Dear Grief Guide, I'm Mourning Back-to-Back Breakups

In the fallout of two consecutive breakups, a letter-writer is also grieving her home, her belief in love, and her hope for the future. I read her anonymous letter and then offer her practical tools and compassionate wisdom for growing through grief.

Dear Grief Guide is a weekly advice podcast where I answer anonymous letters from people feeling lost, stuck, or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

Music © Adi Goldstein, Used with Permission

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

I recently ended a five-and-a-half-year relationship.

For some reason,

I thought it would be easy.

I think I thought I'd processed the end.

I believed that I'd checked out a long time ago,

So in the moment of the breakup,

It felt possible to say goodbye to our time together.

In the wake of the breakup,

I met a new guy,

And he brought me so much hope.

I had an amazing month living by myself,

Focused on my hobbies,

Passions,

And friends,

And going on dates with this new and exciting guy.

I was truly on cloud nine.

And then in a flash,

Everything changed.

I began packing boxes and feeling the heartache of losing the partner I'd built a life with for five-and-a-half years.

I felt like a failure because my relationship,

One that I invested so much love,

Time,

And effort into,

Ultimately failed in the end.

It tore me apart.

It was mentally,

Emotionally,

And physically a ton of work to leave our condo.

While this was happening,

I was also processing the reality that the new guy I was dating wasn't honest with me about his intentions,

And he wasn't this perfect partner that I thought he was.

He was the delusional distraction I really wanted to be true.

He did build me up,

But he also eventually tore me down.

I realized he was love-bombing and manipulating me.

So I moved back to my dad's,

And then I went to see the new guy.

And it felt wrong,

Because I know that I deserve better.

I woke up and knew it needed to end.

I replayed that conversation a million times.

The anger I have felt towards him has felt so strong.

I think I'm still allowing him to distract me from what I'm actually upset about,

But I do know it's valid to be upset about breaking things off with him.

It's a lot.

Losing your partner,

Losing your home,

Losing a potential new partner who you thought would save you from the pain of the other two losses.

I am not okay.

My happy moments are few and far between.

My sad moments are constant and powerful.

I truly feel empty inside.

I felt so sure of myself,

Who I was and what I loved.

I knew that I would find my person one day.

I've always believed that.

And now I'm scared.

I don't know what to believe.

I don't know how to exist in my old room.

I don't have the energy to put boxes away.

I barely have the energy to feed myself or take care of myself.

I'm consumed by feeling alone.

My question is,

How do I release this pain and find myself again?

Thanks.

Triple Heartbreak.

Hi there,

Triple Heartbreak.

That is a lot,

A lot,

A lot that you have been through and experienced in not a lot of time.

And I gotta tell you that breakups,

As much as we don't really talk about them in society as grief events,

They can leave us with this profound sense of emptiness.

Because here's the thing.

You're not just grieving the end of a long-term relationship,

Although that would be enough for any one person.

You're also grieving your physical home,

A space that you shared together,

A place maybe that you felt safe in the world,

In a neighborhood you liked,

Near things that you liked going to.

You had specific routes and rhythms that were tied to this geographical place,

This spot,

This address.

And on top of that,

You are also grieving a new breakup,

Along with the sense of trust and safety and hope that you once had for the potential future of what that new relationship could have,

And maybe even should have,

Been.

You are grieving losses that are both tangible and visible,

Things you can touch and see,

But also things that are abstract and invisible,

Things that you can't touch,

Things that you can't see,

Things like trust,

Things like hope,

Things that kind of live and take up residence inside our hearts and minds,

But we can't actually grasp them with our hands in real life.

And that is a lot of loss,

All at once.

So it makes sense that right now you are feeling exhausted,

And lonely,

And lost.

Here's what I want you to do,

Or here's what I invite you to do.

First,

I'm going to lean on something that I talked about in the last episode of this podcast,

So I hope you'll go back and listen to Dear Grief Guide episode 47.

And this tool is to devote 1% of your day,

And this is about 10-15 minutes for all of us with 24 hours,

So unless you're a time traveler,

10-15 minutes of your day to grieve.

Except for you,

I want you to focus exclusively on stabilizing yourself as you grieve,

Whatever that means to you.

This is a tool that we talk about in Life After Loss Academy,

And the sentiment of it is that when things are up in the air and uncertain,

And you feel like you are living in the fallout of a disaster,

Whether literal or metaphorical,

You have to practice safety first.

It's essentially putting on your oxygen mask and practicing taking deep breaths before taking any other action,

Especially when what you are facing is a series of back-to-back-to-back losses.

And what this looks like in practice is helping yourself feel safe in small,

Doable ways every day until you get some of your strength and energy back.

Here's some examples of this.

You could spend time journaling.

You could set a timer and unpack a box for that amount of time.

You could pack a lunch for yourself,

Sit in meditation,

Or do any other habit that can make you feel calm and grounded in this season of your life,

Even if it just looks like laying on the floor.

That's a lot of what it looked like for me at the beginning.

Or just sitting and listening to music,

Or listening to the birds,

Or just being still and knowing that in that moment,

In those 10 minutes,

I was alive and I was okay.

And then the rest of the day was whatever the rest of the day became.

When you practice stabilizing consistently for a while,

So you feel like,

I've got the oxygen mask on,

I'm taking deep breaths,

That's becoming a part of my routine,

Who I am,

Is somebody who is constantly grounding,

Then you can start looking at releasing pain.

This requires a lot more energy and a deeper dive into your feelings,

Which is why I always recommend doing it after starting,

Beginning,

Creating,

Practicing these grounding habits.

Because here's a mistake that a lot of grieving people make,

And it breaks my heart when I see this,

Because I did this also,

Especially after my mother's death,

Is I thought my goal was to release pain.

And so I started working with therapists and taking workshops and seeing spiritual healers and just kind of throwing spaghetti against the wall,

Anything I could grab onto that would help me heal from my mom's death.

But what happened is I would break my heart open and pour my entire soul out to somebody or something or as part of a practice.

And I didn't have any safe place to return to.

And so I would leave these spaces or practitioners feeling like there was no ground underneath my feet,

Feeling emotionally hungover.

And I didn't know how to re-regulate myself into feeling secure and feeling grounded again.

I think it can be hard to feel safe in a world where grief exists,

But to feel secure and grounded is really important when we're grieving.

So we're going to practice starting there first,

Square one,

Safety first,

Oxygen mask,

And then to be able to use the energy we've gained there and the practices we've done there to restore us when we do dive deep into those emotional places.

And this is the order of steps that we follow in Life After Loss Academy too,

So I hope you will join us there.

First we ground,

Then we release.

Okay,

So what do you do when it comes to releasing?

Because I can hear your brain itching for that next step,

That certainty in your letter of I want to release this pain,

I need it to go somewhere.

So here's a thing that I also invite you to practice.

On four separate pieces of paper,

I want you to write partner,

New guy,

Home,

And trust.

Then on each of these pieces of paper,

I want you to start listing elements of these relationships that you're grieving.

You might be grieving stability and familiarity and a sense of a past and a sense of a future with the partner of five and a half years that you broke up with.

You might be grieving the excitement of a new relationship with this new guy,

Or the hope you had for what the relationship could turn into.

You might be grieving a sense of coziness or safety from your home.

And you might also,

With trust,

Be grieving the sense that all people are trustworthy inherently by design,

Or the world is a good and kind place.

These are larger,

More abstract things that you can certainly grieve in grieving trust.

Get as specific as you can in each of these lists.

What exactly about each of these people,

Each of these places,

Each of these elements of being alive are you grieving?

And let these four pieces of paper be living documents that you add to as you think of new things that you're grieving,

Or something pops up on the way to the grocery store,

Or in a yoga class,

Or something like that.

You're like,

Oh,

Got to add that to the grief list for the new guy,

Or I've got to add that to the grief list for my old home.

Because where you are living now,

Who you are surrounded by now,

How you see the world now is informed by all four of these losses,

Loss of partner,

Loss of new guy,

Loss of home and loss of trust.

It makes sense that reminders of these losses would pop up all around you.

So don't just make these lists once and put them away.

Let them be alive.

You might even keep them as notes on your phone,

If that's something that you do,

Is journal on your phone.

And I have thousands and thousands of notes on my phone.

So that's something I recommend often.

Or taking things like voice memos,

Or keeping a teeny tiny pen and paper notebook in a bag or in a purse to write these things down with.

And then when you feel like you have the energy and bandwidth to do so,

I challenge you to invent rituals for releasing each one of these unique losses.

So you might release the coziness of a home by hanging a framed picture of your old apartment in the place you're staying now with your dad.

Or you might ritualize that by saying goodbye to some boxes of stuff that no longer fits where you are right now,

Or is too sad of a reminder that you can't see yourself keeping or wanting into the future.

The practice of giving something away or offering it to somebody in need is often a practice that many people do after moving out of a house after a big grief or loss event.

And you can make these rituals as big as you want or as small as you want.

And if you'd like more ideas of rituals to create based on these losses,

I would love to support you in Life After Loss Academy.

One of my favorite things to do is help people invent rituals that match the things that they're grieving.

Because we can't light a candle,

Write a letter,

Blow it out and say goodbye for every single loss that we face.

That doesn't feel meaningful enough or symbolic enough to what we're facing.

So I have helped so many people invent rituals from releasing leaves in a river in the back of their yard to rearranging the closet,

Which was one of my favorite examples,

To building an altar in their home for something they want to carry forward and remember.

Our rituals are as unique to us,

And this is cliche as hell,

But as unique to us as fingerprints because they memorialize our losses,

The things that we are feeling and the things that we want to do,

How to take action in the world,

That commemorate the things that have happened to us,

That we have lived through and survive.

I have to tell you,

And this is kind of the disclaimer of this episode,

Is that you're going to have to release this pain over and over and over again.

This is not something where you can say,

All right,

I've released the pain of the partner,

I've released the pain of the new guy,

The house and the sense of trust,

One and done.

And I never have to look at that again.

I never have to think about that again.

Just like loss due to death,

And I'm sure you've heard on many other episodes of Dear Grief Guide,

Releasing is a practice,

And you will be releasing bits and pieces of this over and over and over again.

Whether you enter into a new relationship and part of that activates something about these old relationships,

Whether you watch a movie or a TV show or listen to a song that reminds you of this season of your life,

Again,

If you're in the grocery store in a yoga class and something's coming up out of the blue and you're like,

Holy crap,

Suddenly I'm thinking about a thing I haven't thought of for weeks or months or even years,

You practice releasing in grief again and again and again.

And that's not an indicator that something's wrong with you.

It's an indicator that you remember what happened to you.

And those are very different things.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you for needing to greet these emotions,

To deal with them,

To process them,

To ritualize them,

And then to release them over and over and over again.

And each time these memories of anger and heartache and nostalgia,

Resentment come over you in the future,

You can view them not as signs that something is wrong,

Not as signs that you haven't gotten over it.

I hate society's usage of that language.

You can view them as invitations to go back again and release,

Just kind of guiding your soul back there.

Okay,

You're calling me back to this place.

What needs readdressing?

What needs reexamining?

What needs re-holding and comforting and soothing?

And what needs re-releasing?

Here's the last thing I want to say.

You noted that spending time with friends and pursuing hobbies brought you joy in the past,

Even if it was just for that month window of time.

Perhaps they can bring you some joy now in this season as you're figuring out where you are and where the heck to go from here.

Finding yourself again often looks like looking back at what has made you happy or satisfied before so that you can plant little seeds of that now,

Even in the midst of your grief.

Even if the joy isn't as intense.

Even if it's just,

I'm content doing this,

As opposed to I'm joyful doing this.

That's something,

Even when you're grieving.

You may not have the energy or focus to do what you used to with the joy that you used to do it.

It will look different.

But taking an inventory of what has helped you historically can be a really great starting place to work from as you make your way forward.

My heart goes out to you and I am wishing you so much luck.

Best to you.