That’s the interesting thing about a breakup — each story is different and yet they are all the same: two paths meet and intersect in a flash, followed by joined journeys filled with passion, love and romance.

Rob Macpherson — the author of “Will Preach For Food” blog met his first big love during his university years.

After years of being inseparable, still wayward, I felt my way was diverging from hers. I was young, and it was my life, dammit, and I wasn’t going to be held back from what I was sure were far horizons. So I left one fine day.

It was the first serious relationship for both of us, and spanned most of our university years. In leaving this lovely young woman, who had done nothing injurious to me, not ever, I created a wound in the very core of her being that I know for a fact has never really healed. And that was 30 years ago.

Then a storm hits, blue skies and fluffy clouds are chased away by winds, rains and storms. One gets lost, takes a different turn or falls behind. Feelings change, whether gets cold and the world turns into ice. Laughter and passion is choked by loneliness, anger and despair.

Fate is not without a sense of ironic justice. In fact, I often think it is intent on mocking our attempts at directing our lives. For as badly as I did to her, the same was done to me 10 years later. But with a twist: I was left with a small, innocent, girl-child to raise. And so those far horizons I was chasing narrowed to the necessary confines of her needs.

“I’ll see your broken heart, raise you a heart to love and shape,” says Fate. Any gambler will tell you: the house always wins.

I remember being out in the garden one night as a late summer evening closed in, my little girl sleeping peacefully in her room above, and I suddenly got it. “Okay, ” I said. “O-kay.” It was more than poetic justice. Life had offered me an opportunity to heal through loving a tender, fragile little girl, and thus to undo the sort of heartlessness in me that so wounded someone else’s tender little girl a decade before.

Her heart would stay broken, of course. As with a vase, even if you put it back together so it holds water and flowers, it’s still broken, and always will be broken on some level.

Mend broken heart with forgivness

My heart has stayed broken too, even though the little girl is now about to be 25 and is far more well-adjusted than I have any right to expect. Raising her taught me, long after I should already have known, what love actually was.

There is a way to mend a broken heart yourself, even if you don’t have a child to show you how. I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, and I can see no practical alternative to forgiveness. What else do you do, seethe and cry forever? Is it really better to keep the anger and hatred locked away and take them out and polish them in the wee hours, savoring the bitterness? Do you really want that flinching reflex every time anything–a street, a song, a particular tree– reminds you of the one who hurt you? Do you really never want to trust anyone ever again?

Rob offers six steps on the road to complete forgiveness to heal heartbreak:

1. Work to comprehend the motives of the person who hurt you
2. See your own role in your heart-break
3. Pray for the heart-breaker
4. If it’s appropriate (and only if), undertake to do acts of kindness toward the heart-breaker
5. Let go of the desire to see the heart-breaker acknowledge guilt, responsibility, or even awareness of the hurt they caused
6. Be patient and steadfast

Read the entire article here.

Forgiveness is the art of letting go of resentment, indignation and anger. Forgiveness will set you free. Forgive your ex partner, but more importantly, forgive yourself. You don’t need to rewrite the past or pretend you were not hurt. You don’t need to forget — just forgive and let go.