a 28-step guide to heartbreak 💔

You can seek validation that you are loveable from others your entire life, but it will never fill the gaping hole that tells you that you are unlovable and not enough.

Last weekend I went to London to take care of my friend’s teenager while she was away on a work trip. The boy was still at school and my friend was already gone so I was met at the door by her lodger.

Twenty-six — a singer-songwriter with wild dark curls, a childish figure and a thoughtful nature — she introduced herself as Victoria.

“I’m Vienda”, I smiled in response kicking my shoes off and following her into the living room. We sat down and I politely asked her how she was.

Without taking a breath she dove into a 40-minute detailing of her recent heartbreak.

“I know, you are going through hell right now. You are sad, confused, angry, depressed, numb. You go from sad to angry then to numb and then a combination of them all. It is totally normal to feel what you are feeling and to even be confused about what you are feeling right now.”

She continued sharing a verbal waterfall of thoughts and feelings to which I offered consoling sounds for a while, tears in her eyes, staring down at her shoelaces, unsure of what to do with herself.

“I ended a relationship myself last week. It was only a short one but endings are never easy. Here’s what I know about healing heartbreak.”

Inviting her for a walk around Hampstead Heath, a city-centre wilderness in the middle of London — a place that offered me solace in many of my own rock bottoms — I told her these truths.

1. Two things can be true at the same time. You can love someone deeply, want to be with them and grieve them with every part of your being, and they still won’t be the right person for you. Your mind can’t make sense of this paradox, but your heart can.
2. You have to give yourself the time you need to grieve. Grief comes in waves. It’s not linear. Don’t expect yourself to be ‘normal’ but also don’t lose yourself in wallowing.
3. It hurts, I know. It really really really hurts. It is going to be like this for a bit but you will get better eventually. Be patient and kind with yourself.
4. Love is a cocktail of brain chemicals. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin. It activates all of your happy chemicals at once. When a relationship ends you get cut off from all these happy chemicals. You go into withdrawal.
5. It’s best to have no contact, at least for a few months. Delete their number, unfollow them on any social media accounts, and withdraw any connection you have to them, to give you space and time to heal.
6. Listen to music that restores your wholeness. I made this playlist, especially for navigating my own heartaches and heartbreaks.
7. It’s okay to be in shock and denial in the first few weeks but eventually, you will just have to accept it. It will be very hurtful to accept it, but you have to do it in order to get to the next healing stage. Accept what happened.
8. Stop trying to figure out the ‘real’ reason for the breakup. You can analyse every conversation, every text, and every moment spent together. But you won’t find what you are looking for. Because the choices we make are emotional and not logical, they can’t be explained rationally.
9. Don’t expect the other person to give you the closure you want. The only person that can give you closure is you. What does your heart tell you? Mystery solved. Remember, if you do reach out to them and try to get closure, no matter what they tell you it will never be enough. Closure is something you give yourself.
10. Don’t blame yourself. Also, don’t blame them. It’s no one’s fault that it turned out that you are incompatible. Take responsibility for your part: your actions and choices; and learn from the lessons. Hand their actions and choices over to them (in your mind — don’t contact them to tell them so!).
11. Remember that the way a person behaves when things are hard is exposing who they are. If they handle a breakup with kindness and care, the belief you had that they are a good person is correct. If they handle the breakup with unkind words and actions and are intentionally hurtful then they have a lot of growing and maturing to do.
12. Rejection is protection and redirection. Even though it doesn’t feel like it right now, someone so much better is coming.
13. Let go of any of their belongings and memorabilia. Holding onto vivid reminders of them does not let your wound heal properly. Getting rid of them signals your brain to let go. It’s a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain. A lot of people report an immediate boost in mood after they purged the physical reminders.
14. Develop a non-judgmental inner voice that is kind to you. Instead of beating yourself up with insults, talk to yourself kinder.
15. Recognise this as an opportunity to reinvent yourself into the person you actually want to be. Find new interests. Meet new people. Read! READ! Increase your knowledge and unlock your full potential. Commit yourself to becoming a better person.
16. Don’t avoid the parts of your life that you used to share to avoid the pain. Keep going to your favourite places and start making new memories in those places.
17. Don’t sleep with strangers or do extreme and erratic things to avoid feeling the pain of loss and grief. Let the thoughts come. Cry. Weep. Be an emotional mess. Close your eyes and focus on the pain. Be with the body, don’t judge the pain. Just notice it. Keep noticing it, until it goes away. That is how you process your pain.
18. At first, every waking moment of your day is filled with ruminating about your ex. This is totally normal. Try going for long walks in nature. Listen to mindfulness meditations. Take up visiting new places alone or with friends.
19. A break-up is a very tumultuous time. When a relationship ends, we don’t just grieve for our ex. We grieve for every attachment trauma we ever endured in our lives. You won’t grieve for your ex alone, you will unconsciously end up grieving about all your attachment trauma. A good therapist or mentor can help you through that process.
20. Feeling sad? Reach out to friends and family to vent. Sometimes just straight up tell them that you just want to vent and don’t want their advice. Your loved ones are here for you to utilize them. But do give them breaks from venting here and there. They are human and they sometimes can get tired of your break-up story.
21. Rebuild your identity. Now is the best time to reclaim that part of yourself that you lost. It is also the best time to figure out who you are and what you truly want. If you always wanted to travel and live in some country for a few months but you couldn’t because you were in a committed relationship, now is the perfect opportunity to do so. You aren’t tethered by anyone, fly free.
22. Move your body. Of course, heal in your own time, there is no timeline to grief. But eventually, start exercising regularly to pump your brain with all those feel-good chemicals. 15 to 30 min a day is a good start, hell even just 5 min is great. You can try yoga too if working out isn’t your thing. Becoming a bit sexier in the process is a pretty good bonus too.
23. Write them letters, however many letters you want. Write whatever you want to write. Whatever you ever wanted to say to them. Go ahead and say it in the letter. Pour your heart out, leave nothing unsaid. Burn the letters. Every time you burn a letter, thank them and forgive them. Forgiving is not for them, it’s for your own healing. No matter what they did, you have to be able to forgive them eventually. In your own time! There is no time limit. Remember to forgive yourself too.
24. In the first few months, you should journal every day to track your feelings thoughts and emotions. After a 3 or 6-month period read your early journal entries and compare them to your most recent journal entries and you will notice how much better you are doing. It will give you a much-needed boost to healing.
25. Is there something you always wanted to do or be? Set some ambitious new goals for your life.
26. Have fun, enjoy yourself, and slowly be open to meeting someone new. Take it slow and be weary of any early red flags. Trust your gut. Maybe you knew your ex was an alcoholic but still went out with him (like Victoria did). Don’t make the same mistakes you made last time. But if you want to stay single for a while, that is okay too.
27. Heartbreak commonly shows symptoms of clinical depression. The antidote to this deep suffering is finding meaning in it. Find the meaning, the lessons and gifts of your suffering.
28. You can seek validation that you are loveable from others your entire life, but it will never fill the gaping hole that tells you that you are unlovable and not enough. You have to develop a closeness and intimacy with yourself that closes that gap so that no matter what happens you will always have your back, because you love you, no matter what. Spend time cultivating the relationship you have with yourself so that any future heartbreak simply lands you back in the cushion of your own heart instead of torn to pieces across your inner emotional landscape.