Mending Heart Emoji

A red heart with an adhesive bandage across it. The opposite of 💔. Where 💔 is the wound, ❤️‍🩹 is the healing. Together they form the first emoji narrative arc: break → mend.

❤️‍🩹 represents the process of recovering from emotional pain. Not healed yet, but actively getting there. The bandage is the key visual detail: it implies the heart was hurt and someone (or time) is patching it up. It's an emoji of progress, not completion.

The Unicode proposal (L2/19-380) explicitly positioned it as the healing counterpart to 💔, filling a gap in the emoji emotional vocabulary. Before ❤️‍🩹, you could tell someone your heart was broken but had no way to say it was getting better. The proposal listed keywords including "recovering," "improving," "on the mend," "healthier," and "well."

It won the Most Popular New Emoji award at the 2021 World Emoji Awards, beating ❤️‍🔥 and 😵‍💫. Measured by Twitter usage in July 2021, the healing heart outperformed the passion heart. People wanted to express recovery more than desire.

On Instagram and TikTok, ❤️‍🩹 became the visual marker of the "healing era." The #HealingEra hashtag has millions of posts where people share post-breakup glow-ups, therapy breakthroughs, and "I'm getting better" updates. The emoji sits in captions alongside discussions of attachment styles, therapy progress, and personal growth. It signals: I was hurt, I'm working on it, and I'm not ashamed of either.

Gen Z adopted it as a core part of vulnerability culture. Talking openly about healing, setting boundaries, and going to therapy isn't just accepted, it's social currency. ❤️‍🩹 is the stamp on that content. A 2022 TikTok trend had users captioning posts with "healing isn't linear ❤️‍🩹" alongside progress photos or journal entries.

In texting, ❤️‍🩹 sent to a friend going through a hard time says "I see your pain and I'm here for the healing." It's more empathetic than ❤️ (which doesn't acknowledge the pain) and more hopeful than 💔 (which stays in the pain).

On Slack and Teams, it occasionally appears as a reaction to team members returning from difficult situations: medical leave, bereavement, or personal crises. It says "welcome back, we know that was hard" without requiring words.

The emoji arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic (late 2020), when collective grief and mental health awareness were at historic levels. Designboom noted that the Emoji 13.1 batch, which included ❤️‍🩹 alongside 😮‍💨 and 😵‍💫, represented "the compounded exhaustion and confusion of 2020." The mending heart gave people a way to say "I'm hurt but I'm coping" during a period when everyone was.

The proposal L2/19-380 (November 2019) positioned ❤️‍🩹 explicitly as the healing counterpart to 💔. The proposer argued that the emoji set had a way to express heartbreak but no way to express recovery from heartbreak. The gap meant that emotional stories told in emoji had an ending but no sequel. The keywords in the proposal: "recovering, improving, mending, recuperating, on the mend, healthier, well."

Technically, ❤️‍🩹 is a ZWJ (zero-width joiner) sequence: ❤️ (red heart) + ZWJ + 🩹 (adhesive bandage). The bandage emoji itself was proposed separately in L2/18-146 by Melissa Thermidor. On platforms that don't support the sequence, it renders as two separate emoji side by side (❤️🩹), which still communicates the same idea.

The timing of its release was striking. Emoji 13.1 was approved in September 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full Unicode 14.0 update had been delayed because of COVID, so 13.1 was a smaller batch that could ship faster. ❤️‍🩹 arrived alongside 😮‍💨 (exhaustion sigh) and 😵‍💫 (dizzy/overwhelmed), a trio that Designboom called "emojified representations of the compounded exhaustion and confusion of 2020."

The cultural parallel nobody planned: ❤️‍🩹 is the emoji equivalent of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Both share the same philosophy: the repair is part of the object's history, not something to hide. A kintsugi bowl is considered more beautiful for having been broken and mended. Psychology Today noted that kintsugi has become one of the most widely used metaphors in contemporary psychology, particularly for post-traumatic growth. ❤️‍🩹 carries that same energy: the bandage is visible, the healing is deliberate, and the heart is more interesting for having been through something.

Added to Emoji 13.1 (2020) as a ZWJ sequence: U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79 (Red Heart + VS16 + ZWJ + Adhesive Bandage). Part of the Smileys & Emotion category, heart subcategory. CLDR short name: "mending heart." Keywords: healthier, improving, mending, recovering, recuperating, well. The proposal (L2/19-380) explicitly positioned it as the sequel to 💔.

1. 2018Adhesive Bandage (🩹) proposed in L2/18-146 by Melissa Thermidor↗
2. 2019Mending Heart proposed in L2/19-380 as the healing counterpart to 💔↗
3. 2020Added to Emoji 13.1 (September) as a ZWJ sequence (❤️ + ZWJ + 🩹)↗
4. 2021Available on iOS 14.5, Android 11, Windows 10. Wins Most Popular New Emoji at World Emoji Awards↗
5. 2021TikTok's #HealingEra adopts ❤️‍🩹 as its visual marker

The concept ❤️‍🩹 represents, that healing from emotional pain is valuable and worth expressing, isn't universal.

In Japan, the emoji parallels kintsugi (金継ぎ), the 15th-century art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. The philosophy treats breakage as part of an object's history rather than something to disguise. A kintsugi bowl is considered more beautiful for having been broken and mended. Psychology Today notes that kintsugi has become a widely used metaphor in post-traumatic growth psychology.

In many Western cultures, especially among Gen Z in the US and UK, openly discussing therapy and healing is normalized. ❤️‍🩹 fits right into the vulnerability culture that TikTok's healing era runs on.

In cultures where emotional restraint is valued (parts of East Asia, some Latin American machismo contexts), sending ❤️‍🩹 might feel overly personal or might not land the same way. The assumption that everyone should publicly process their healing is a specific cultural stance, not a universal one.

• •❤️‍🩹 is a ZWJ sequence: ❤️ + zero-width joiner + 🩹. On platforms that don't support it, it renders as ❤️🩹 (two separate emoji), which still communicates the same meaning but less elegantly.
• •The Unicode proposal (L2/19-380) explicitly pitched ❤️‍🩹 as the sequel to 💔. It's the only emoji designed as a narrative continuation of another emoji.
• •It won the Most Popular New Emoji at the 2021 World Emoji Awards, beating ❤️‍🔥 Heart on Fire. Healing outperformed desire on Twitter.
• •The 🩹 adhesive bandage was proposed separately in L2/18-146 by Melissa Thermidor. Without the bandage emoji, the mending heart couldn't exist as a ZWJ sequence.
• •❤️‍🩹 arrived in the same Emoji 13.1 batch as 😮‍💨 and 😵‍💫, a trio Designboom called "the compounded exhaustion and confusion of 2020."
• •The emoji parallels kintsugi (金継ぎ), the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Both treat the repair as part of the object's history, not something to disguise.
• •Google Trends shows ❤️‍🩹 grew from zero to 60% of 💔's search volume in four years. The mending heart grew 10x while the broken heart grew 2x. Healing is closing the gap on heartbreak.

• •Sending ❤️‍🩹 immediately after hurting someone reads as "get over it" rather than support. Let the pain be acknowledged before suggesting recovery. Timing is everything with this emoji.
• •Confusing ❤️‍🩹 with ❤️‍🔥. One is healing (bandage). The other is passion (fire). They're both heart + modifier ZWJ sequences from the same batch but serve completely different purposes. They competed head-to-head at the 2021 World Emoji Awards and the healing heart won.
• •Using ❤️‍🩹 performatively ("thoughts and prayers ❤️‍🩹" with no real engagement) feels hollow. The emoji carries weight because it acknowledges specific pain. Using it generically dilutes that.

• •❤️‍🩹 won the Most Popular New Emoji at the 2021 World Emoji Awards, beating ❤️‍🔥 Heart on Fire and 😵‍💫 Face with Spiral Eyes. Calculated by Twitter usage in July 2021.
• •The 💔→❤️‍🩹 pair was celebrated as the first emoji narrative arc when ❤️‍🩹 was added in 2020. Two characters telling a complete story (heartbreak → healing) in sequence. Emojipedia's blog called it the "opposite of the broken heart."
• •TikTok's "healing era" movement adopted ❤️‍🩹 as its visual identity. Millions of posts under #HealingEra feature the emoji in captions about post-breakup growth, therapy progress, and vulnerability. The phrase "healing isn't linear ❤️‍🩹" became a caption template across the platform.
• •❤️‍🩹 arrived in the same Emoji 13.1 batch as 😮‍💨, 😵‍💫, and ❤️‍🔥. Designboom described them as "emojified representations of the compounded exhaustion and confusion of 2020." The pandemic timing made the entire batch feel like it was designed for COVID grief, even though the emojis were proposed before the pandemic began.
• •The emoji parallels kintsugi (金継ぎ), the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Psychology Today and NBC News have both written about kintsugi as a metaphor for post-traumatic growth. ❤️‍🩹 is the digital version: the bandage is visible, the repair is deliberate, and the heart is more interesting for having been through something.

• •ZWJ sequence: U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79. Handle as a single emoji in parsers. Note the variation selector U+FE0FU+FE0F after the heart codepoint.
• •On Slack: :mending_heart::mending_heart:. On Discord: :mending_heart::mending_heart:. On GitHub: not available as shortcode.
• •Falls back to ❤️🩹 (two separate emoji) on platforms that don't support the ZWJ sequence. The meaning is preserved.
• •Requires iOS 14.5+, Android 11+, Windows 10+. Older devices won't render it as a single emoji.
• •The U+1FA79U+1FA79 (adhesive bandage) codepoint was added in Unicode 12.0. The ZWJ combination was standardized in Emoji 13.1. If you support 12.0 but not 13.1, users can type the components but won't see the combined glyph.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.