Many of you wrote to me after the last article , sharing your own stories, reflections, and lived experiences of being cracked open by life. I am deeply grateful for your courage, your honesty, and your willingness to normalize vulnerability in a world that so often asks us to hide it. This work is not meant to be done alone, and your voices matter here.   I spoke about how grief, heartbreak, and loss expand our capacity to love, not by bypassing pain, but by allowing life to

Expanding our capacity to love is not a soft or sentimental process. It is not forged in moments when everything is tidy, predictable, or comfortable. It is forged in moments that crack us open. The loss of someone we love. The ending of a relationship we believed would last. The sudden rupture of a life we were certain of. These moments do not politely knock on the heart’s door. They split it. They press directly into the chest. They bypass our philosophies and go straight f