Take your heart out of its cage of ribs and let it live its day beside you as an entity of its own. A walking, breathing, conscious organ as tall as you, as vibrant as you, as vulnerable as you. The biggest hearts take their height and width from your capacity to love, and people are drawn to your company, wondering how such a person could grow such a big heart. But what they do not tell you is the risk that comes with having a heart available for anyone to reach. The biggest hearts tend to break the hardest. Their magnitude becomes a vulnerability.
Em's heart is bright red, a stark contrast to her dim, matte surroundings. Held in her arms, it spills over her sleeves. Its size has clearly outgrown them. Like a person who trips over nothing, her heart falls on occasion, though never with grave injury. She goes to the people around her at a moment's notice, often forgetting that her heart is in tow. Such ventures do not seem safe for a heart that falls at her earliest convenience, always attending to the needs of others. A friend has warned her before not to let it fall, for fear of it becoming unfixable. But by accident, it trips and falls again, and now it has split in two. Jagged lines cut across its center. It cries out for Em and her help, but with each stitch, she cannot hide the seam. It remains even after she has sewn it back together completely.
What she did not anticipate was that, with the help of her friends, each stitch would bring her heart back to life. Mutual aid made it shine brighter than it ever had before. Em learns the value of safeguarding her heart and keeping close only those who value it as much as she does.
Em's Big Heart, through its lyrical, simple narration, teaches the often-forgotten lesson of valuing oneself. Extending our care beyond our capacity leads the heart to fall, collecting scrapes on its knees, grazes on its hands, and bruises along the way, until it reaches a breaking point and splits. Left unattended, a heart can dim and wither, and nursing it back to health takes significant time and energy. Em's hands began to turn red in her time of mending. Beyond the physical toll, the isolation of nursing oneself back to life removes us from the company of others, which only delays healing further.
Only in the company of things a heart has loved, and been loved by in return, does one begin to heal fully. Em had her companion and a few pets, and their presence brightened her heart more than before. With their help, her heart was stitched back together and reanimated, the joy and energy of before slowly returning.
In our own lives, there will be days when our hearts, our love, and ourselves as a whole are placed on the back burner. This can happen for many reasons: favoring tasks assigned by others, succumbing to the pressure of academics or work, giving wholly of oneself into a relationship that does not seem to give back. We neglect to ask ourselves whether we need a break in our drive to do our best for everyone else. Our hearts gradually thin under the unforeseen weight of accompanying those who cannot or do not reciprocate the same care we so freely offer.
In its simple prose, Em's Big Heart makes the lesson of safeguarding oneself accessible to young readers while serving as a reminder for adults, who perhaps need it most. It does not call for pulling away from others entirely. As one of the oldest truths goes, people need people. What must be examined instead is the habit of giving to the point of forgetting ourselves. Balance must be achieved for a heart to flourish, to stay healthy, and to keep beating despite the various cuts, bruises, and grazes it collects over a lifetime. It is inevitable that our hearts will break. But in the company of the right people, and with our own hands willing to do the work of putting ourselves back together, a heart will beat, and beat, and beat, despite everything.
By Catherine Fangon