Grief and heartbreak: the two are inseparable. American author Anne Lamott affirmed the fact when she wrote: "You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken..." - Anne Lamott (Source: Goodreads)

British author J.K. Rowling, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix painted the picture more vividly: "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it." And Leo Tolstoy recognized the frailty of the human heart when he wrote in Anna Karenina, "Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken."

Right now, following the death of your loved one, it feels as if your heart is - to one degree or another - broken. There are times when the heartache is unbearable and other times when you don't even think you can get out of bed. So, what can you do to help yourself heal?

You begin healing, not by doing everything you can to avoid the pain of grief; but by focusing your attention on the task of mourning. And because grief work is hard, you'll need to rest whenever you can. Through this cycle of attentive mourning, you can find your way through your grief, healing your broken heart along the way.