Do you ever suffer from breathing issues, where you feel like each breath is laboring through your body? Every breath you take hurts. Every step you take hurts.

I am not talking about a case of the swine flu. I am talking about heartache. We don’t ever really talk about heartache.

Do you ever get into a huge fight with your significant other, and you just feel like it’s the end of the world? How about if your significant other breaks up with you, or you break up with them?

You get that deep, heavy heartache feeling. You experience that wave of emotion where you feel like nothing in the world is going to snap you out of it.

That is really hard. Heartache is tough.

Heartache, however, also makes you grow. It makes you stronger as a person. Let me explain why.

You went through a tough time with a relationship. Your heart aches and your heart hurts.

That means that you are actually fighting for something you believe in. It means that you are fighting for the sake of the relationship, because love takes time and it hurts at times.

Heartache is tough. Nobody wants to feel it.

I remember when I was 17 years old and my high school girlfriend broke up with me. It felt like the end of the world. I felt like I was going to just keel over and die. I couldn’t eat or sleep for days, and every breath I took hurt.

So here is a word of advice I want to give everyone who has ever suffered from this type of heartache or who is suffering from it right now. It is actually some of the best advice (and maybe the only good advice) my Mom ever gave me.

She looked at me when I was 17 years old and my girlfriend had just broken up with me and said, “Remember how much you loved this person today. She is not the person for you. All the pain and suffering you are feeling right now is just temporary. It is growth. It is you learning and processing the relationship. It is okay to grieve a relationship. When you are finished grieving it, make sure you learn each lesson from that relationship so you learn more about yourself and don’t repeat things.”

We never talk about heartache here in the blog, but I know a lot of you have emailed me over and over again about relationships ending and about the pain that you feel associated with that. So to all of you, you need to know that the heartache you are feeling is just growth.

Keep you heart open. The longer you keep your heart open in life, the less your heart is going to ache.

You are going to grow, so push yourself through that heartache when you feel it. Realize that amazing thing will come through you if you remain strong.

One of the best ways to get through the pain of heartache is to take time to really reconnect with yourself and who you are as a person.