best advice on breakups, grief, & heartbreak!
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Hi, it's Valentine's Day and in honor of this holiday, we're going back in time to 2019. This is a clips episode that I made back then and I'll let past me set that up in a few minutes, but I just wanted to jump in and

and say that listening back to these clips from each of the guests was actually comforting and useful. And if you've been around since then, since 2019, maybe you remember this episode. I had forgotten a lot of the anecdotes and advice that the guests in this give. And so it was actually really interesting to listen back. And if you weren't around then, you're about to hear, but basically I was the type of

Heartbroken after a breakup where I had an inability to

talk about much else and that bled into this podcast I would it was like the type of heart broken where I'd be like in the back of a cab and I'd be like uh Saint Mark's in uh between first and second and also have you ever had your heart broken like I just was talking to everybody about it and I ended up doing that to several podcast guests actually more than I remembered I did at the end of this I was like oh my god you're still talking about this

It's been months, you know, but I was. And so I had quite a few clips to choose from. And each of the guests that you're about to hear are really unique from each other. You're going to hear them speak about this topic. And by the end of that year, I had a lot of material and a lot of advice and their answers on this specific topic of breakups and heartbreak and grief and

all come together in this tapestry of this episode. So it's actually not really a downer, which, you know, past me will tell you again in a moment. But keep in mind, this was 2019. And I, like I said, I found everything that each guest shares to be incredibly interesting.

applicable and useful to me even now with new circumstances and new relationships and new breakups. That part is great, but listening to a past version of myself is always a little bit difficult. At the end, I'll come back and share my reaction to listening to this today years later. But here's the episode. We did it. We made it. 2019. It's almost over.

If you're new here, this is my podcast. My name is Katie Dalbaugh. Every week for many years, I speak with fascinating people and 2019 was no different. I had these long form intimate conversations with people I really admired, but the difference with this year was that I had my heart broken for really the first time as an adult and it was all I could talk about in my real life.

It seeped into this podcast heavily and it could have been a drinking game how many times I said the words emotionally bloody or hyper emotional state or I cried or I asked people about their breakups. And I got a lot of really good advice and wisdom that might be useful to you if you're feeling that way, which can be such a lonely feeling, even though it's one of the most universal feelings that we're

so many people have felt and made art about and we really shouldn't feel alone in, but it feels so specific and lonely when you're in it, which is why I'm making this clips episode of all of that advice and wisdom that I received this year from so many angles and

A lot of it is the same, but said in such unique, beautiful words that I just wanted to put it somewhere. And what's interesting about this is that you're not just hearing the advice, but you're also getting me in process. And you can hear it in the types of questions I'm asking, my desperation, where I was at different months of this year. Whether you're feeling heartbroken right now or depressed,

you have felt heartbroken at any point in your life, I think you'll relate to this episode and you'll feel feelings during this episode. There's a great This American Life Breakups episode that is so emotional no matter when I listen to it because this is a human experience emotion that what I've realized through this and what's been the most beautiful part of this year, feeling so sad and undone and

for most of it, but I really saw who I was. I learned so much about myself. I'm still learning so much about myself, but I also was so open that my friendships got so much deeper. Every relationship in my life changed because I became more open. I

was more myself because I was forced to be. And that's something really cool that came from this. And a lot of that is the result of a lot of really great wisdom. And that's not all I made. I made something else, which I'll tell you about in the middle of this when you'll know. It's pretty cool though. And I'm really excited for you to see it and

use it because it's what I worked on all fall and it's making me really happy. So more on that, but first let me tell you who you're about to hear from. So all of these people and their full episodes on Let It Out will be linked in the show notes, but they go in order and I'll just set up a couple of them now and kind of tell you where I was and

In my relationship, this is a very intimate episode because I'm really just getting into the details of what was actually going on and why I was asking the questions I was asking, which I wasn't, of course, ready to share about back then. With the exception of the first clip, which is from the end of 2018, the interesting thing that I asked her about breakups, but at the time, I hadn't broken up with this person yet and

listening back to it, this is when I needed to hear it. Something like, you'll fall in love and break up again and again and again. And the only thing that is constant is you. And I really needed to hear that then, but I couldn't really hear it then. But this year, a year later, I could. And I thought that was really interesting. And then you'll hear from Lacey Phillips, who

Many of you know, she's been on the podcast multiple times. And the interesting thing about that conversation was actually the fullest commissioned me to interview her for my column for their Valentine's Day issue about relationships and love. And so we got it on the calendar long before I broke up with my boyfriend. And I was like, great, I'm going to talk to Lacey about love and relationships and love

Turns out the day that we had this scheduled was the day before, I think, my breakup. Right in the thick of things. I can tell that this episode sounds like a huge bummer, but weirdly, it's optimistic. It's a little bit emotional for me because I remember what I was feeling at each point and I can hear it in my voice and maybe you'll pick up on that, but the advice and the insights and the stories are

are so optimistic and bright and actually...

This episode is not a downer, like it sounds. It's not just about breakups, too. We talk about creativity and change, and I'm going to tell you about my new project, and I can't wait for you to hear it. So let's get into the clips. After you hear from Lacey, you'll hear from Sarah Avenstover, who speaks about grief in such an articulate way. And it was very kismet that I had the conversation scheduled with her when I did. I had no idea that this was going to happen together.

at that time, but then I had this conversation with her already on the calendar. And then you'll hear me speak with very prolific illustrator, Mari Andrew, who I met her in a yoga class in our neighborhood. I ran into her at the post office and that was very kismet and beautiful. And then you'll hear me speak with John Morrow about creativity and how

I'll come back in there and talk to you before we move on. Let's talk about breakups and cycles and leaving, leaving your marriage, which you already mentioned. Can we dive into that a little bit? How did you get through that? And then what did that whole experience teach you?

So I have a project that's an Instagram feed called Personal Practice. And I started it in July of 2015, which is also when John and I started talking about ending our partnership. And it took us another year, basically, you know, to... Yeah, we worked on it. We tried a lot of different things and sometimes they worked and then they didn't anymore. And so...

but it's funny because I started personal practice, not thinking like, this is what will save me as I go through the end of my marriage. But it just did like it's, I started it and then I committed to dancing every single day. And I still have it. I still post most days, but I, after about a year and a half just needed to give myself permission to not show everyone every day. But it was like such an amazing accountability tool for that year of

And a half where I did post every, every single day, even, even when I didn't want to. And yeah, I mean, dancing every day was the way, I mean, that was, you know, and as a person who doesn't drink or do hard drugs, that was definitely the first time that I, since getting sober in 2011 was really just like,

I want to drink or I want to die. And the two things that kept me from doing either of those things was calling my friends and dancing every day. You know, really, there was like two times where I really needed to call someone to be like, I don't, I don't feel safe by myself. Like I don't really like being alone right now. And yeah, I'm glad I did that. And I'm glad I just,

Kind of got through in those ways and had a lot of, yeah, just like people around me. But really, I think dancing every day was the thing that really...

Got me through. Yeah. What advice would you give to someone who's going through something like that? Like a big life change where everything reminds you or you're questioning your choice. You're just scared about the next phase in your life. And, you know, would it be having some sort of creative practice or outside of that? Yeah. I really think that the daily practice is so amazing because

And again, it's like, I really did it with the accountability of having a place to put it every day, which was really helpful. But I think just like, it's, it's so like the cheesiest thing, but like just knowing trust that it gets better. Like, it's so crazy looking back at that time. And now what my life is like two and a half years later and just being like, wow, like

it's so different. And like, you're going to fall in love again and you're going to break up again. And, you know, or there's people listening who have been with their partner for 30 years or something, but even within long-term partnership, I think you can still go through questioning and pain. And that's where the only thing that's constant is you and God, you know, I think it's Octavia Butler has some amazing things. Like,

I'm not going to try to say it, but it's something that like change is always happening. God is constant. But I love just thinking about, yeah, it's just me and my relationship with God.

I'm somebody who like uses God, even though I don't believe in God. I just, this is a fast word and I like it. Whatever. I probably more specifically believe in goddess, spirit of the universe, but I'm down with lowercase God. Well, it's kind of, I think you're kind of saying like that it's cheesy and it's like everybody has it tattooed, but it's like this too shall pass. It's like, it's really fucking good. Exactly. I mean, cliches are cliches because they're real, you know, that's why they are what they are. So yeah.

I think it's just so interesting because I've been going through something that I wasn't expecting to talk to you about this or for this to even come up. And I think the easier thing sometimes that doesn't feel easy is to walk away and start over and be like, well, this just isn't the relationship for me. But then I've been reflecting on this a lot this week. And then I think, well, all

all of this shit will come up in my next relationship because wherever you go, there you are, you know, that thing. So it's just like, I, yeah, maybe I could do that, but like turning it around on you and letting go of that control. And it's really profound. I'm so glad we talked about this.

And I think it's actually just so good because I think a lot of people are in these situations too. I like to tell people a lot because so much of my formulas, like past tests, you know, if you're settling, leave, you know, and I don't necessarily always put that in relationships. Again, if it comes back to toxicity, meaning abuse or someone who's making you small or they're narcissistic, there's a chemical imbalance. It's a whole different type of refraction.

framing if you should be in something or not. But if you aren't 100% sure that you should go yet or not, and I'll give an example of this.

stay because and like you said where you go there you'll be and in manifestation it's particularly important because we just continue and everybody can look at their patterns in life we continue to attract the bosses that were like our moms the partners that were like our dads or our cousin or the weird person who was mean to us in school or whatever you will just keep attracting these types of experiences until you deal with them so look

prior relationship. I knew I was there two years too long. I knew it was time to go, but it hadn't run its course fully. And I really, really tried to suggest to people, like, don't leave something until you'll know you will wake up that morning that hits you where it's like, I've got to go. It's time to go. This has been

dry. You'll always have that breaking point or you'll fall in love with someone else or something will happen. You'll know. But if it's like maybe it's not the one or this or that, stay for a while until you're sure because there's so many lessons that you'll reap out of this that you won't then again attract

in another relationship, you'll attract an even better relationship after and whatever better means to you as you evolve. And like an example I give of this in my past relationship, the breaking points finally were that he didn't want to get married or have a family. And I really did. And this is the irony of it. I stayed in it and really saw that through. So I made sure to manifest a partner who did want those things. And the funniest thing now is we're engaged. I don't want to get married and I can't

seem to get pregnant. So it's like when we stop controlling anything we think like societally time might be running out, it should look like on paper in this relationship, so I should go or it doesn't feel right. Or like my partner and I, for instance, societally most partners and you guys live in the same city or home, let alone, and we are going to explore not doing that. So to not be afraid of really seeing what works for you

Not leaving before you're supposed to. You'll know when it's time to go again if this is a healthy relationship. And then taking all of the expectations off the partner, the pressure and the needs being filled and start to actually turn the mirror back around on yourself. I think it's the best thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it's so expansive that you're sharing that because we look at with society and the media and really social media of you only see the good parts of relationships. You only, we don't, I'm not posting when I'm sobbing over my boyfriend or whatever it is. Like I'm not posting that, but I am posting are really like

beautiful tender moments. And so I think to vulnerably discuss this right now and talk about this is it's helpful for me and hopefully a lot of people listening. So thank you for being vulnerable. Absolutely.

I know that before you met Max, your current partner, you went through a tough breakup and, you know, what were some self-care things for you that you did then that were helpful? And what do you suggest on getting through that time and reflecting? Well, number one, I think a really big gift that somebody I would love to give people is you will never be more magnetic than you are when you leave a relationship that's no longer serving you. I mean, it's like,

The universe just wants to send you so many bones. So that's one little thing I want to offer to the person who knows it's time to go and they're afraid or they've just been broken up with. This is the time to harness manifesting because you're just going to have so many bones thrown your way. So it's kind of like Christmas or whatever holidays one celebrates. And so that's one thing I just want to give to shine a little bit of inspiration to the person.

who may be nearing heartache or be in heartache right now. I think that it'll always be very clear when it's time to go. There's a breaking point. There may feel like there's many breaking points, but there's one actual breaking point where you wake up one day or you hear a voice or you fall in love with somebody else or you can't take it anymore. There will be a breaking point. And when you honor that, and again,

Even if it's delayed a little bit because you're afraid to be alone or you're afraid to go through this process or you're financially connected or whatever that might be, once you're able to do it, magnetism will set in. So that's really beautiful. And I think the best ways to care for yourself, we just actually put out a workshop called

I think that a lot of people, when they go through a relationship, even though it doesn't seem like for everybody who's been through them a few times, the earth quaking rock bottom situation, however, the energetics of how to navigate it are identical. So there's a lot that we talk about in that of learning how to be in grace when you leave or left, you know, and so how to stay in grace and not engage in, and all of the toxicity and drama and all the

stuff that can happen. It's also like the steps of like how to stay in your magnetism and make things work for you. So that's called up level and rock bottom. And then in terms of self care during that, and it tells you like how to weed out things that aren't supposed to be around you. I mean, it's really supportive about this.

But the self-care things too that I think are so instrumental during this time is how to learn how to fall in love with yourself and also feel all of your feelings fully. And a really good book for that is called Letting Go by I think the author's name is David Hawken. And it's really just it's so simple, but it really shows you how to feel all of your feelings fully so that they move through you and they don't become repressed or turn into something else or resentment.

So that, and then also falling in love with yourself, to me, is looking at all of the things that make you so afraid of being alone and facing them. So if you're like afraid to go to the movies by yourself or go to dinner by yourself or have to initiate a new circle of friends because you guys shared friends, all of that stuff, the more you can go and just

face your fear and do it. Not only do you create massive magnetism, meaning you're like a magnet. Things you want are just coming to you, but also you're overcoming your fears and really stepping into this more powerful wholeness version of you that's going to attract in another relationship that's just of a higher value.

So that's what I mean when I say fall in love with yourself is face all of your biggest fears about being alone. So I think that's like the bell. Yeah, sure. Take an Epsom salt bath. Go get massages. Do those things. Sure. Whatever feels like self-care to you of what traditionally seems like self-care, take

Yeah. So when thinking about mourning the relationship and like all the little things that remind you of the person and trying to milk all it's worth for reflecting on what you can learn from their relationship, any quick tips? I, maybe that's the question for the book letting go, but any quick tips on, you know, when you get overcome by an emotion, you feel it. Like for me, it's always like in my like chest area, when you feel that feeling, you

just let it pass through you? Do you have any tips for that? Just that missing someone feeling. Yeah. I like to deduce it into a very quick practice of that feeling your feelings fully, the way that I'll go about it. And you welcome it all. It's going to be a roller coaster of different spectrums of emotion. But essentially, I quiet all of the thoughts in my brain so that I can be present, literally get rid of everything. And I move

my attention to my heart and it's as if I'm like opening up my heart or my stomach either of them and I just let it's like I'm kind of pushing out or feeling all the things coming up going through my heart I'm not intellectualizing what I'm feeling I think when it comes to the real emotions they're far more

more vast than intellectualizing can even comprehend so I turn off my thoughts I open up my chest or my stomach and I let all the feelings go through me like a river and you'll feel when you hit the tail end and what I love about the book letting go is what he says he was like most things that overcome you if you don't avoid them if you don't repress them if you just initiate and feel them all the way they usually pass under 30 minutes and then it's like it's it's

it's one layer less of the onion that's processed and gone so you then grief can come up or anger and just again you don't need to intellectualize them you need to turn off your brain and just feel them all the way oh that's so good and it moves you up that emotional scale and it allows you to move forward i it's so helpful thank you yes

You obviously experienced heartbreak and made such beautiful art about it. Can you talk about what those experiences taught you and being in that tender time? Like what was some advice maybe you got? You've already given me such beautiful advice just through email, but what was helpful to you? You know, when I think about those times, it's so...

It was strange and probably sounds disrespectful to people going through them, but I kind of miss it because I was so squishy. My heart was so squishy during that time. Like I remember there was a couple much more difficult heartbreaks than others. And I remember during those times,

Just like walking down the street feeling so incredibly in touch with everyone's pain. Like I was so hyperintuitive. Like you're raw. I felt raw. I felt like an open wound walking down the street, but it just made me like,

so in touch with other people and so connected. Like I said earlier, when I was little, you know, and I felt most connected to the world when I was sad, like I did feel alone a lot and actually feeling sad made me feel more connected to people because it was never like beyond me that other people felt that. I think, you know, like I,

I've never felt particularly too alone in the world during those times because I know, I know that everyone goes through it. But during those like really potent heartbreaks when you just...

Like you're really in survival mode and it's every little thing you do is so... takes so much energy. But then again, on the flip side, you're so easily fed. Like if someone like buys you a coffee, it's like the most generous thing that anyone's ever done. Like you're just so hypersensitive. And I think during those times...

It's been so fertile for creativity, so fertile for empathy and learning about myself. And I think the real gift of having something taken away from you is that you have to fill that space. And most likely, you're going to do it through positive things. I mean, once you've had your, like, you know, two bottles of wine in the bathtub night, you will start to fill that space. And I found that after every heartbreak, I've always...

learn something new, become someone new, did something exciting for myself to the point where I'm kind of worried that if I never have a heartbreak again, like when am I ever going to learn Portuguese? Because that's the time when I'm just like so good to myself. And that's really the only way to get through. You're meeting me in the time where I'm, I am like in that where it's like, just put one foot in front of the other. I'm sort of

coming out of it, but I I've been, I've had tough things before that like I've been nostalgic for not this exactly, but I know what you mean. But I also, I know what you mean about so many people have said that to me of like, this is the time where you'll learn something new, but it is, I'm still in the moment of feeling like I'm the only one that feels like this. I, this is, we make movies about this. Like I, but I,

I can't, but I also see like, as I'm moving away from it, I don't want to let it go because it's, I'm so present and I'm so in my body and,

And I want to carry that with me. Totally. There's this great This American Life episode about breakups. Yeah. And on it, this line that always sticks out to me, I've listened to this a million times for every million breakups I've been through. I need to re-listen. It's so great. And one line I love is breakups feel, it's like the most universal thing. Like everyone's broken up before, but it feels so specific. And I always say when I go through a breakup,

It feels like it's not only the first time it's happened to me, but it feels like it's the first time it's happened to anyone. And I've been through, like, I'm average twice a year at this point. And I've been through some, like, horrific ones that I know are going to be, you know, the worst that I've ever experienced, I hope. And even so, even...

Even after like a couple months of dating, if we go our separate ways, it feels, it's like unbelievably painful. And you'd think like, I've been through it. I know that I'll get through it. I know I have, you know, the wisdom to get through it, but it feels like the first time it's ever happened because it is, I mean, it's a relationship between two people. So it's never going to happen again. So yeah, it's really sad. Yeah.

You mentioned rejection and I wrote down rejection as protection, which is a line that you've said. Can you talk about that? Yeah. Oh, rejection. I was just rejected romantically and I'm still like so mad about it. It never gets easier. Never gets easier. The only wisdom I have to offer is a cliche that

I think everyone knows, but it's like, but it takes a while to kind of feel it in your skin. And that's that it's for the best. It's just for the best. I mean, if someone rejects you, they weren't fully valuing you. And whether that's like in a work thing, and I've been rejected many, many times in my work or romantically or as a friend or whatever. If someone's not like pumped about you, they just don't deserve you. And that's so hard.

I mean, I've had so many work rejections that I just remember really manifested so much as just anger. Like I would get a rejection letter in the mail and like rip it up and just like stomp on it. Like just get so mad and like, why am I trying? The world is against me. And then in a romantic rejection, that taps into something very, very deep in me. Very deep self-worth issues. Again, starting from when I was...

in middle school. And I know by now that it's fine and it's for the best. And that that person who rejected me is always opening a door for someone better to step in, but it's not easy. It's not easy. It's funny though. I was recently romantically rejected and I was talking to my friend about it the other night. And I said, it's like clearly because I'm not pretty enough.

And she said, that's so interesting because what I projected from my own wound, her talking is that you were like too successful. And she's like a star on Broadway. And she, she deeply fears that she drives men away with her success. And she doesn't have an issue. She just doesn't have like body image issues. So that didn't even cross her mind. And so like, whatever we're rejected from, we're like projecting our wound, but it's like, it's probably not even about that.

You know, it's probably about like something else. Exactly. Their wound. Totally. Yeah. You talked about this a bit before. It's another cliche that's probably on a t-shirt or an Instagram feed as we speak, which is probably like a roomy quote or something of what is meant for you will not pass you. And I wouldn't have been able to let go of this relationship, but it let go of me. And now it's, it was so easy to,

look to this relationship as where I was focusing. And now that that's gone, I'm forced to focus on myself and use it as a mirror and all the areas that I need to grow and change and not what wasn't working in the relationship, which is scary, but actually a gift, like you were saying, and it's protecting me from time, like time that I'm getting back a little bit.

Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. That's happened to me many times where I can see I would have kept, I would have stayed in, in something I, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have been there. So yeah. What advice would you have and what helped you through your breakups? Is there any tenderness or you've kind of talked about a lot of self-care, but anything specifically for that brand of grief? Yeah.

It's such a bittersweet time. And it's really about learning how to be there for yourself and supporting yourself in all the ways that you want to be supported by someone else. I'm not sure how to put it, but it's to keep going deeper in yourself and your relationship to however you experience the divine.

Because ultimately that really is our primary relationship. And I think one of the reasons why we've become such a love-obsessed culture and really idealizing romantic relationships is because we are so disconnected from the divine. And we need to bring that back to the forefront of our lives, that sense of being in love with life.

so that we don't put so much pressure on needing to find the one. I don't think that there is like the one. I think there's many ones and every relationship really is an assignment for us to learn something that we came here to learn. Yeah, I think I'm grieving this person that I love so much and then the jarring aspect of being a relationship partner

period and then not. And then also wanting to learn as much as I can from this experience. So I don't replay these same patterns with the next person again and again. So that's really helpful of giving myself, you know, what I was getting from that relationship. How can I give that to myself? And yeah, I like that.

So I heard you say on another podcast that you went through a tough breakup and you wrote a book about it. Can you talk about that and what you learned from it? Yeah. Well, let's see. That was a giant, just giant life lesson. I actually don't think I had made, I kind of describe that as like the first mistake I've ever made.

I had an affair. I had an affair with my friends, with my friend's girlfriend at the time. It was this total passionate, undeniable chemistry thing that I totally fell into and wanted to make that work even after they broke up and we were kind of like on and off for two and a half years. And it was something that I needed to make sense of afterwards. Like,

That, like, A, so I think when I started the book, it was more of a long love letter to her and our love of where, I mean, it was a 450-page fully illustrated romance novel complete with, like, the...

watching our email flirtation starts and well, it's kind of like full on, like just documented everything, like the love letters between us all. And when she ultimately left and didn't choose this, I had to be like, how can she not choose this? And I needed to make sense. Like, how was this not right? So when I started, I thought I was writing this sultry romance, epic romance novel. And by the time I was done, I realized, Oh, actually I was a jerk who had an affair on my friend. Like I committed adultery. And yeah,

And that was ultimately all I needed to do was just process it and put it into place and create it to bring it to life. But it looked like an old fairy tale, but I've seen so much of what I'm capable of, like calling, you know, thinking myself as a nice guy or someone who wouldn't do that to be able to witness the darker side of myself and what I'm capable of and, and fully like right until I saw that, like it was, you know,

my own therapy of, hey, here I am. So I ended up burning them, burning the copies I had, and yeah, deleting it all off my computer, not for anything other than thank you, learned that lesson, you know? But it was a chink in my armor that I needed and that I've always, when I approach all relationships now, know that's there. And I think I can see too, my own

insecurities. I've described it as almost putting my arm over the electric fence, you know, but never kind of like never crossing the boundary. And this was like full on electrocution style. And so lesson learned and, and like total humble pie served and beyond grateful. Isn't it interesting how cathartic making art about something like you didn't even need to share that art or publish that, but it's,

It sounds like it brought you through it like you could have done in therapy or you could have done in different ways. I've been thinking about that a lot because you're talking to me at this very tender spot and it's so emotionally bloody. And I know I will make art about this, but I'm still so in it. I don't know exactly why.

And I think I could share it because I think for me, I made a lot of mistakes in the relationship, but I think it could be helpful because people feel this. Like I was just talking to a friend about, she just had a baby and she was like telling me the story of the birth and all that. And she was like, I can't believe more people do this all day long, every day. And it's horrific. Birthing you mean? Birthing, yeah. And then I recently went through this and I was like, I can't believe that people feel this.

lost it's my first time feeling this and so when I heard you talking about that on that podcast about how you made art about it I think it's my only way out and I've been journaling about it and writing about it and things I might publish and thinking about what type of art I want to make about it I think something different than what I've done but I can see it's the thing I don't want to

talk about, but I have to talk about? It's an honoring, I think, to do that. And it's an honoring in a way, well, I would say when you can come full circle and see and take ownership of the good and the bad. And if you need to, I find, I've just found that art has always been my therapy. It can say the things that I didn't even know were in there until I actually dug in and saw that it was layers upon layers.

But the process was what was needed. And sometimes I think that's a private thing. Sometimes I think that you can share so others can see it. But I knew it took me to the end of my book to kind of get, oh yeah, this is... I wasn't going to try to clean it up to then off because it was such a... I had to see that what I thought was love was a big giant mask for not seeing my own shadow. So, but I think I've definitely...

gone through breakups or my parents' divorce or even my dad's death. Art is how I do like the meteorological, like check in with my soul. What's happening here? What do you need? What do you need? What's the lay of the land look like now? And they're each...

such different landscapes. And I've learned to just trust my soul knows how to make metaphor analogy or make sense of it in ways that my rational mind can, because you can read all the Instagram like positivity quotes and they're wonderful, but they're really drops in a much larger ocean. And if I really believe like everything's inside of me, let me put up like a big fish. Let me see what's actually, let me be brave enough and be all the things that I

give lip service to and see what's there. And then if I really all know if it's going to be helpful for others or not, and then I'm absolutely will share if, if I know others can, it's a service, I think.

to help others through your own process. Yeah, you have to be discerning over what's... We talk about this a lot with comedians using the mic as therapy. I think it's interesting what you were saying about how when you started it, it was kind of a love letter to her and your relationship. And I think some of the art that I've been... I've been collaging a lot. That's something I'm doing. And I think some of that is a love letter to our relationship. And some of the writing I've been doing has been... Like I used to teach yoga and...

I remember all through college when a friend would come to my class, I would teach for that person and forget everyone else in the class, which was not a very loving thing to do. But every time I'd play a song or teach a move or say a new word, I'd be like, what do they think of that? What do they think of that? And I think great gads being, you know what I mean? And I feel like I can see myself doing that with some of my art and some of my world now. What's he going to think about when he sees this or when he, you know? And I want to make sure that's out of the art before I...

before I think about sharing it. Like this, this is, this writing is for me. It's not for him. It might be for an audience, but right now it's just for me. And I think that's when art can be cathartic, you know? And, or put that in, put that exact thing, like be self-aware through what would it be like to make something for him? You know, like call yourself out through the creative process, you know? And I think that'd be two very different collages, you know, for him, like

his and hers. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot of it. Did you watch the, or did you read the Chris Kraus book? I love Dick or watch the version with Catherine Han did this in Kevin Bacon. There's a TV show that came out last year and it's these, this part, the character who's Chris Kraus in the memoir and played by Catherine Han writes this, these letters to the character Dick who's played by Kevin Bacon. And I,

it's essentially her obsession and her crush on this person, but it becomes her art. And I think there's this great Ted talk. I forget what it's called, but you've probably seen it and it's old, but they're saying like your dog dies, make it art. Is it the Neil Gaiman one? Probably. Yeah. It was a graduation speech. Neil Gaiman had like a make good art no matter what. Okay. I'm sure it's probably that. Maybe it wasn't a Ted talk, but yeah. So I knew when this was happening that it, that's my only way out, but it doesn't make it less interesting.

annoying or emotionally and bloody is like the thing I keep saying because that's what it feels like. Well, I think let it out clearly is your, it's your healing. Like you already know what's happening and it's going to change. Like the word, it will change. It'll be,

what it represents will be different throughout your different decades in you and different, different, different chapters for sure. And I think that you're just committed to that. And I think that, um, ultimately, I mean, it's going to be, it will represent love, which you're so clearly embodying and expressing, but I, I, I think trust yourself to heal the way you need to heal. Yeah.

Guys, it's me again, Current Katie. John was right. I did make something. I made lots of things, but I made something I'm really proud of. Two things, actually. The Soothe Kit and the Solve Kit. The Soothe Kit is a digital or a printed zine that you can either get...

dosed out to you over email daily or you can get a PDF of it. It's basically everything I did and learned

would have wanted when I was feeling like a raw nerve right after a breakup. Didn't know what to do, couldn't even decide what to do. This is something that tells you one thing to do every day, more than one thing to do, but just a few things that give you a sense of completion. It's full of themes and

journaling prompts and actions and it's like a scavenger hunt for your mind and it's full of soft stories my story other people's stories art and advice that helped me that was useful for me and it was so fun to make and

a really cool process and you can get one for yourself. If you're feeling this way, you can also send it to a friend, which I think is really lovely. When I was telling my best friend, Simi about this, she was like, I would have loved to be able to send this to you this year because I postmated you so much food and I spent so much time crying on the phone with you. I wish I could have just sent you this instead of flowers. Um,

So that's an option too, which I love. And then I also made the solve kit. So after you soothe yourself, because I feel like you first just have to soothe yourself when you're feeling so raw and it's just so jarring to have a relationship and it feels like you're losing a limb, as Rochelle says in this episode. But basically then, most recently, what I've been doing is more solving. So I've been mining the relationship for gems and...

personal growing and all the things I'm doing to become better at being myself and grow from this experience. And that is called the solve kit. So that's what I am working on now and what I've been working on. And I'm really excited about that next level part of this kit and that's available as well. So the links are in the show notes. If you have questions, let me know. I can't wait for you guys to, um,

Tell me what you think of these two writing projects, audio projects, visual projects that I made that I'm really excited about and I hope you like. And if you do, let me know. If you have any questions about them, let me know.

I enjoyed the process making them and I think that matters. Oh, it does matter. Okay, it's 2024. Me here to... God, it's wild that 2019 was a full five years ago. But it's true. I'm jumping in here. I hope I don't give you whiplash jumping into the time machine back then. Here I am again now. I'm going to send you back to then in a moment. But...

jumping in to tell you that those kits still exist. The one I made then, it's a zine that is sold around at a few places and the Solve kit part two, that also exists. I ended up going away and making that while I was in Bali and it

is something that I'm really proud of and those exist. And I ended up making a bunch more kits. I called them kits for personal growing. So I have one called the right kit. And that one's about writing for emotional wellness. And that also the links in the show notes, if you want to check them out. And you know what? I'll make a discount code for the occasion. I'm working on a new one that I'm really excited about. So the links to the soothe kit and the solve kit and all the kits all in the show notes. Okay. Back to the

the time machine and back to 2019. All right, let's get back to some more clips. You're going to hear from herbalist Rochelle. She's the founder of Supernatural in New York. We had this interview on the calendar and it got moved and rescheduled a million times because my grandpa died right at the same time as this breakup happened.

And I had to move a lot of things around. And so I end up at her apartment just a few days after I got home from this. And so I was a mess. And instead of talking about herbalism, we were really heavy on the heartbreak conversation. But she had some of the best advice that I got. So you'll hear from her. And then you're going to hear from my beloved co-host of Spiraling, Serena Hale.

I've spoken at length about how spiraling really was born out of me being a mess and Serena kind of helping to clean me up and giving me so much great advice about anxiety and the role that played within my relationship ending. And then you'll hear from my writing teacher,

who I just found myself taking a lot of writing classes after this breakup. And that's how I met her and became obsessed with her and loved her outlook on life and love and love ending and breakup. She has...

a unique story about her divorce. And then we'll pick up the mood. You'll hear from Robin Kanner. You'll hear from Kristen, who gave my favorite lesson on romantic love. And then you'll hear my favorite song of the year. Have you had any hard breakups? What did they teach you? Yes, I had two that were heart-wrenching.

Well, I wrote a book about one of them. Oh, really? Yeah. Here, I'll show you. Oh, wow. This is so cool. Where can people get this? Nowhere. It's published, but I really like nobody knows about this. That was the first hard breakup. That was a hard breakup because we, you know, I think I think that he I'm trying to think how much I should say publicly. How old are you?

About 25, 24. It was in Seattle before I moved to New York. And my family wanted me to marry him. He wanted to marry me. Everybody loved him. We were an amazing pair. It definitely could have happened. I can relate. Yeah. You know, and there are those things. I mean, to me, the breakups and not even in retrospect, in the moment, the hard ones feel like, or for me, they have felt like life with this person is

entirely possible but we are choosing for it not to be totally and it feels like life splits in that moment and you know part of your being part of your soul and alternate you know reality whatever it is continues on yeah and that life goes forward and you are together sliding doors yeah totally and we chose not

not to. And it was super hard and hurt. And I, you know, was running like multiple times a day and felt like I lost half my body, like meaning, you know, my soul. And it's just, that's, that's how both of the breakups have been. It's felt like losing a limb or something. And I went back to my favorite therapist and was like, help me make sure that I process this right. Cause this feels really, really big.

And then I moved to New York and we're great friends now. And he's actually, I'm going to talk to him tonight after, after this. Wow. Yeah. And it took a while to come back to that, but I consider him a friend for life. And when you know someone that intimately, you know, and you can maintain a friendship, obviously it's really meaningful. I really look forward to that. I'm not,

Yeah. But what advice helped you through that or what advice would you give someone through that? What helped me through both of these breakups was a consistent, healthy relationship.

or the best you can do, cathartic release. So when I was going through this, I didn't actually write the book until afterward because it was too painful for me to sort of be in the moments. I was, those journals up there are my sort of, I don't know, my safeties, if you will. I was writing and literally I would just, I would check in every night and it's like still here, still here, still here. Like just checking in and making sure that I was not

detaching from the situation that I was not burying it with anything unhealthy. I would say as much as it hurts, the more you can feel it and let it, let it express itself. Yep. Let it out. Then the better you're going to be with all of it. And these things are, are crazy and they're, they're deaths in their own way. And I,

As hard as it is, it's also this sort of tragically beautiful and poignant experience in life. There's richness to it, I'm finding. Yeah. And it's fascinating and it's hard and it's sad, but it's also like,

wow, what a thing to feel or what a thing to experience. I never knew I could be this, you know, broken or, or whatever it is or angry or, you know, and I just tried to observe it all as much as possible and, um,

let it, yes, out, let it out. So you had another breakup after this breakup? Yes. What did that one teach you? Was that different? Was it where the experience is similar? The relationships probably could not have been more opposite, except that

I do also think that life with this other person would have been possible. Like it was an immediate, you know, soul latch. And we were together for four plus years here in New York during the sort of starving phase. So really, really bonded over the hardness of being here and fascinating how deeply we were connected, but it was not a healthy relationship.

There was a lot of codependence and the lifestyle was super unhealthy, which was really hard for me. I was trying to help myself and help him and, you know, keep us out of the dark alleys of New York bar scene and that kind of thing and just...

It was hard. And then that one, I think it was different in the end because I chose to leave as opposed to it being a little bit more of a mutual thing. And I got to experience what it's like to leave somebody who it appears is 100% dependent on you. And that is different and scary in its own way. You know, literally fearing that this person won't survive if you're not there to take care of them.

And so, yeah, so it took me a long time to kind of get there. And then after we broke up,

I was going through some of the same symptoms as before, grieving and feeling the severity of it. But the symptoms persisted and persisted and persisted for like a solid year afterward. And I started to really worry about the inability to recover from the breakup. It was so intense afterwards.

And so finally I reached back out to him and I was like, I'm having a really hard time getting over this. Like, are you okay? Did you do it? And he was in the exact same place as me. And it, it turns out that we had to like reconnect and we had to talk again more. We had to like reconnect, not for the terrible, just sort of let's relive our, our sort of traumas again, but to sort of officially disconnect again to process it.

It felt undone somehow. It was, did you say undone? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We, it felt like there's a, an idea in shamanism called soul loss, where part of your soul leaves your body during trauma and is supposed to return after the trauma. And a lot of times it doesn't. And there are these practices to help sort of tell your soul that it's safe to come back or to pull it back in. And it was not something that I knew very much about or thought much about, but I, I

I learned about it or learned more about it after that experience and

Could not be more convinced that that was what I was experiencing. That's what it felt like. My soul was so entwined with this other person still. What did you do to get it back? There was something in that reconnection where we were able to say more, say, I think what we needed to do were say the last words and sort of officially acknowledge that we were separating and that we were going to be okay. And maybe it was me seeing him, you know, a year later and he had

survived barely, but survived and just kind of say it again. Started dating other people during that time? No, no, I definitely couldn't get near anyone. I was extremely single. I was like, austerely single, totally sober. I moved out here. I was in this place by myself.

I was working a lot. I was launching the company. So I was getting up really early working. Everything was like bright white stark. It was very interesting and severe contrast to the time with him, which felt very dark and hidden and hard and low. And this was a sort of blinding phase where I was emerging into a whole different place. And, um,

And eventually, yeah, we, you know, we've recovered and I would say I learned the exact same thing. You have to feel it and you have to let it, let it move through you. So are you friends with this person? No, we, New York is amazing. We've seen each other one time since we broke up. And what was that like? It was just a random run in totally random run. And it was actually pretty recently.

We just saw each other and like had the shock and I sort of, you know, put my hand up like, hi, but it was not a time to stop and talk. He was talking to someone else, whatever. Did it feelings? Oh yeah. I had to like walk around the corner and like breathe. And I think we're okay now and we'll probably talk at some point and that will be great, but I'm

fairly certain we won't be friends like I've you know rekindled a friendship with this person I think

just knowing him and how he processes emotions. And, you know, I think that it's something he'll prefer to leave behind a door. And I totally respect that, you know, when you were ready to date after that relationship, did you have fear that you would about finding a person that you felt that connection with? And how did you know your fiance was the, you know, bit like a glove? Yeah. Um,

I don't think I've ever been afraid of

having to go through the heartbreak again. This is a big part of my personality and a way that I hope to live always, which is when I mentioned earlier, you know, about relationships and going with that sensation, even if it seems illogical or, you know, irrational. I think life is so short that when we have the opportunity to fall in love, we're

or be in love or just be in a really healthy relationship or get a heart broken or, you know, fall in love at the cost of getting your heart broken, that it's worth it. So I don't know myself yet. It could happen, but I don't know myself yet to shy away from something like that because of the potential of it hurting so damn bad when it ends. I think it's all still worth. However,

My fiance is fabulously well-balanced. So after having some very dramatic relationships and getting older, that kind of thing becomes attractive in a way that to a younger me, I probably wouldn't be attracted to it. And now it's like absolutely wonderful that there's no drama, you know? And

That's not something you can predict and that's not something you can know about yourself ahead of time, you know, and everyone's going to be different. So much of life is timing. Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. Relationships are timing, you know. If you had to pick a breakup herb, what would it be? Oh, what a good one. Yeah.

The strongest sedative. No, I'm kidding. These conversations always end up, you know, I've been doing this since I was 22. So if I've like grown up on the internet, so these conversations always end up being a mirror to what was going on in my life based on what I'm asking. Gosh, a breakup herb. What a good question. I would not recommend something numbing.

I would recommend something to replenish your heart. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is Rose. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. I don't know why. Do you have some? No. No.

Let me see. It's also my middle name. Oh, literally. Get some rose and you should probably have it around. It's so funny. I have kind of like no reason to know that, but I just like had, I was like, she's going to say rose. So then there's a, that's a good, yeah, that's a good sign. So rose petals. And put it in everything. Tea, like teas. Okay. Yeah. Rose petals in tea. I would use essential oil, make sure it's a good quality and just like smell it, bring it with you. You could bathe with it.

Um, you could do any kind of rose hydrosol like for your face or your heart even. I mean, roses, you know, it's heart medicine. Okay. Um, that, and then second to that, I mean, I would think about, um,

I think about oat seed or oat straw. Oat straw, I've been putting that in my infusion. Okay. Yeah, that's for emotional grief and recovery. I didn't know that. Yeah. From an energetic standpoint, it's recommended for grief or any kind of anxiousness that comes with emotion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also good for anxiety in general. Maybe a tincture of that would be good for me then. That would be nice, yeah. Yeah. Like an oat seed tincture.

And then also if you do feel a lot in your heart, hawthorn berries are one of the best herbal medicines for heart. And that's very literal. So it's great for like your cardiovascular system and heart health. But, you know, love potions or heart tonics or, you know, heartbreak can also be treated with some of these herbs that are good for your heart. Yeah.

But Rose. Okay, I'm on it. Especially since it's your name. Yeah, that's funny. I don't know that everybody has the patience or in a weird way, like the self-confidence to be like, it's not me and there's nothing I can do. Like, just like I said about me personally riding the anxiety wave.

They kind of have to wait it out too, which is the worst part for somebody that you love. And it didn't, and this might make me cry, but it didn't work in my situation, you know? And that's, I have so much like shame and guilt around that. Cause it's like, I could have been better and I could have managed my anxiety better and I could have communicated better. And a lot of that's true, but,

But I don't think it is that like it's going to make me do because I think so many people think that. And I don't think that like we have any control over it. At the end of the day, what people fail to understand is it's like so much of it is just brain chemistry. And like we can't control it. Like we were born like this. Like we were literally born like this. That's what's so hard because some... Like I want to just think that someone who loves you can accept you for that. But sometimes it's just...

Like maybe we're too much for some people or maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's, but I don't think that like, it's such an oversimplification, but like, I, I don't think that you can ever be too much for whatever you want to call it your person, because you are eventually going to find people that are able to either empathize or to just be like,

This is something about you that I love you enough to not think of this as any sort of like deterrent.

It reminds me, I wrote this down to talk about of, you know, the messiness and the nonlinear nature of growth. And you rewrote this line at the end of your Atlantic piece that I also wrote down where you say, no one can ever know which direction is best. That's part of living. And I think that really speaks to what we've kind of been talking about as a through line throughout this of, of,

being present and decision-making and just not knowing how to be a person and knowing that you can only do what you can do today. And yeah,

nobody's ever going to know what the best thing was or how to say the thing that, you know, I'm constantly, we're talking about, we feel so many feelings were in our heads or questioning, but at the end of the day, we're just doing our best trying to meet people and have empathy for other people. That's a beautiful line. There's a lot of moments in sobriety, especially like the few amends that I've made with people. Like you can agonize over that, what it feels like to make amends to people. Right. And I have, like, I,

I've written a few, like I've probably written way more mins than I've actually sent, but you can write the most perfect of mins ever. Like you can really write the fuck out of one, right? And it could get deleted in two seconds.

Or get read and thought about for a week, right? And either is fine for me. Like you're saying you can't control the person. I can't control it, right? But what I'm doing is I'm cleaning my side of the street, right? And that's all you can control. Literally, like I can give you my heart, put it on the table and say, I'm sorry, I was a dick. Feel free to slice this open with a blade or move on with your life. Whatever you do, I'm fine.

But that moment of like, I can't control the direction of how that rolls. I just fucking can't. Like, I just know the moment happened. I know I wish the moment didn't happen. And then I just want to move on with my fucking life because what am I supposed to do? Die over it? That's so hard for me. Yeah, it's impossible. I have so much trouble replaying ways I could have been better and things I could have said better and things I wish I hadn't said. Yeah.

And then I start thinking about, I don't want this to be the way a person remembers me or I don't want, and I can try to forgive myself and I can go to therapy and I can try to not do that again. What's so painful is doing it again. Sure. Yeah. But then what's also so painful is, um,

I can't control whether someone forgives me for that or if someone remembers me for that, or if someone lets that go. And also, I just don't even know. I don't know. I might be thinking about it still. And they completely didn't let go a year ago. Didn't even track with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's part of the, that's part of the work. And for me specifically, I know that I do it because it's time. Like, it's just time. Like let go.

bad moments dissolve and just sort of get that people were going through a different thing in a different time and going to handle it better, good or not, but whatever. How far do you want to take it? Do you want to kill that person or you just want to let them be a person again? And I think... Or yourself or something. Yeah, letting myself be a person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me specifically, I've decided that I'm going to, when the moment is right, be like, man, I really wish I would have handled that differently. I hope you're well now and I mean that.

I let go of that fucking ghost in my heart and it's gone. Okay, so you wrote, I get attached to things, to people, to ideas, and permanence has always been a bit of a heartbreaker for me. I have shuffled crates of books around the world, rolled up t-shirts that don't even fit simply because someone I love once wore it. So beautiful. I love when I have my own words. Gives people an idea of your writing, but...

Can you talk a little bit about what you learned about moving on and letting go? I'm really, really bad at it. So anything you can learn, anything you can tell me? It's hard. If it feels hard, you're doing it right. If it feels uncomfortable, you're doing it right.

My ex-husband, who I love very much, he said, Jess, when you write a memoir that's about your life, like not your family, not a marriage, just about your...

experience. It's going to be called the girl with nostalgia disease. I was like, that is accurate. And it's insane. I mean, to the point of I've kept notes and post-its from decades ago because somebody wrote a thing once that made me smile. It's ridiculous. So I hold on to the past in every way, when it serves me, when it doesn't serve me, when it's

Whether it's pain or whether it's joy, I hold on to it simply because it happened and that feels important to me. I think it's not to analyze myself, but I think it's very much connected to childhood. If you as a child did not feel like you had control over things, as an adult, you kind of overextend that control. You overextend like I'm going to keep all of these things because before I had to choose which things were important. So how to let go when you're a nostalgic monster like me and you. Yeah.

So I think once you acknowledge and accept the idea that choosing to hold on to something is creating a small prison for yourself and it starts to feel like that. I'll talk about it in terms of family because that is what's the most present in my mind. I thought that I would have a family where it's your paper doll family, the father, the mother, the dog, the kid, the house, everyone lives together.

Very soon after I started a family, it did not look like that and it did not feel like that. So rather than expanding my ideas of what could be, I doubled down and I was like, no, these are our barriers. This is our prison. We will all live here.

And it felt awful for everybody involved. It's really scary to let go of an idea. It's really scary to let go of these shoulds that we have. I should be doing this. I should look like this. I should have this relationship. It's really scary to let go of that, especially if you don't have a replacement for it, right? And if you don't have like an idea to replace what your previous no longer working idea was. So...

One thing that really, really was necessary in my letting go process was writing down what I wanted the future to look like, even if I had never seen it before. So for me, I didn't want to be

a divorced couple who passed their kid back and forth, who never spoke, who hated each other, who bad-mouthed each other. It was what I had seen from TV and people. That's what I grew up with. Yeah. Not great. Exactly. A lot of people have that experience and it's all I knew. If we weren't going to be married and sharing a house and living together as a family, the only way I knew a family to exist, then we had to be this. And I didn't want that.

So what did I want? Great question. Big question that I didn't have an answer to. So I sat there in the discomfort of plotting and planning what that would look like. If I, if anything was available to me, what would it look like if I could create a family dynamic that felt good, that felt healthy, even if it didn't feel like what I thought it, or even if it didn't look like what I thought it was supposed to.

And so I wrote down things like, you know, weekly family dinners, traveling together, being able to be in a room with each other without wanting to kill each other or sleep with each other. Like all the very detailed, like, this is what I want. And when I was writing those things, I may as well have been writing down like unicorns flying, you know, flying, whatever, because it seems so impossible.

But because I was creating, I was writing down the reality of what it could look like and then rereading it every single day and living in that moment of like, what if it could look like this? What if it could look like this? And then working toward that and like moving in that direction, even though I was like, I don't know how we're going to get there, but this is what I want, right? Like you don't necessarily know how you're going to get to the other side of it, but knowing what it might look like is really helpful.

I will say, though, it is hard to let go of stuff. It's especially hard to let go of pain. I always tell my son this.

The first three seconds you have, whatever that reaction is after an event, that is real. That is your brain. That is a reaction that you cannot control. And after that, you're controlling it. So if you choose to continue staying in that pain, it's because you're making that choice. And again, it's like the good news and the bad news. Like, oh, damn it, I've been choosing this. And also, oh, I've been choosing this. So I can just choose to stop.

wanting to be in the pain. She was to stop wanting to be, you know what I mean? So yeah, it's just like the realization that you control your narrative. You, if you were the cause or not the cause, because I feel like then we get into tricky territory. If you were the common denominator in your past, then you're also the common denominator in your future, you know? So to think of it more like

I don't know. Think of it more like planning and plotting instead of losing something, right? Because it feels really hard to give something up. But if you're writing out and creating this masterpiece of what might come next, that feels a lot more fun than just like, I don't know, letting go. Yeah.

You touched on this a little bit. That's going to be, that's so useful for me. I feel like I'm letting go of so much and I want to talk about moving, which is something I'm doing and you're doing in a second, but you will, we're, we'll stay in this territory for a second because you mentioned this already, but you write a lot about co-parenting and you've been really honest about the challenges of it. And I wrote down another line of yours that I loved. And you said divorcing with a kid is

is a different kind of heartbreak, one that never fully heals because you're simultaneously looking into the face of your painful past and your uncertain future.

Oh, it's just such a good line. I loved it so much. And, you know, I would love to talk about breakups a little bit, as you know, from my writing, man, it's emotionally bloody. Yeah. So can you talk about heartbreak and what's helped you with that? I would love to. It's like my favorite topic, heartbreak. Absolutely. I think that

It is not hard to let go of a relationship that sucks and a relationship that hurts and a relationship that is dysfunctional. That is easy. It's really hard to let go of the hope that it was going to get better and it was going to change. And that person you fell in love with is going to reappear somehow at some point. And it's really hard to let go of what you thought your future was going to look like. I think that's the mourning part is not the past. Nobody...

Suffers from walking out of a bad situation. We suffer because we're letting go of the hope that that bad situation will repair somehow. Or like an okay situation, I think. It's easy and clear when it's like something was really hard or it was a trauma, but when it was just not working. And there's a parallel universe where it could have worked. Oh my gosh. I feel like that's just...

incredibly painful. It is. Yeah. And it's, it's like when you walk away from someone that you still love, Oh, that's hard. But the reality is that, Oh my God, this has been the transformative. This has completely changed my whole life. The realization that I can love someone and I do not have to be in a relationship with them.

That blew my mind because I thought, but I still love them. I still love them. That means we're supposed to be together. That means I'm supposed to keep trying. That means I'm supposed to stick with it and whatever, insert cliche here.

But then I realized like, oh, no one's going to make me stop loving them. I can still love them from right here in this safe space that I'm creating for myself. And that's super important. I think that we live in a culture that's really messed up because we're taught that you can only love one way. Why? Why is romantic love? Why does it trump everything else? Right? I feel like it's like...

The saddest part of a relationship ending is like you're losing that friendship. You're losing that person who has been, for better or worse, a person that is significant in your growth and in your life. And it goes from connected, romantic togetherness to nothing. We don't even say hi in the street anymore. And that is brutal. So, I mean, when it comes to heartache, I think the hardest part is letting go of what you thought was going to happen. And that is...

It seems like it should be easier, right? Because it hasn't actually happened. But no, we spend so much time in our brains living in the future, playing out the what if, what could, all of the possibilities. Yeah. And maybe especially people like us with our temperament of, I don't think, that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately is that I don't think everyone,

is like us in that sense that they do that as to the level that we do maybe. And so it's like, I've been thinking a lot about this in my situation. Like I know this is easier for him than it is for me just because I'm someone who feels things so deeply and that's,

That's hard. I don't know. Yeah. And you know what the reality is? A lot of people, a lot of people are not sincere and a lot of people go out of their way to develop a thick skin. And I think if I haven't said this in our modern love class, I feel like I must've said this before because I think it a whole lot where people think that, that having a thick skin is helpful to you.

And as an artist and a creator and a writer, I think having thick skin is actually so detrimental to your creativity because when you have thick skin, you can't feel all of the beautiful things that need to be felt in writing, right? So yeah, some people will...

just allow themselves to grow, you know, kind of hard and develop this shell where nothing can hurt them, which is a really isolating place to be. And then other people will cope with whatever makes them stop feeling. I mean, there are, there's so many ways to fill that blank, right? Whatever way it is that you cope with loss or heartache or any kind of suffering or loneliness, um,

If you remove all of that and just sit in the pain, oh my God, that's where the growth happens. But no one wants to sit there. And the reality is like, because you are there,

It's so powerful. It's so easy to walk across the street, go get a few drinks and stop feeling the things you don't want to feel. It's so easy to just go start dating somebody else so you don't have to miss someone. Those are all temporary. Those don't actually cause growth. Those are just little band-aids. They don't actually do anything. So yeah, we're going to feel things a lot harder than other people do. They're going to feel...

They're going to feel much more profound and they're going to feel inescapable at times. But I mean, one of the things that I wrote down in like my middle school journal was,

I mean, nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent, right? Even the good, the bad, nothing is permanent. And that is something that I keep going back to time and again, which is like, even when it's painful, it will not always be like this. And I know that it feels like that when you're in it, but history shows that you have overcome painful things. History has shown that you got through the thing you didn't think you could get through. You did the thing you didn't think you could do. So,

It's like, look at your past. You can do hard things you already have. Yeah. If you're feeling pain, feel it. You know that you're not okay. You know that this feeling is not good. And at the same time, other people put a timeline on our healing.

And healing does not pay attention to timelines. It will happen at its own pace. So for you, it might take three months. For another person, it might take three years. Another person, it might take so much longer because you don't know what losses are tied up in that one romantic loss. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There's no other answer other than you have to sit in it until it gets less painful, until you can stand in it, until you can maybe like tread in it, and then until you can walk out of it. Yeah. That's it. I want you to just say, it's going to go away. You're okay. It's going to go away. And you know what? It is. Nothing is permanent. It is going to go away. There are things that I think every person listening –

Every person living, there are things that you go through. That's why they call it, you go through them, right? No one, you don't get stuck in it. You go through it. And there are moments where it's like, I cannot even imagine how I'm going to get out of this. This is going to be like this forever. And that feeling is so real when you're in it. Oh my God, it is so real.

But the reality is you go through it. You will overcome things you did not think you could ever overcome because that is what a human being does is what it is to be human. That's why it's so damn hard. Yeah. As you go through it. Oh my God. And it's also not linear too. Like I have moments where I like right now, I feel like pretty okay. Like yesterday I was crying later. I'll probably, you know, it's just like, it's so it's complicated and interesting and

I feel like I need, I'm glad this was recorded because I can listen back to that whenever I want. But also I was going to say one of the things that, that,

has allowed me in the past to get comfortable and be okay when you're in it. And when like the entire world's crashing around you, I'm like, is knowing that all of that serves a purpose. And I know that's super cliche. Everything happens for a reason, but like, oh, you don't even know the reasons that you are going to use this in a way that you can't even imagine yet. That is like, we're talking about writing about co-parenting. Do you think that when I was in it, like,

drowning in it and suffering and totally by myself feeling like I am the only person going through this because everyone else seems to be vacationing with their ex-husbands, Gwyneth Paltrow. I felt so in pain when I was in it. And I had no idea that at some point I would use that and bottle up that experience and I would be able to use it as a balm to offer other people.

That feels so good. No experience is wasted. I think that is something that writers need to know. I think it's something that people need to know that everything that is happening is happening for you to use at some point and not knowing how is really scary, but just knowing that that is a solid truth and you might not even see it anywhere close to immediately after, but at one point it will all make sense. It was not for nothing. It's there for a reason. Yeah.

I want to talk about your song, Good Pain. I think about it all the time because I believe we grow through essentially good pain of hard things. And wouldn't it be so great if we grew through fun things and when things go well? But I believe that growth comes from hard things. Yeah, and I think those, whether it's something easy or hard is almost a matter of perspective. Yeah, and I think...

Good Pain is like a choice that you make to use struggle to your advantage and not to be blown over by it, you know? Yeah.

This was a very cathartic episode for me to put together and re-listen to. And I hope that you see yourself in this in some way or can send this to a friend who you think it would be useful for. I'm so grateful for this podcast to allow me to be where I am. And this year, it was honestly really sad, but also...

elated and happy and joyful in many moments. And I was able to be exactly where I was on this podcast. And I'm so grateful for you guys for that. I'm so happy that we get to be friends and I can't wait for you to check out the soothe kit.

If you're in New York City and want to come to the launch party and buy one in person, I would love to see you. And if not, get a digital one and send it to a friend as a gift or to yourself as a gift and let me know what you think. And the Solve Kit, that will be launching in 2020, but you can buy it now and start it when it is open. I'm honestly, you guys, just really excited and proud of this.

both of the kits these things that I made that feel like the inside of my brain and they were truly enjoyable to make and I collaborated with really cool people Amanda and Melissa and Meredith who made the art she's a collage artist who is so wonderful she made all the art involved in them and if you like this podcast you will really like these

If you don't like this podcast, you may not, honestly, and that's okay. But if you don't like this podcast, you won't be listening right now. So I'm really only talking to people that can at least tolerate this podcast. So with that, I will leave you with the emoji of the week, which is of course the bloody syringe, as well as the broken heart and the butterfly.

So if you're new here, you just comment that on my most recent Instagram to let me know that you are listening all the way to the end. Please subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a review. Those things really do help. So grateful. Talk to you next week. Okay, like I said at the beginning, it was wild how applicable everyone's advice was, again, to my life, just in different circumstances and situations.

to different situations that I'm in now, it really hit me hard. And, you know, it was just wild because I'd forgotten about a lot of them until now, but their words were so comforting, just with new circumstances. And I've had a few things end somewhat recently that weren't relationships, but every ending feels different. You know, every ending can be a bummer and also...

opening for something new but you know when you have a crush and it doesn't when it ends it's crushing and those things make an impact and you know as Mari says in this it leaves an emptiness that we have to fill and I

have had several smaller sort of emptinesses that I've had to fill. And I actually had an entanglement, we'll call it, a couple of years ago that went on for a while. And even months after it ended, I was still thinking about it and writing about it and processing about it. And it was coming up in

in therapy and in essays I was writing. And I mentioned it to my friend, Dini, who's been a guest on this podcast, how I had a lot of shame for the fact that I was still processing. And I know the other person, for him, it was just a, but for me, it was a bigger deal. And that disproportionate feeling made me feel a lot of shame. And the fact that

I felt that shame just sort of made me almost stay at it more and it just felt embarrassing. And she normalized that for me by just saying that she had felt that way too. And that sometimes, even though something was a blip for one person, it doesn't mean it's insignificant for you and that's okay. And I just wanted to share that because it's something I've learned since and

in case anyone listening is feeling that way and that can alleviate some feelings of feeling alone in that, I hope it helps. And I've also learned since this episode that regardless of what other people's timing on how to process something or regardless of other people's advice on when you should be done processing something, everything is different. Every relationship is different. Every person is different. And of course we know that, but yeah,

even the people that I look up to and I admire and that you heard from in this episode, the way that they process things is different from the way that I do and the way that each other does and the way that you do. And there's no formula for feeling better. And I could just hear in my voice in a lot of this, I was so desperately after a formula. And I do think it's useful to take anything comforting from other people or anything inspiring. And

There's a lot of that in here. I loved what Lacey said about how to look at breakups positively and how we'll never be more magnetic than in post-breakup energy or what she calls a magic dark. I found that so comforting and inspiring and exciting. And I want to take it now, even in this like mini, you know, crush breakup that I just had. Like I want to use it as a way to

allow newness and get those benefits and that she's talking about. And I think all endings are openings. And if you can glean gold on the other side of, of darkness or pain, I think that's really lovely. And listen, I haven't had a significant romantic relationship start or end since this episode, but I do have the following and that is,

is that I have broadened my definition of love. I have many significant others now. I have so many friends that I really love and I've had a handful of sort of in-between relationships and one thing I've learned about those is that I think they might even be harder to get over than a clear-cut breakup in some ways. And I never could have anticipated the life that I have now thinking back to 2019

all the wildness that would transpire just a mere months after I recorded what you just heard with obviously the pandemic. But before the pandemic, I was traveling. I left for Bali like maybe a week after I recorded this in January. And I never would have anticipated that. And it was really interesting when the pandemic began because I had recently –

at that point left my full-time job. So my life was in this really malleable place. I left that job and then this relationship ended and I was new to being a freelancer. And, you know, a couple months passed and then it was the pandemic, really. And I just kept saying, like, as a joke that, oh, wow, yeah, it's wild now. But I was kind of feeling chaotic and wild anyway. So now everyone's, like, met me where I was. And that felt comforting at the time. But

Anyway, just hearing this episode, I've been reflecting on what each guest echoed, which is a version of what Mari said best, I think, which was how potent of a time breakups are for growth and learning. And again, what Lacey called a magic dark. And I think back to that one from 2019 in particular that I was referring to, which

And I was asking myself, like, oh, man, did I do it right? Did I... Was it true for me? Did I take all their advice? Did I end up manifesting something like Lacey said I would during that potent, magical time? Did I create a creative opening like Mari said I would? And at first, I was like, oh, I don't know if I did. But I think in other ways...

I like to think that I did and I'm still processing the ending of that relationship in some ways but in other ways my life is different and it feels embarrassing that I'm still processing that but I also know that we all do things at different times and hopefully that's okay.

And I'm sharing that embarrassing thing because maybe you feel that way too. And this will help someone else feel less alone and dissipate some shame when we share, right? That's what Brene Brown says happens. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Tell the people that you love that you love them. One of my best friends lost a parent unexpectedly this month and, um,

She has been articulating that and writing about that and processing it and it's been so beautiful to witness. And one thing that she said that was so profound is that it taught her to tell the people around her that she loves them and to broaden her definition of love. So I will leave you with that. What is in your definition of love? And tell them, happy Valentine's Day. If you're heartbroken and you just had a breakup, congratulations.

See what's on the other side. Mine it for gems. You just heard all the things you can do. I hope whatever is on the other side of that is full of richness and opportunity and expansion and creativity. And also know that it's okay if it's just hard right now and it takes a long time for it to feel useful or inspiring. And in the spirit of what Maddie said, tell the people that you love that you love them. And I'll say it right now, I love you.

This podcast is edited by someone else. I love Brianna Bain. I'll talk to you next week with brand new episodes. Bye.