Reading real-life stories of people who have been heartbroken and their journey from those people themselves or from people who listen to them as professionals and share them could sometimes help you to feel less alone or more understood in your pain. In our culture of enormous self help industry and coaches and therapist we sometimes forget about long lost healing powers of stories.
List of the most helpful books to read when you have a broken heart.
The Love Trauma Syndrome – Richard B Rosse
It’s all about how to Free Yourself From The Pain Of A Broken Heart.
Love is one of the most exhilarating emotions we experience–unfortunately, it is also one of the most painful and sometimes traumatic. The unresolved emotional scars from a broken heart can manifest as a “love trauma syndrome.” Until now, a love trauma was thought to precipitate other common psychiatric conditions, such as depression or adjustment disorders, but these generic psychiatric ailments are not adequate for articulating the full and unique character of the condition following love trauma. The Love Trauma Syndrome: Free Yourself from the Pain of a Broken Heart fills the need of patients feeling isolated, ashamed, or alone in their anguish. Dr. Richard Rosse, a psychiatrist with expertise in the area of emotional breakdown, provides a concrete path to help people understand this condition. At times, the syndrome can seriously diminish the sufferer’s quality of life, and dramatically impair social, academic, and occupational activities.
Jill Homer: Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide
Jill takes us with her on the healing journey thru her breakup, on the outside shes dives into the worlds longest mountain bike race and on the inside, she dives deep into and thru all the painful emotions of her break up and came out more alive at the end. A truly remarkable real-life story about healing a broken heart with opening it more to the life at the end. At the end she opens her heart more then it was open at the beginning of her love story.
Beneath the stories of tire-sucking mud single track, of white-knuckle lightning storms on a barren plain, Homer weaves a tale of sorrow, heartbreak, growth and survival as she traverses the spine of the Great Divide on a mountain bike tour from Banff, Canada to the southern border of the United States
Most people fear solitude after a breakup but Jill dives into the worlds longest mountain bike race that is nothing but solitude and hardship. She realizes that the world is complex and cruel but it is simple and beautiful as well. She discovers that love can come from many different sources. Her struggle against the winds of life become a tailwind to confidence and independence.
Life is a wheel, a journey that comes full circle. You fall apart just to put things back together the way you want them. In the end, this is what makes you, you. And Jill portrays her personal journey in this book which in turn enriches its readers with new perspectives and the ultimate inspiration.
Cheryl Strayed: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to difficult breakups. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer’s life into account but also Strayed’s. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience. . . . Moving. . . . compassionate
Winston Graham: The Poldark novels
Even though that is a novel, it’s characters are portrayed so real. The story pulls you in and it the end, you could not
look at betrayal and cheating just from one side. After I read it, I have more space inside my heart to understand that sometimes we love more than one person.
In the end, the main characters Ross and Demelza realize that they deeply love each other but that along the journey the parts of their hearts open to other people also. We are all just humans and sometimes life is not black and white. It made me think deeper about infidelity and forgiveness.
Than broken heart sometimes means that you have a broken heart with the reason. To open your heart more and maybe even because of that feel more love and more deeply with another person, that is waiting for you on your journey.
Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth
Remarkably touching war love story about Vera, who on the Christmas, waiting for her love to came back from the front to marry her, find out that he just died a few days ago.
The story continues as she works as the nurse, so the number of people close to her, who died. At the end of the war when she had lost virtually everyone she loved.
Vera Britten feels in love at the beginning of WW1. At the same time, she was accepted to Oxford College [ Somerville] a very prestigious school. The love of her life was Roland Leighton, a very smart and talented man, a friend of her brother’s. As the war broke out in 1914 her brother’s friends volunteered. She felt she was not doing enough for the men fighting, so she joined the VAD [Nurses Aid’s]. As the years went by first Roland died, then the others followed Edward her brother died the last in Italy in 1919.
In spite of her broken heart, she later did get married and became a mother of two children.
Kate Kerrigan The lost garden
The Lost Garden is a mesmerizing story about loss, friendship and the power of true love.
The story begin with young Jimmy Walsh, who falls for flame-haired Aileen the moment he sets eyes on her.
Spending each day working together side by side, Aileen and Jimmy fall passionately in love, until their happiness is cruelly cut short by a tragic accident which will change their young lives forever.
Back on Illaunmor, Aileen finds solace in reviving an abandoned garden, which has been left as lonely and bereft as she has. Gradually, through the magic of hope, Aileen brings the garden back to life – and herself with it.
I Know I’m In There Somewhere by Helene Brenner
As somebody said: This book was an immense help when I found myself divorced after having lost my identity in my husband and marriage. Helped me on the road to getting back to who I really am.
It will show you:
– How to embrace, rather than fix, the Inner Voice that has been there all along
– How to distinguish the Outer Voices (the expectations of the people around you) from Your Inner Voice (the voice of your true self that goes beyond intuition and guides you wisely towards what is right for you)
– What to do when you feel that the essence of who you are is being stifled by external demands and expectations
With Hellen own words:
“I can’t tell you how many women have walked into my office trying to order themselves to get over their suffering. “Snap out of it!” they tell themselves. “Live with it.” “Deal with it.” “You made your bed, now lie in it.” “Count your blessings.” But if there’s one thing my therapy practice has taught me without a doubt, it is this: The army boot camp approach to yourself does not work. Not in the long run. The only thing that will end your distress and help you make lasting changes is compassion. Compassion”
Suggestion for next read: Gentle steps to get over broken heart