Healing a Broken Heart

I have tried a new form of healing which may be unique.  I call it “Adele Therapy.” 

Two weeks ago, I felt a distinct urge to do something I have not done in over 20 years – buy a CD.   I purchased 25, Adele’s latest album and allowed the words, the songs, and the rhythms to just seep  through me.  I play it loudly over and over again as I drive around town in my Kia Soul.

 Entertainment Tonight described this album  as being “built over minor-key melancholy, stylistic flourishes and simplicity.”  What I find is that the combination of images, sounds, and voice resonate in the deepest part of me and take me to feelings I cannot fully describe, but I can experience.

“When We were Young” and “A Million Years Ago” touch on the  journey into adulthood and the sadness  that  is part of it. These are the  lines that speak to me

I know I'm not the only one
Who regrets the things they've done
Sometimes I just feel it's only me
Who can't stand the reflection that they see
I wish I could live a little more
Look up to the sky, not just the floor

I feel like my life is flashing by
And all I can do is watch and cry
I miss the air, I miss my friends
I miss my mother; I miss it when
Life was a party to be thrown
But that was a million years ago

When I hear this sung, memories and emotions of grief and regret I have buried in the busyness of living today are released.  Adele is my  spiritual companion naming experiences and thoughts and feelings that are within me. (It is hard to believe that she is only 25!)

There are many songs about love and the ballad “All I Ask” is about the final night with a lover.  I think about the way  relationships in my life have ended over the years and how we always wish that they can “end clean” and so often they don’t .  And then that haunting question – “What if I never love again?”

But the song that brought me to the album was “Hello.”

Hello from the other side, hello from the outside.

  Hello, it's me, I was wondering
If after all these years you'd like to meet to go over everything

I wonder, as I listen, if this is me meeting myself again – the younger Margot, the one who used to be free.  The one who is still waiting for resolution and answers.  

What I find in this album is that the words, Adele’s  soulful voice and the arrangements combine to give voice to something deep inside  me.  It expresses better than I can on this page - the complexity of feelings I experience  in the mystery of  love and life. 

I titled this “Healing a Broken Heart” because my time with this music has revealed a broken heart.  My broken heart.   Wounded by people and relationships and life and loss and change.  Usually I stay too  busy, distracted and numb to spend much time  in the  hurting and broken places.   I paper over them and just keep moving.

But listening, remembering, feeling, and reflecting  as I drive through the streets of Columbus somehow opens me up to deeper understanding and an appreciation of where I have been and who I am becoming: A wounded woman who is being healed and restored to life.  

This may be a Unique to Margot form of healing but I hope not.  We are – to quote Adele – “running out of time” and I believe it is never too late to find healing for all of our wounds.