If you're listening to this at some strange hour in a quiet room because you couldn't sleep again,
I'm glad you're here.
You're not being too sensitive.
When someone has meant so much to you,
Losing them can hurt in ways that are so hard to explain.
Hello and welcome to my podcast.
I'm Amulya Manna and I'm a relationship and emotional wellness coach.
And this is a space for honest conversations about love,
Loss,
Relationships,
And finding your way back to yourself.
I'm here for the part of separation that almost nobody talks about.
Not the beginning when your phone won't stop buzzing and everyone is asking how you're doing.
I'm here for what comes after.
When life carries on for everyone else but not for you.
When the tears come less often yet you're still in pain.
When people assume you've moved on because you're smiling again,
But every day still feels heavier than it should.
When you've become so tired of saying,
I'm OK,
That you stop telling people how you're really feeling,
Even the ones who love you the most.
That's the part I care about.
That's the part this podcast is for.
But every podcast will spend time understanding what's really going on beneath the surface.
Why some days feel lighter and others feel like you've gone right back to the beginning.
I'm not here to rush you or tell you to let go before you're ready.
I'm here to help you stop blaming yourself for where you are and gently find your way back to yourself.
The version of you that didn't feel like they had to shrink,
Chase,
Or lose themselves to be loved.
There is no need to hurry.
Take this at your own pace.
There are moments in life when healing begins with another person's presence.
If your situation is such,
Please reach out to someone you trust or a qualified professional.
Some seasons of life are simply too heavy to walk through alone.
And that's part of being human.
Let's begin with things that so many people feel,
But so few ever say out loud.
The thoughts you've been carrying but haven't quite known how to put into words.
I know these thoughts because I've heard them from so many people.
Different names,
Different stories,
But the same aching questions.
Almost every one of them believed they were alone in feeling this way.
They weren't and neither are you.
You've checked their profile more than once,
Maybe today.
You've had the conversation a hundred times in your head.
You find the perfect words.
They finally understand.
They finally say the thing you've been longing to hear.
And then you remember that every word of that conversation only ever happen inside your own head.
You've held your phone in your hand and typed something and deleted it.
Typed it again,
Deleted it again.
You've heard a song in a shop and had to walk out.
You take a longer route home so you don't pass a particular road.
Some days,
You genuinely feel like yourself again.
And then a small moment catches you by surprise.
A song,
A scent,
A memory you didn't invite.
And suddenly,
The sadness is sitting beside you again.
Not because you've gone backwards,
But because healing is rarely a straight line.
And here's the one thing that people almost never say.
Some part of you would still take them back.
Even after everything.
Even knowing what you know.
And you're ashamed of that part.
You think it means you have no self-respect.
No,
It doesn't mean that.
Perhaps you've been asking yourself,
If I knew it had to end,
Why does it still hurt so much?
Because knowing and accepting are not the same thing.
Your mind may already understand what happened,
But your heart is still learning how to live with it.
And that takes time.
Let me name a few more.
It's exhausting trying to look okay all the time.
You get through your day,
Say all the right things,
Even manage a smile now and then.
But when it's finally quiet again,
You realize how much energy it took just to convince everyone else and maybe even yourself that you were doing alright.
One of the hardest parts of losing someone is that your heart doesn't stop reaching for them overnight.
When something wonderful or awful happens,
Your first instinct is to reach out to the person who used to make those moments feel lighter,
Right?
Not because you're choosing to,
Because that's what your heart has learned to do.
And it takes time to learn a different way.
The friend who means well and says,
Honestly,
You deserve so much better.
And you nod.
And it doesn't touch the pain at all because you weren't looking for better.
You were looking for them.
And then the comparison phase,
Where somebody else got over something in three months.
And it's been long affair.
And you've quietly decided that means there's something wrong with you.
And I would like to address that here.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You're grieving.
Grief doesn't run on a schedule and it never has.
It doesn't care that it's been six months or a year or that everyone thinks you should be past this.
Grief goes at the speed of how much it mattered.
And I know it mattered a lot.
And then the hardest part,
The one at two in the morning,
Watching them build a life without you.
Seeing that they're okay,
Seeing them somewhere new with new people.
Looking like someone who isn't lying awake.
And underneath that,
The question you'd never say to another person.
Was it that easy to walk away from?
I want to answer that carefully.
Somebody being able to live says something about their capacity.
It does not say anything about your worth.
Those feel like the same thing at 2am and they are not the same thing at all.
People leave for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with how much you are worth loving.
They leave because they couldn't hold what you were offering,
Because they weren't ready.
Sometimes people don't leave because of who you are.
They leave because they're carrying fears,
Wounds,
Or struggles they haven't yet learned how to hold.
You simply became part of a battle that began long before you.
You are not less valuable because somebody couldn't carry you.
I want to tell you something that I hope you'll come back to whenever the doubt creeps in.
You are not alone.
And you don't need to see yourself as someone who needs fixing.
You're a human being trying to make sense of a painful loss.
I know,
It feels as though the world has carried on without you.
Like everyone else has found happiness again while you're still trying to make it through one day at a time.
But there are so many people in places you'll never see and lives you'll never know feeling exactly what you're feeling today.
They too believe they're the only one.
Trust me,
You're in more company than you know.
There's something I've learned from sitting with people through heartbreak and I'd like to talk about that.
The event itself is deeply painful,
But it isn't always what keeps us suffering the longest.
Often it's everything that follows.
The questions that never get answered.
The hope that refuses to disappear.
The memories we revisit every day.
The future we imagined but never got to live.
Those are the things we keep carrying,
Often without realizing it.
You're still holding on to someone who's already gone.
Even if a part of you is still hoping they'll come back.
You find yourself replaying old conversations,
Searching for the one sentence you wish you'd said differently.
As though if you could just find the right words,
You could somehow change what happened.
Perhaps you're still waiting for an apology,
Not because you're trying to hold on to the past,
But because something inside you believes that if they could just acknowledge your pain,
If they could simply say,
I'm sorry,
Your heart could finally begin to rest.
So you keep carrying it all.
Not because you want to suffer but because holding on feels like the last connection you have.
Letting go can feel as though you're letting go of them,
As though you're saying the relationship didn't matter.
But that's not what letting go means.
You're standing with one foot in the life that's here and the other in the life you still wish had happened.
It's an impossible place to stand for long.
Because your heart keeps looking behind you while life quietly keeps moving forward.
And over time that in-between place becomes more painful than the loss itself.
There's something else I'd like to share with you.
It's not always easy to hear,
But I think it's important.
Everything we love changes.
Not because life is trying to hurt us,
But because that's the nature of life itself.
Relationships change.
People change.
Circumstances change.
Even we change,
Often without noticing it.
The difficult part is that our hearts don't always change at the same pace.
When we are hurting,
We naturally hold on to the moments that felt safest.
The way they smiled at us,
The conversations that made us feel seen.
The future we imagine together.
We gather those memories close because they remind us of what once felt certain.
But while we are holding tightly to yesterday,
Life keeps moving.
Not because it's unkind,
Simply because that's what life does.
And sometimes the tighter we cling to what can no longer be,
The more it begins to hurt.
What once brought us comfort slowly becomes the very thing that keeps the wound from healing.
So let me offer you something softer to hold instead.
Nothing meant for you will ever make you chase it,
Force it or beg for it.
Say that again,
Slowly,
In your own head.
Nothing meant for me will ever make me chase it,
Force it or beg for it.
The people who are meant to stay in your life,
Stay without being held in place.
You don't have to manage them.
You don't have to be careful.
You don't have to check their tone for signs.
The life that's actually yours won't ask you to break yourself into smaller pieces to keep it.
Anything that costs you yourself was never really yours to begin with.
What's meant for you feels like breathing,
Not like drowning.
And if something inside you tightened as I said that.
I understand.
Maybe a part of you is thinking.
But you don't know us.
You don't know what we shared.
This wasn't just another relationship.
I'm not here to argue with that.
I'm not here to tell you that your love wasn't real or that your relationship didn't matter.
The part of you that's resisting,
This isn't your enemy.
It's the part that loved.
The part that hopes.
The part that still hasn't stopped waiting.
It isn't broken.
It isn't foolish.
It's simply carrying love that no longer has a place to go.
You don't have to push that part of yourself away or be frustrated with it.
Just sit beside it for a while and when it's ready,
Help it understand that it doesn't have to keep waiting forever.
Let me show you what I'm asking with something very simple.
Imagine holding a glass of water in your hand,
An ordinary glass,
Not even full.
For the first minute,
It's nothing.
You could hold it through an entire conversation without even thinking about it.
10 minutes in,
Your arm knows it's there.
An hour in,
Your shoulder aches and your grip has tightened because your fingers are tired.
And if you held it long enough,
Really long enough,
Your arm would go numb.
You'd be in genuine pain.
Eventually,
You couldn't hold it at all.
Now,
Here's the part I want you to sit with.
The glass never got heavier,
Not by one gram.
It's exactly the same glass it was in the first minute.
What changed was how long you held it.
Grief works exactly like that.
So does anger.
So does missing someone who was once such a big part of your life.
Every one of those feelings is a natural response to losing someone you loved.
They're not signs that you're weak or that you're not coping.
They're signs that your heart is trying to adjust to something it never wanted to lose.
The problem isn't that you're feeling those things.
The problem is when you've been carrying them for so long that they've started to carry you.
At first,
You only notice that you're not sleeping well.
Then food doesn't taste the same.
Things you used to enjoy don't really interest you anymore.
You stop recognizing yourself.
And somewhere along the way,
Something very understandable happens.
You begin to believe that if you stop hurting,
It must mean you've stopped loving.
That if you let yourself heal,
You're somehow leaving them behind,
Or that you're forgetting what the relationship meant.
The healing doesn't erase love.
And letting go doesn't erase what was real.
Letting go doesn't mean pretending none of it mattered.
It doesn't mean forgetting them.
It doesn't mean denying the love you shared or acting as though those years never happened.
What was real will always be real.
No one can take that away from you.
Letting go simply means recognizing that you don't have to carry the weight of it every single day.
You can treasure what was beautiful without letting the loss define the rest of your life.
You can love someone and still choose to move forward.
You don't have to be ready.
Healing doesn't work that way.
Today isn't about letting everything go.
It's simply about giving your heart a chance to rest,
Even for a few moments.
You just have to feel for a few minutes what it's like to loosen your grip.
That's all I'm going to ask of you.
Just for these next few minutes,
We'll do it together.
Find somewhere you can be still for the next few minutes.
You don't need to sit in any special way.
A chair is fine.
Lying in bed is fine.
If you're walking,
Just slow down a little and keep your eyes open.
If you're driving,
Just let these words keep you company.
There is no need to do the exercise.
It will be waiting for you whenever you have a quiet moment to come back to it.
You Let your body settle into whatever is holding you.
The chair,
The bed,
The floor.
Notice that something is holding you.
You're not doing any of the work of that.
Something underneath you has been taking your weight all day.
Without being asked,
Without you noticing.
If it feels okay.
Let your eyes close.
If closing them is too much today,
That happens,
Especially at night.
Just lower your gaze and let it rest somewhere soft.
Take a breath.
In through your nose.
Not a big one,
Just slightly more than usual.
And let it out slowly through your mouth.
Let the out-breath be longer than the in-breath.
Again.
Into the nose.
And now.
Slowly.
Relax your jaw.
Most people don't realize they've been holding it all day.
One more.
Into the nose.
And out.
Let your shoulders drop with ease.
As you breathe out slowly.
Your body begins to receive a simple message.
You're safe enough to pause.
Safe enough to stop searching for answers.
For these next few moments,
There's nothing you need to solve.
Nothing you need to carry,
Just this breath.
You've been trying to solve this for a long time.
You can stop for some minutes.
Let your breathing go back to its own rhythm now.
Allow your breath to settle into its own pace.
You don't need to control it anymore.
Now,
Gently notice where this heartache is living in your body today.
Perhaps it's a heaviness in your chest.
A tightness in your throat.
A knot in your stomach.
Or maybe you feel it somewhere else entirely.
There is no right or wrong place,
Just notice it without trying to change it.
Stay there for a few breaths.
Now bring your attention into your hands,
Just your hands.
Feel them wherever they're resting.
Notice if they are tight.
So many people carry this in their hands without ever knowing.
Slowly,
Close both hands into fists.
Not hard,
Just enough that you can feel the effort of it.
Hold that.
Hold it for another moment.
Can you feel your grip getting tighter?
Your hand,
Working a little harder.
Perhaps the tension is beginning to travel up into your wrist and forearm.
There's no need to change it.
Just notice what it's like.
This is what you've been doing.
Just not with your hands.
Now let them open.
Let your fingers uncurl slowly on their own.
Until your palms are open and soft.
Feel the difference.
Your hands didn't change.
Only the group did.
Stay with your open hands a moment longer.
Now,
Very gently,
Bring your attention to the heartache you've been carrying.
What you've been carrying doesn't only live in your thoughts.
It often lives in the body too.
Without going back through the story.
Simply ask yourself.
Where do I feel it right now?
Maybe it's a heaviness,
A tightness,
A knot.
Or perhaps something that's hard to describe.
Whatever you notice is enough.
Maybe your eyes get hot.
Wherever it is.
Just let yourself find it.
You don't have to do anything about it.
You don't have to make it smaller.
Now,
Put one hand there,
Right on that place.
Let your hand be warm.
Let it be steady.
This isn't about getting rid of the feeling.
It's about meeting it with kindness instead of carrying it by yourself.
Perhaps that part of you has been waiting a long time for someone to simply notice it's there.
Breathe into that spot.
Not to change it.
Just to make a little more room around it.
And now,
Silently,
In your own head,
Say something to it.
Something like.
.
.
I know you're there.
You don't have to leave today.
You're not too much.
You're not taking too long.
And I don't have to hold you this tightly.
Now bring back the glass.
The one we talked about.
Feel the weight of it.
How long you've been holding it.
How your arm has been aching in the way.
You almost stopped noticing because it became normal.
And now imagine setting it down.
On a table beside you.
Not throwing it.
Not smashing it.
Not pouring it out.
Just setting it down carefully.
The way you'd set down something that mattered a great deal to you because it did.
Nothing has been taken away from you.
The weight is still there if you decide you need it.
But for this moment you've chosen to set it down.
Notice your empty hands.
Notice your arm beginning to relax.
Notice how much energy it takes to keep carrying something for so long.
Notice what that feels like.
And if nothing seemed to happen just now,
That's ok.
Maybe your mind wandered.
Maybe you felt nothing.
Maybe the tears came.
However this moment was for you,
It was enough.
There isn't a right way to do this.
Some days it's easier to loosen your grip.
Some days it isn't.
And both are part of healing.
And if you noticed,
Even the smallest shift.
One deeper breath,
A tiny sense of relief,
A little less tension in your body.
Take a moment to notice where that came from.
It didn't come from them coming back.
It didn't come from finally getting the answers you wanted.
Nothing outside of you changed.
The shift came from you.
From the moment you allowed yourself,
Even briefly,
To stop carrying so much,
That's something no one can take away from you.
Now start coming back.
Feel your feet wherever they are.
Feel the ground or the seat underneath you again.
Take one full breath in.
And let it go.
And when you're ready,
There's no rush,
Take your time.
Open your eyes.
I want to give you a picture of this.
Because as an idea,
It sounds lovely.
And in real life,
It's much harder than it sounds.
So let me tell you about a job.
Not just any job,
Your first real one.
The place that gave you a chance before you'd proven anything to anyone.
Somebody there believed in you before you believed in yourself.
You gave it years,
You made friends.
It stopped being a workplace and started being home.
And then something better appears.
More money.
More room to grow.
More peace.
And instead of relief,
You feel a pull backward.
You find yourself not wanting to leave a place you've clearly already outgrown.
You know the new path is better.
On paper,
It isn't even close.
But attachment doesn't argue with logic.
It doesn't lay out reasons.
It just whispers,
Usually at night.
What if I regret this?
What if I never find people like that again?
They believed in me first.
Meanwhile,
Here's what's actually true.
And part of you has known it for a while.
You're underpaid.
You're exhausted.
You carry the stress home every night and you've been calling it loyalty.
And then one question breaks the spell.
If they didn't need me tomorrow,
Would they stop moving forward?
No,
They wouldn't.
And that isn't cruel.
It isn't even a betrayal.
It's just real.
But the moment you see it,
You understand what you've been doing.
You've been treating your future to stay loyal to something that was never built to hold your whole life.
So you choose differently,
And here's the part that matters the most.
You don't do it bitterly.
You do it with gratitude.
You thank the chapter for what it genuinely gave you.
Because it did give you something real.
And you're allowed to keep that.
And then you close it.
And on the other side,
The change shows up in your body before it shows up anywhere else.
You breathe easier.
Your confidence comes back in pieces,
Not all at once.
You start waking up to possibility instead of dread.
Not immediately,
Not in a straight line,
But it comes.
I told you a story about a job.
You already know.
I wasn't talking about a job.
So before we finish today,
I'd like to leave you with one thought.
Letting go isn't about losing what mattered.
It's about making room for your life to begin moving again.
The love you gave was real.
The memories were real.
Nothing can take that away from you.
But you don't have to carry the weight of them every moment of every day.
One day,
You'll realize you aren't thinking about them quite as often.
You laugh without feeling guilty.
You'll wake up and notice that your first thought belongs to today instead of yesterday.
Not because you stopped caring,
Because your heart has finally found the space to breathe again.
The piece you've been searching for isn't waiting inside an apology.
It isn't waiting for one last conversation.
It isn't waiting for them to come back.
It's been quietly waiting inside you all along,
Beneath everything you've been carrying.
And every time you loosen your grip,
Even just a little,
You make a little more room for it to find you.
And please don't feel that you have to set it all down today.
I really mean that.
The last thing I want is for this to become one more thing you feel you're failing at.
There isn't a perfect timeline for healing.
There isn't a right way to move through a heartbreak.
Some days you'll feel lighter.
Some days the weight will find you again.
That doesn't mean you've gone backwards.
It just means you're human.
Before we finish,
I'd like you to remember one small thing.
Your arm has been carrying that glass for a very long time.
For just a few moments,
You placed it down.
Nothing was lost.
The love didn't disappear.
The memories didn't disappear.
The story didn't disappear.
All that changed was this.
For a few quiet moments,
You gave yourself permission to rest.
Hold on to that feeling.
Because every time you allow yourself a moment of rest,
You're teaching your heart something new that it can love without carrying the weight every second of every day.
One last thing before you go,
We all hold on in different ways.
Some of us keep ourselves so busy that there's never a quiet moment to feel what's really there.
Some of us keep hoping that if we can just stay friends,
Stay in touch or leave the door slightly open,
The ending won't feel quite so final.
Some of us go quiet.
We tell ourselves we're being strong when really we're carrying more than anyone can see.
And some of us turn all of the pain back on ourselves.
We replay every conversation,
Every decision,
Searching for the one thing we should have done differently.
Because having an answer,
Even a painful one,
Can feel easier than accepting that some questions may never be answered.
None of those make you weak.
They're simply the ways our hearts try to protect us when something precious has been lost.
And once you can gently notice those patterns,
They no longer have to quietly run your life.
Thank you for spending this time with me.
I know it isn't easy to sit with a painful heart.
It's often much easier to stay busy,
Distract yourself or try not to feel it at all.
But today you stayed.
And that took courage.
As you move through the week ahead,
Be gentle with yourself.
If you can,
Drink some water.
Eat something nourishing.
Get some rest when your body allows it.
And if some days feel heavier than others,
Please don't mistake that for failure.
Healing doesn't move in a straight line.
It unfolds one day,
One breath and one small act of kindness towards yourself at a time.
Thank you for letting me spend this time with you.
I'll be here whenever you're ready to come back.
Until then,
Take good care of yourself.
Warmly,
Amulya
