When the Heart Carries Too Much

A reflection on my Heart Chakra and the life that shaped it

There was never anything wrong with my heart.
It was never weak, broken, or naïve.

It was simply open.

From a very young age, I learned to love deeply, to hold space, to understand others even when I was not understood. My heart became a place of safety for everyone else, a listening room, a refuge, a container for emotions that others did not want to carry.

In chakra language, this is the Heart Chakra (Anahata) the centre of love, compassion, connection, and emotional balance. But what is often not spoken about is that an open heart, without support, becomes an overworked heart.

My life shaped my heart chakra not through one single wound, but through years of showing up without being met.

I loved without conditions.
I supported without keeping score.
I stayed when leaving would have protected me.

And slowly, without realising it, my heart learned that love meant endurance.

The heaviness I feel in my heart today is not bitterness. It is unexpressed grief,  grief for the parts of me that kept loving even when love was not returned with respect. Grief for the emotional labour I carried silently. Grief for the times I chose peace over truth, hoping harmony would arrive on its own.

In many spiritual spaces, a “heavy heart” is seen as a blockage. I no longer see it that way.

A heavy heart can also mean a deeply experienced one.

My heart chakra did not close after betrayal, abandonment, or misunderstanding. It stayed open, perhaps too open absorbing pain that was never meant to live there. And yet, it did not turn cold. That is not weakness. That is resilience.

What my heart is learning now is a new language: Boundaries are not the opposite of love. They are how love survives.

I am learning that I can be compassionate without carrying. That I can forgive without reconciling. That I can love without self-erasure. The heart does not need to be hardened to be protected,  it needs to be respected, especially by the one who lives inside it.

Today, my heart chakra is not asking to be healed. It is asking to be relieved.

Relieved from the belief that it must hold everything together.
Relieved from the role of being the emotional anchor for everyone else.
Relieved from the responsibility of proving its worth through sacrifice.

As I sit with my heart now, I no longer ask, “Why did this happen to me?”
I ask, “What is my heart ready to put down?”

And the answer is gentle and clear:

I am allowed to love myself with the same devotion I once gave away freely.

My Closing Reflection

An open heart is a gift.
A protected heart is wisdom.
A balanced heart is freedom.

And I am learning slowly, compassionately,  how to hold all three.