SURVIVINGABREAKUP
Breakups are one of the most rough and intense human experiences. They’re destabilizing, jarring, sad, heavy, and lonely. But it’s weird they feel so lonely when they’re also one of the most universal and common. But when I am in the weeds of a breakup, I forget this and feel intense emotion, pain, and extreme sadness.
I knew people who survived breakups -- even ended up better for it -- yet I couldn’t be conceived of how that was possible while in the thick of mine. Thinking of everyone I knew who survived a breakup overwhelmed me, but thinking of just one person who was better for it comforted me.
For me, this was my cousin Jenny. I vaguely remembered her navigating a rough breakup when I was in high school and really didn’t understand what true heartbreak was yet. Jenny’s nearly a decade older than me and therefore was approaching 30 when I saw her leave a relationship that wasn’t the right fit. I saw her attending weddings and watching her friends settle into long-term relationships.
Cut to a decade later, I’m nearly 30 dancing at her wedding with my long-term boyfriend I assumed I’d end up with. A few months later, at another darker family event, Jenny sensed I was crying harder than was expected for the loss of a sick nearly centurion grandparent. Her hunch was right, that morning I’d broken up with my date to her wedding.
Luckily, a funeral home is an ideal place to sob uncontrollably for hours. I felt like a raw nerve but I was surrounded by some of the coziest people in the world to me, including Jenny, who scooped me up and told me a bunch of helpful things I didn’t believe then but now, a year later, I’ve started to.
HERE’SWHATSHETOLDME.
1) Be nice to yourself. Take it slow. Get a massage, get your nails done, go out with friends.
2) Time will help more than anything else on this list and that sucks but is the truth.
3) You will feel like it will never get better, but it will. You just can’t believe that right now.
4) You will feel like you will never meet anyone else, but you will. It feels like that everytime.
5) You will feel like you made a mistake, maybe many mistakes, and you probably did. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t correct for it to end.
6) Surround yourself with people who value and support you.
7) Learn all you can from this one but know you’ll make mistakes again.
8) Don’t text them -- remember that moving on is your goal here.
9) Only death is final, if this relationship is meant to come back around it will, and if it’s not it won’t.
I’m someone who needs constant reinforcements, reminders, and systems on a good day and especially after a jarring change like a breakup. Jenny was that person for me, who checked in and cared and I want to everyone to have that during something so tough. So I made this email zine, to feel like a check-in, a to-do list, and to feel like a warm blanket for your heart.
In the same way as what The Artist’s Way does for creativity, advent calendars do for kids awaiting Santa, scavenger hunts do for fun birthday parties in the 90s, I’ve held onto everything I’ve documented over the past year and I’ve made myself both a breakup soothe kit and solve kit.
First, the SOOTHE KIT….
Before I could mine the relationship for gems of lessons, move on, or solve anything, I had to soothe. Soothing sounds easy and in theory it is, but I was so overwhelmed by all the possible ways I could potentially soothe myself that most mornings I woke up feeling low, lethargic, and lost. I would sit around stunned and try to put one foot in front of the other but I felt like I was on a hamster wheel going nowhere.
I felt better on the days when I accomplished something, even if it was just organizing my closet or calling a friend.
I wished I’d had someone to tell me exactly one thing to do each day that would move me forward or just comfort me. I got countless pieces of advice, playlists, and ideas but I felt too raw to even decide what to do when. I wanted to feel like I was doing at least one thing each day. So I made what I wish I would have had to wake up to on the mornings when I was most depressed: a daily email to tell me what to do to feel even 10% better. They include stories, a journaling exercise, an action, a song to listen to each day.
Here’s what I made:: my breakup soothe kit – a daily email hug. it’s best used right after, when for while you’re feeling like you hit a raw nerve, but really it can be used whenever you need it weather it’s been 10 minutes, two days, 9 months, or a 1 year, soothing is important. You can order this SOOTHE KIT for yourself or send a friend going through a breakup to help them feel held and less alone.
If you’re not a daily email type of person and want it all right now (or to send it to someone) + some heavy lifting journaling prompts, you can get my soothe kit zine here.
SECOND, THE SOLVE KIT….
Once I soothed and my nervous system had calmed down and I stopped feeling so raw, I could start to solve…. Meaning doing the heavy lifting of learning the lessons that were illuminated in the relationship. I’m still learning and growing and using the relationships I flow in and out of as mirrors to see myself and where I want to shift. I will always be using the concepts I collected in this Solve Kit; to grow and try to become a better person. The heavy lifting of mining the recent relationship for gems you can grow from is the main theme of MY SOLVE KIT. Each relationship that ends is a new opportunity to learn something new about myself.
I made this Solve Kit workshop to really do that heavy lifting, give support, and be for other people what Jenny and many others were for me. It goes into everything I did to examine the relationship through journaling prompts, a plethora of therapies to see my role in it and to eventually move on.
____
I’m not an expert in breakups, but I have survived a couple and did things that helped that I can share. What might be most valuable in this is my story of what happened and how it made me feel. I think we learn and feel less alone through stories.
