Love and the ability to feed and nourish what we love are the essential components for a healthy life. When loss, acute or chronic, curtails our ability to nourish what we love, we inadvertently erode our passion and the dreams they generate. Losing what we love can push us further and further out of balance, which leads eventually to disruptions that can show up as various kinds of problems, most specifically women’s reproductive issues.

Loss interrupts the essential energy of love that flows from our heart to our female organs that germinate the dreams that sustain us. Loss reverberates through our body’s entire energy system, especially our circulatory and reproductive systems. In other words, our heart and our womanhood are especially hard hit with the loss of love. Statistically, heart disease is an even larger threat than breast cancer. Breast cancer takes approximately forty-three thousand women each year, while heart disease claims an estimated five hundred thousand and is on the rise. In fact, heart and female energy go hand-in-hand because our heart generates the love that feeds our passion, which in turn gives us the desire to nourish and cherish our truest yearnings.

The more chronic or acute the state of loss, the more we struggle to believe that we can still live as a complete woman, with something of our own design to feed, nourish, and cherish. No matter what our sense of loss, we benefit when we take a long hard look at what we want, who we are, and how we desire to spend our time, energy, and money.

Think of a flower bulb, which has such tremendous energy to open to spring, the new season of life. It can push through concrete, around boulders, and even break clay pots in its passion for opening to life. We can afford to be no less passionate about our own opening to new life. Aren’t we ready to begin again with the renewed energy of spring—of spirit?

As we allow new dreams and new energy to nourish us, we move through loss and find ourselves in the grieving stage of our healing journey. Grieving is positive in this case because it allows us to use the energy of old losses to germinate new beginnings and new conversations with ourselves.

As we talk and write about our losses, we actually grieve them and heal them through our tender attention to what has hurt us. By listening to ourselves with greater self-honesty, we realize that while we have inner and outer work to do, so does every human being.

The challenge of imbalance isn’t ours alone, it is humanity’s struggle. Being out of balance is our perennial condition, and many today actively seek their return route to inner peace, spiritual knowing, and health. Certainly no one plans for an illness to be a vehicle of regaining a clearer perspective of life direction, yet it can serve us in this way, becoming our return route to a healthy and quality life.

The Old Nurtures the New Through Grace

The loss of cherished love and hopes is similar to a giant redwood tree falling in the forest. The tree represents dreams that got away as well as love that we always wanted or once had and lost. But the fallen tree, once on the ground, nourishes new growth, which springs from under its bark. What has come before is meant to be fodder for the new. There is no need to throw away our old experiences—good and bad—because they provide the nutrients for today’s opportunities. The fallen tree, our old dreams, now nourish our new dreams, as we turn our attention to moving through the grieving stage. We can think of this grieving stage as the stage of germination of the new, as we use the nourishment from our fallen dreams to welcome grace.

Grace is the experience of loving ourselves no matter the ways that love was shown to us, whether faulty, judgmental, and abusive or kind, forgiving, and supporting. Grace doesn’t come to us in those moments of gentle awareness and comfort, as if we’ve done something to have God love us more than others. Grace comes to us when we open our hearts and ask for it because we need it. God is forgiveness, creative support, and opening to love from within.

Grace is the energy of love that flows continually from God, Divine Intelligence, Spirit. Our willingness and ability to receive it is what makes the difference. As we sit with ourselves, whether in good times or bad, we can put our hands over our hearts and feel a quiet, strong reassurance that no matter what comes to us in the future, in this moment we are loved. More than being loved just today, we are part of the Love that flows in and around the entire universe—we were born from Love.

Grace is actually the healing energy of Spirit that helps our body listen to a steady, reassuring inner message, one that helps us settle our fears and struggles and turn them into food for our spiritual journey. When we put our hands over our heart center and realize that we are sending ourselves love and recognize the impact it has inside us—that’s grace. The healing response in our body is grace in action, Divine Love in action, helping us on our journey of spiritual empowerment and healing.

Based on the book Spirit Heals. Copyright 2007 by Meredith Young-Sowers. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800/972-6657 ext. 52.