many of us are dismantling in our own system, as we have been performing for other’s comfort and love our entire lives.
We are experts at contortion.
We are learning to say “No, that is not mine. I won’t take it. Stop.”
We are learning to say “I will not pretzel myself to keep you comfortable and feeling good right now.”
We are learning to say “Something feels off here and I don’t feel safe to open up right now.”
We are learning to say “I’m fuming. I’m incensed. I am not fucking okay.”
But when it comes to the space and grace we give other women to be imperfect,
I do believe we are being invited into far more grace than this culture has taught us to extend to women.
More room for nuance.
More responsibility for our projections.
More of a willingness to see how we do the same thing we are quick to blame and vilify others for.
More devotion to find the most helpful nugget of what is arising rather than the sensational story our mind wants to throw on the front page.
More awareness of how quickly pain seeks certainty.
More willingness to look underneath rupture instead of only reacting to it.
More capacity for repair where repair is possible.
I love this quote by Cornel West.
"Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.”
So, as women, we have a big invitation:
1) Publicly, we fight for justice for one another, and for all, intensely.
2) Privately, we recognize the tenderness and vulnerability of the individual and of the connection. Of the trauma of patriarchy that we all live inside of.
We fight for the preservation of the sacredness of the bond, and when that is not possible, we focus on fighting for the intact dignity of both women.
Because anything we cannot allow in another woman often points us toward something we cannot yet fully allow in ourselves.
If She is not allowed to be imperfect, neither are we.
If She is not allowed to be messy, neither are we.
If She is not allowed to be in her sovereignty with her choices and her path, neither are we.
If She is not allowed to be free in our eyes, neither are we.
If She is not allowed to be in process, neither are we.
If She is not allowed to be vulnerably visible and safe from attack, neither are we.
And perhaps the most important thing I have come to understand is this:
The relationship that breaks your heart open is not always the relationship that created the wound.
Sometimes it is simply the first place your body finally believed she was safe enough to feel it.
And sometimes that breaking open becomes the beginning of freedom, especially if you are willing to listen.
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I’m interested in the places where healing, embodiment, nervous systems, attachment, womanhood, power, intimacy, grief, and becoming all collide.
The slower writing lives here now.
And if you are in a season of your own unraveling, thawing, or return, I’m glad you found your way here.
With Love & Devotion,
Beth