In your heart is where you give name to your feelings, and is where you find your ability to share them with others. People who are addicted are disconnected from their own feelings, and disconnected from relationships. Loneliness and rejection become normal states of living, and these are very common, very core reasons for people to seek pleasure, relief, or oblivion in addiction.

Ask yourself today if there is strength in your heart. Are you able to name the different types and tones of feelings that happen inside you? Do you ignore, avoid, or bury feelings? Have you given up on someone, or did someone give up on you? Did a relationship explode in your face?

You can feel things in your body, you can evaluate feelings in your mind, you can even find meaning for them in your soul, but without the heart to share and trust and witness with others, you can never feel truly whole.

When a person is connected to their heart, they can seem virtually fearless. They can name their state in any given moment, and speak it out loud, seemingly without fear of what anyone else would say or think. Yet a strong heart is not completely without fear — the strong heart is deep enough to let fear happen, and charge forth anyways. A person with a strong heart is confident because they know their feelings are important in some way. They are worthy, simply because they are here.

Your heart connects you to kindness without expecting something in return. Your heart connects you to love, despite fear of losing, or risk of pain.

What are you hiding in your heart? Can you speak it out loud? Can you share first, speak first, trust first? Do you have feelings that are “good”, and others “bad”, or can you learn something from both pleasure and pain? Can you give without expectation of something in return, or do you have an agenda? Can you see the difference between choices based upon love, that are for others, and choices based on fear, that have intent to manipulate?

Re-connecting with your heart is no different from building any other kind of strength, but it will take time, especially if yours has been cold and hard for many years. Know that when you allow feelings to happen, and acknowledge them, you validate your own self. What you feel matters. You matter. When you hold space for another person, to let them have, and know, their own feelings, you show them that they matter.

This is important, because as we move forward in life, we meet others along the way that have had very different experiences, but have felt very similar things. When we relate, understand, and connect, we remember that we never have to walk our path alone.

You can be joyful, and inspire others to reach for that same mindset. You can share that.

You can be heartbroken, and release your pain to someone who’s been there, and understands. You can share that too.

You can be the one that reaches out your hand to someone that is going through hell. You can say, “I know it hurts. It will be okay. I’m with you.” And the power of that connection could change their life forever.

Addiction wants joy to be permanent, and wants sadness to disappear, instead of letting feelings come and go with the ups and downs of life. Addiction breaks apart your heart, or numbs it out, and re-connecting to your heart is necessary for becoming whole again. The body is for physical health, the mind is for grounding in reality, the soul is for purpose, and the heart is for bringing others with you. Through the joy and the sadness.