The Breakup Survival Guide

Embracing heartache, healing authentically, loving and losing

Dear Friend

Part of me wishes that I could take your pain as my own but the bigger part of me knows how much wisdom and strength you have to turn it into your own magic. I know that from this ache, you’ll spin your wildest dreams. I’m here, cheering you on, every step of the way.

Destination: Heartache Trenches

When one of my best friends texted me to tell me that her partner and her had broken up, my heart ached for her tremendously. It ached especially because it’s her first ever romantic heartbreak and sometimes, when it’s the first one, we tend to think that it won’t ever get better (I remember feeling that way). I so badly didn’t want her to think that.

This friend has also kindly, warmly and bravely faced the task of supporting me through every big breakup I’ve ever been through in my life. She held me in her arms at 16, through the first (and worst) one and whispered into my ears words of wisdom that helped me stumble through it. And then she did the same for the next one, and the next one. It is a deep goal and honour to try and do the same for her. And so I had the idea of writing down all of my breakup advice so that she could have a chaotic and loving guide for her first ever encounter with the almighty breakup.

Then, the next day, the lovely guy I had been (mostly) happily seeing for a month decided to end things with me and then I cried on his couch for three hours straight (I feel deeply, sue me for crying on the Hinge guy’s couch) and so the act of writing down my breakup advice became flecked with the glimmer of a current, personal aching.

Since I was writing it down for her and now suddenly a (very) small part of it also for me, I thought, well I might as well write it down here too.

No Time Like The First

When my first love dumped me, at 16 years old, the one thing I was completely sure of was that the feeling of pain would never get better. I had sunken to the floor of my bedroom after shakily achieving the insurmountable task of a shower and had since crumbled down to the fibres of my carpet, realising that the act of finding scraps of clothes to dress my body into was too much energy for the shards of my pieces. I wept like a child. My mom came into the room and wept at the sight of me weeping. “Mom” I said, “I don’t think I’m ever going to laugh again”

If I could walk into that room as who I am now and place my hand on the shoulder of that inconsolable teenager, I would tell her that the deepest laughs of her life are still to come. I would tell her that pain is the deepest portal into joy. And that she will love again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And meet herself more deeply each time, through the vital corridors that heartache provides.

That summer I threw myself into the arms of my friends and the art of belting grotesque rap songs out of the uber window. I writhed inside the cocoon of my pain illegally in dive bars, underneath the desk of the Afrikaans classroom and most significantly, in the intricate green depths of a secret dam tucked away in the forest. Wherever I went, the pain in my chest was a constant, nagging companion. Until one day, many weeks later, I woke up and confusedly crept my hand onto my chest, wondering where the now familiar ache had ventured off to.

I realised that what they said was shockingly and almost annoyingly true: one day it just gets better. Without even knowing it or thinking that it would be possible, I had somehow danced, screamed, laughed, swam and cried my way through the trenches of the ache, emerging on the other side: different, lighter, wiser, ready.

A vaguely remarkable and intensely annoying fact about my heart is that it never seems to harden. Every time my heart gets finely pierced by the thorns of loving, it seems to piece itself back together softer, hopeful and relentlessly open to experiencing it all again. This has meant many endeavours into love, some softer than others and many endings, some more gut-plummeting than others. It has meant an impressive array of breakup playlists, endless absurd strategies and a self-proclaimed seat at the “what to do with your heartache” table.

Breakup Summer, 2016

Here Are My 23 Breakup Tips

1.) Abandon all hope (OF BEING WITH THEM). What started out as annoying words on a YouTube video I found after frantically typing in “what to do when you've been dumped” as a heart-wrecked teenager, have become increasingly true throughout all my experiences. You can only truly begin to heal once you’ve given up the idea of reconnecting with them again one day. I know it’s comforting and tempting to fantasise about them showing up to your front door with flowers and apologies, but it’s (probably) not going to happen, so you have to let that notion go. Here’s the cheese of it all: abandoning all hope of them is when the hope of you truly resurrects itself.

2.) The first morning after what I like to call “breakup day” is undoubtably the worst part. Sleep offers a temporary sweetness of forgetting and so the act of crudely waking up from that and in turn, realising your new reality, is like a colossal cosmic slap in the face. The good news is: you only go through that dreaded first morning once.

3.) You have to let yourself feel sad. I’ll tell you easily and with confidence who heals from a breakup faster and better between the person that cries into their ice cream tub for two weeks straight and the person who distracts themselves from their feelings with quick hedonistic fixes. Hint: it’s the first one. Allowing yourself to feel sad is literally the key ingredient to authentic heartache healing. But being present with such weighty, deep, achey feelings is no stroll down the avenue. It’s hard. And you have to be brave. And you have to remind yourself that it’s okay to be with and lean into your pain. It might feel like it, but it won’t kill you. Your sadness, when embraced with gentle love and care, will actually be the thing to bring you back to life when you give it a seat at your table.

4.) Make the lingering-ache a companion. The initial eruption of the heart which was hopefully quelled with the tears and ice cream faces its course eventually. At some point, you have to get up off the bathroom floor and continue with your life and when you do, a level of sadness and ache still remains and so you learn to live with it. And crazily, you can even learn to love it. After many times of trying to run from the gnawing heart-pang residue of dump-land trenches, I can safely say that it catches up with you, every time. These days I try to befriend the lingering ache as if it were an old friend knocking at my door, allowing it to keep me company. In all it’s imperfections and discomfort, it is a gentle reminder of having loved deeply (a beautiful thing!) and it fades, through living on with presence.

5.) You won’t feel better by hooking up with someone else. As someone who has tried to fill the breakup-void with a random snog on a dance floor many, many times, I can statistically and academically conclude that it has only ever made me feel worse. Breakups are a tender time. A time to grieve intimacy. A time to love and treasure your body which has been through the most. A time where your energy is fragile and needs the loving arms of you and your mother and your best friend and your blanket. Not some random guy, trust me.

6.) Grab a metaphorical surfboard. Breakups are a specific type of grief and like any grief, it comes in waves. Denial, rage, regret, quiet sadness, loud sadness, elation of freedom, good riddance, wait come back, god I’m so sad, I can’t believe I put up with that, I miss him, I miss having someone, wait this is so fun, god I’m so sad may trickle and retreat in and out of yourself as you adjust to this tumultuous and nuanced time on all levels (heart, body, mind, soul). Take each wave as it comes, allow space for every single one of your feelings and know that it will pass (and one day you will float in still waters again).

7.) You can’t heal in the arms of who hurt you. I have picked up phone to call my ex about being sad over said ex one too many times. I know that it’s embedded heart-instinct to lean on the person who was just recently your comfort-person for when you’re feeling sad (this urge is so understandable) but they’re really not the one you should seek the comfort from- it only makes it harder. Call a friend instead.

8.) Little acts of self care is everything right now. Managing the likes of brushing your hair, tucking yourself in extra tightly, doing your skincare, 5 minutes of morning yoga and showering (even if its a sob-shower), will help you give the love you’re grieving back to yourself. At this time, your body is quite literally withdrawing from being loved by that person. There’s also a big chance that this loss has also tested your sense of self-worth. The remedy? Giving extra, gentle love to yourself.

9.) Energy Redirection is when you do something beautiful with the energy that you were once giving to your partner. If you’re used to loving with your whole chest, you’ve probably got a whole lot of loving energy and effort right now that would benefit from gracing a new home. You can:

• Creatively express it through your chosen medium (painting, sculpting, dancing, musical instruments, writing?!)

• Learn a new language

• Try a new sport

• Finish an old project

• Join a club

• Take the love you had for them and spread it around you like confetti

10.) “You don’t have to let go right now” were the shocking words from a loving friend who was suddenly spewing breakup advice that I’d never heard before during my last gnarly rodeo. I had always felt like the act of letting go of the person was an imminent and almost impossible first-step task that I seemed to be really bad at until I heard “you can just focus on your healing and let go of him when you’re ready, allow it to take you as long as you need, there’s no rush”. And so I focused on the being sad, the self care and the energy redirection whilst allowing my ex boyfriend to occupy his tender space in the corners of my mind and heart. I didn’t punish myself for thinking about him or missing him or holding him close in my heart, even long after he had left. I gave myself time to keep him around in my inner-world, knowing that one day the time would come to let him go. Sometimes it has taken me only weeks or months to let go. Sometimes years. There are some, from long ago, that I’m still letting go of. It’s okay.

11.) When the time does come to let them go you can make it ritualistic, ceremonial and sacred and it may not be one big moment of release but lots of little moments instead. Some ‘letting go’ rituals include:

• Whispering their name into the palms of your hands somewhere in nature and then intentionally unclenching your palms, letting their name drift away.

• The classic: writing a letter, burning the letter.

• Chord cutting ceremonies / meditations on YouTube (lol)

• Donating the boyfriend hoodie to the homeless

I remember the moment that I let go of the ex I thought I’d never be able to unclench from my palms. I was sitting by the Ganga River in India, listening to Radiohead, and as the sunset began to engulf the mountains and I in an undeniable pink, I suddenly felt it’s time. I whispered his name into my hands and then tossed it, with love, into the river. The lightness that overcame me then, as I watched the river roll on, ushered me into a state of inner-peace that held me tightly in my aloneness going forward.

12.) If you feel that your letting go requires a push there are little things you can do to lovingly shove the process along. I know this is harsh, but writing THE LIST has helped me many times.

THE LIST, pinned on the notes app of your phone:

• Every time they made you feel unseen, unsafe, unheard, unsupported

• The hardest moments that occurred during your relationship

• Qualities about that person that you struggled with

We often look back on a relationship we miss with rose coloured glasses and forget to cultivate a balanced perspective of what it really felt like to be in it. The list helps ground you as you manually recall the bad times too.

13.) It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to hurt a lot. If you love and feel deeply then your loss reveals an ache of having given and received and explored tenderly and vulnerably. It points towards your capacity to love- a gift in this world.

14.) When you have friends to lean on, lean on them. My friends summoned an emergency sleepover for me when I was heartbroken at 21 and we went out in a torrential rainstorm to buy cornflake ice cream and we danced all night through the tears and the memories. Last year my friend India took on the role of texting me a good morning message every morning, knowing that I was missing receiving that from my partner. Their arms have caught me time and time again, reminding me that true love is not and never has been exclusive to romantic connections. Let yourself be held and comforted by that undeniable fact.

15.) You need pillars that aren’t people too. This was the campfire-advice (my favourite type) from the smartest and strangest 12 year old I’ve ever encountered, many years ago. He told me that we all need pillars in our life that aren’t people to hold us up. This is what sustains us when all else falls away. Everyone has their distinct little recipe. Mine includes writing and books and pine trees and coffee and long drives and my music. Build yours, love yours, strengthen yours.

16.) It’s the little things that help pick you up. A rich sip of coffee that warms the body. A freezing plunge into the ocean. A moment of looking at the stars. The warm arms of your favourite song. A particularly good parking lot sunset. Personally, its always an incongruent collection of the small things that raise up from the trenches.

17.) Remembering the love that belongs to you will naturally come along at some point. I love watching my friends remember that a decent chunk of the relationship that they grieve is really a reflection of their own heart, love and effort which unequivocally still belongs, and always has belonged, to them. How many of the tender moments were really crafted by you? How many of your own jokes and own inquisitive insights were the pillars for the good times that you remember? How many of the tender touches that you longed for were really guided by your own fingers? Remember that the love you gave is also yours to keep. And that you were a co-creator and instigator of the magic that was shared- it cannot be lost, it always belonged to you.

18.) You can keep the pieces of the parts of them that you loved. You can adopt the characteristics about them that you cherished, and make it your own, with love. My first love had a colossal impact on the music that I love today. I remember how my ex would guess people’s shoe sizes when he stood in long queues, just to make it more interesting, and I always do that now, and laugh, and think of him. The sense of humours that I’ve admired have become a part of my own. Their book recommendations have added to the way I see the world. I have absorbed the intricacies that I have cherished, feeling the residue of those I have loved become a part of my own self that I love.

19.) Send them love and light and let them go from your thoughts in the moment. From the classic movie, Eat Pray Love. these are words of advice from my favourite character. Every time that person frequents my mind, as they often do, especially in the beginning, I send them genuine love and good vibes and then I let that thought go, with kindness.

20.) Take it one moment at a time. Trying to plan the next month or trying to imagine how you will possibly get over it in a given deadline or trying to figure out how long you will survive months of sadness is unpleasantly daunting. Look at this moment that you’re in. And then the next. And when it comes, the next. Each moment is manageable when you’re fully present. Be here right now and before you know it, you’ll look back and marvel at how far you’ve come. Presence is a gift that heartache offers.

21.) Nothing that is meant for you will ever pass you by is what I have gently encouraged myself to believe, year after year. I sincerely believe now that I will meet everyone that I’m supposed to meet and love everyone that I’m supposed to love. I know that if I treat someone with kindness and if I love them from a place of goodness in my heart, I cannot mess anything up that is supposed to stay. Anything that goes, was always meant to go.

22.) It’s not a failure because it didn’t work out forever. I consider many of my relationships great successes, even though they’re long over. If we loved each other with our whole hearts, that’s a win. If we learnt something that we didn’t know before, that’s also a win. If we brought each other closer to our own selves, as we always inevitably would, that’s a victory. If we had a meaningful two weeks, if we had a meaningful year, if it ended in flames and we walked through the other side of it stronger, that’s far from a failure to me.

23.) “Have the courage to trust love one more time, and always one more time” - Maya Angelou

Heartbreak: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

At the end of the day, the throes of heartbreak have strengthened and up-skilled me, every single time. I have seen it in my friends too. There is something about a cracked open heart that offers the chance for life to pour in. There is something honest about meeting yourself in the trenches. There is something to be built when you are on your knees, picking up the pieces. Life grants a warm cushion of humility that swiftly follows an ego-death. Losing is humbling, terrifying and shattering but it carves out the space for the unimaginable to create itself. It makes you appreciate the little things, hold the people around you just a little more tightly and view the temporary nature of life as the starkly glorious glimmer that it is.

Why not embrace what is inevitably going to shape you into who you’re meant to be?

Quote of The Day

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.”

―Rainer Maria Rilke