Part IX: Heartbreak and the Path to Peace

Part IX marks a turning point in the process of journaling your way through tough emotions. This technique is about moving from a reactive state to proactive. If you don't feel ready, don't do it yet.

#7 of 12 Ways to Move Yourself from Heartbreak to Peace of Mind.

Thankful Thanking: Measure your gains because they outnumber your losses.

I took a break for a few weeks because I had overseas visitors staying in the house and was worried about getting emotionally tangled up in writing the hard stuff again while they were here. But as it turns out, I have turned a corner and needed that time to sit with my new state of mind.

The need to manage tough emotions has eased. And eased again. I find myself in a good place to focus on what I learned in that 5-year relationship and ready to lean into the ways I grew and evolved as a person.

Heads up: At the end of this piece, I have thrown in some gains that are about no longer being in a toxic relationship. I want to be very clear that they are from past experiences. My most recent partnership was strong, stable, and healthy (until his feelings changed, which was not an act of abuse or aggression; it’s just something that happened).

But I do want you to know that I have had my own fun mix of toxic and abusive relationships in my past. Most have settled back in time and can’t touch me. One or two have residual effects I’m still working to release. This is all to say that I speak with confidence and experience when I talk about the benefits of thoughtful journaling when you’re trying to find your way through heartbreak to that place of peace, the one where you can begin to build again.

This chapter is about gain over loss. What you gained in your relationship has much greater value than what you lost. It’s just really really hard to see that when your heart aches. That’s why you journal. That’s why I journal, anyway.

The best way for me to shift myself from the fear and pain of loss to a place of peace and comfort is to write my way through. It’s not to skip over the hard emotions as if they don’t matter. It’s not to minimize my experience by comparing it to anyone else’s. And it’s definitely not to fast forward through the tough things, just because it hurts to sit with them.  

The best way to move myself through heartbreak to peace is to write my way through. It works for me, it works for my clients, it works for fellow members of To Live & Write. I’ve been a privileged student, role model, and witness to the power of journaling for about ten years now; my faith is grounded in practice, observation, and results.

The act of writing my way through has to land on writing my gratitude at some point, regardless of what I’m journaling about.

What does this look like? Deep dives. Introspection. Investigation. Specifically: Time and attention spent contemplating the difference between who I was before and who I am now, speaking my thoughts, asking my questions, and testing my answers in ink as it flows across the page. And setting my intention, every time, to recognize that what I gained is greater than what I lost.

To be clear, I’m talking about the relationship, not the person. The loss of a person is a different thing.

Spoiler Alert: This is a gratitude exercise. BUT. It’s not the kind of gratitude that’s just paying lip service because you think you need to be grateful to be a good human or because everyone keeps going on and on about what a difference being grateful can make in your life and how much it can help get you through grief and heartbreak and all the yucky feels that force you to confront how much loss actually sucks.

Gratitude can do all that, but if you can only manage lip service through gritted teeth right now, then writing I’m grateful for … I’m thankful for … is going to be a pain in the ass. And counterproductive.

If you think this gratitude exercise is going to be a chore, and then force yourself to do this chore, it’s going to feel exactly like a chore: Gross, sweaty, and pointless. Forced, insincere, and unrelated to your truth. Funny how that works. Those are negative feelings, so don’t.

This particular exercise might be something you skim through, skip for now, and come back to later, when your emotions have settled into less of a wild ride and equanimity approaches on the horizon. That’s what I did. I kept putting it off until I was ready, which is fine because there’s no strict order for which exercises and techniques to use in your journal. You and I get to use the ones that make sense to us in the moment.

So. What does getting specific about gratitude look like in your journal? How do you approach writing your thoughts and feelings in a way that allows you to own your growth and carry it forward with dignity? And without breaking that crack in your heart wide open, yet again?

Begin with intention. No relationship leaves you where it found you. You are not the same person you were when you walked or fell or sidled into it, whether it was five months or five years ago. So, set your intention to discovering and recognizing the way you have been shaped by this relationship.

It may have ended, but you continue.

You have gained as much as you have lost. Dare I say more than you have lost? After all, what you lost had an expiration date; we know this because it expired. It was finite. It fell away, but you remain. What you have gained continues forward with you. It is part of you now, to do with as you wish.

Last time, I talked about your right to keep the tangible souvenirs of your relationship, to enjoy the music, wear the earrings, and maintain the habits that brought you joy.

This time, I’m talking about your identity. Who you were in the relationship is a bridge between who you were before and who you are now. That bridge was designed, built, retrofitted, and reinforced continuously inside your relationship to support your journey here.

And you are still supported here and now by everything good you gained by working on that bridge. You have new perspectives, deeper insights, ingrained wisdom. Look at them. Claim them. Own them. Aren’t you freaking awesome? Yes.

You are amazing. You deserve a minute to sit back and be amazed by you. Do this exercise. Dig in. Discover things. Sit back on your heels, stunned. Soak it in and then go ahead and get all smug about what a badass you are now.

The Thankful Thanking Exercise (or the Gain Over Loss Exercise) (the name is a work in progress) (title suggestions welcome):

Get your notebook and your favorite pen; we’re going to go a few rounds to get to your truth. We start easy. The first round is basically a brain dump.

ROUND 1: Make a statement

List the generic things you’re grateful for. Make statements that are ambiguous, amorphous, nebulous, and any other synonym for vague you’d like to name.

I’m grateful for:

• the good times.

• the adventures.

• the simple pleasures we shared.

• a partner who brought out the best in me.

• a chance to love someone who loved me back.

• Add yours here.

The items on this list seem specific but look again. They’re loosely shaped at best, and they’re a pretty safe distance from reflection and introspection. If we left it here, it would be ineffective, and we’d feel bad for not feeling better after behaving nicely and writing a gratitude list. That would smell a lot like toxic positivity, and I’m not here for that.

However, if you need to hold yourself at arm’s length for now, a list like this is an okay place to start. Just don’t try to own it as finished work or anything substantial. Call it practice or a warmup or a test and walk away.

If you feel like you want to dig deeper because this is just a beginning, keep going. Let’s make it personal in Round 2.

ROUND 2: Gimme More

This is where you ease away from vague and lean into being specific. Be prepared for your list to expand.

I’m grateful for:

• all those concerts we went to, one after the other, for five years.

• how we visited towns and places up and down the coast together.

• how we explored towns and places around other countries together.

• those times we flew in tiny planes above Sonoma and Silicon Valley.

• those times we went kayaking in Monterey and Sausalito.

• learning to like and then love wine and the wineries they come from.

• being part of Burning Man, from build to play to strike.

• learning blues dancing (a bit) and practicing in the kitchen.

• having someone to dote on with small acts of love.

• having someone as affectionate as I am return my affection.

• having spent so many years in a row knowing what it’s like to live in a world of safe communication, clear signals, and emotional maturity.

ROUND 3: Open an Investigation

But what did these things do for you, really? Why is it so important to dwell on this stuff? Some of it still hurts. What’s with the need to scrutinize them in your journal?

Because journaling is about you. Self-discovery is what happens when pen meets page in a regular journaling practice. It’s good to be ready.

Journaling is about your thoughts, your feelings, your memories, and your understanding of yourself and the way you exist in this world. What you learn, how you contribute, and who you affect come directly from who you know yourself to be.

Self-awareness is an essential element of personhood, especially if you want choice and control as you move forward. Moving forward is the only option, so you might as well be in charge of how you do it, yes?

When you become aware of your gains over losses, you have more innate power and wisdom on hand to guide your choices.

So. What did you, as a human person, gain from all those things you’re grateful for on your list? What kind of bridge did you build and who are you now, on the other side of it?

Continuing with mine, because these are the examples I have on hand:

• Going to so many concerts brought music into my life in new and more personal ways. The live music experience deepened my appreciation for music in general and has made me more attuned to what I like, what moves me, and how it has the ability to transport me to a place I didn’t know existed before dating such a rabid live music fan. I experience music in a different way now. I seek it out; my life has changed for the better.

• He normalized 2- and 3-hour drives to beautiful places in our state, spending time just soaking up the atmosphere, strolling in and out of art galleries and fun shops, walking along a beach or a ridge, relaxing over a nice lunch, and basically mini-vacationing (getting out of the house) before turning around and driving back home for a movie night on the couch. I used to have this idea that these destination towns were hard to get to and required the kind of planning and preparation that would have helped someone like Odysseus, if only he’d thought ahead. Today, all I need is my phone, wallet, keys, gas, snacks, and a sweater in case it’s cold and I can head out to my own mini-vacation destination any time I want. The where of where I live has expanded.

• The ex is a rather excellent photographer. We traveled to other states and countries that tugged on his need to capture beauty on film, and we spent 90% of the time satisfying this need. As a human who derives a tremendous amount of pleasure from supporting creatives, this was 100% fine with me. I learned that when you travel, you have to bring yourself along and be true to who you are, wherever you go, or why bother? I learned to speak up and be clear about what I wanted so it could be scheduled on the itinerary (making someone guess is just mean). I learned travel itself is not as logistically hard as it seems (it’s logistically way easier than you’d imagine), and I learned that flying 1-, 2-, 5-, or even 7 thousand miles to be yourself and express your same old creativity in a different place is justified. When I visit my family in Australia next year, I will spend time writing every day—not because I fantasize that I can shoehorn it in somewhere, but because I have learned that it’s a good thing to prioritize your creative identity and plan around it. My sense of what makes a trip worthwhile has evolved. Oh, and how it might take courage to speak up and speak clearly about what you want, but it changes everything, so you have to.

• I was rewarded for saying yes to spontaneity, over and over. I was rewarded for leaning into someone else’s idea of fun and going along with someone else’s plans. My rewards were unforgettable adventures and experiences that I get to relive with joy and amazement every time I decide to think about them. Flying in tiny planes, dancing in tiny bars, kayaking, doing all the Burning Man things—I got to be with the kind of person who doesn’t just think it would be cool to try something, he actually does it. He made it all safe and fun and now I’m that kind of person, too. When it comes to reaching for life’s experiences and making things happen, I have gone from willing to able.

• Feeling free and adored for the way I express romantic love was transformative. I now know what it’s like to be fully accepted for all the parts of who I am, from the goofy and ridiculous to the serious and not so generous, and everything in between. The relationship is over, but I can never unknow that I am worthy of real love and that I am good at giving real love. I am good at love. I never, ever thought saying that would be true for me, before I got to spend five years growing into that version of love and relationship. I know what safety feels like and I have this new, full resource of calm and patience inside myself to tap into when I need it. My partner set the bar extremely high for the next person. Guess what? The next person, the one who has to begin at that very high minimum standard for how to treat me, is me. I think I’m ready. I might just be good enough for me now.

Can I take a second to make a confession? I think I’m approaching week 14 or 15 of single life, and this whole time I’ve had a secret suspicion that there’s something wrong with me. Why am I not more of a mess? Impostor Syndrome for writing this series has waxed and waned from not a thing to the dominant thing, like 400 on a scale of 1 to 4.

In all these weeks, I have not beaten myself up for being a failure or accused myself of not being worthy of love or wallowed in the idea that I’m never going to be loved because I am a useless, worthless person or that he stopped liking me because he finally saw the real me or anything like that. Not even once.

Reader, this is a miracle for me. Either that or what I’ve been afraid of this whole time is true: I’ve been suppressing my real feelings and I’m careening towards a complete breakdown. It’s all going to hit at once and I’m going to fall apart. Like, irreparably, completely apart.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think that’s it.

I take responsibility for being an imperfect partner and I spent some time wishing things had been different and really, really hurting on many levels, but not once did I turn myself against myself. Neither did I make him the villain and me the victim, because that’s not what happened.

What’s really going on here? Someone spelled it out for me a few days ago. It’s quite validating.

I have rewired my brain and I just cannot think the way I used to. It’s not possible. The wiring required to blame myself and hate myself and hide myself in shame no longer exists. It’s not on the fritz; it’s burned away completely. New wiring has come in and taken its place.

Having been coached by an amazing coach, then taken a full year to learn how to be a coach, then spending six years coaching others — the whole time applying my coaching tools and skills to my journal — has rewired me. And it has changed my relationship with myself.

I still have some work to do; the absence of abhorrence is not love and affection. Although I’m way further over on the side of love and affection for myself than I have ever been in my life, and abhorrence simply does not apply anymore, I am still learning what it means to love myself as much as I loved that man.

This is my truth: The biggest gift I received from my most recent relationship, the one that ended in heartbreak and an overwhelming sense of loss, is the chance to recognize the change and rewiring that happened while I was out there living life with that person. They were there all along, but I only really saw my gains when I had a reason to look for them.

That, my friends, is something to be well and truly grateful for. Facts.

As promised, it’s time to digress. Here’s a small list of gains I realized after the end of some toxic and abusive relationships. They’re gains from the loss of shitty relationships, where the loss of the relationship is the biggest gain. I’m including them here, JIC you need someone to see you.

Round 1 Statement —> Round 2 Gimme More —> Round 3 Investigation

• I’m grateful I never have to see them again —> I know what those red flags are all about now and why they’re so red —> I no longer have any curiosity about how to handle that kind of person. I no longer have to manage their behavior or feel weirdly proud that I ever could. And I no longer have any residual desire to try. I don’t have to prove myself or sacrifice myself to this kind of mindfuck ever again.

• I’m grateful I’m not being gaslighted anymore —> it’s a relief to not constantly question myself or fight for the right to own my own reality —> I now recognize gaslighting for what it is and walk away without a second thought. I am wise and no longer that gullible. That shit is crazymaking and I have better things to do with my brain.

• I’m grateful I learned I can do so many things on my own —> I gained a lot of skills like how to build furniture and fix broken things —> I know that I have the capacity to figure out solutions and learn how to use the tools required to build, maintain, and repair things in my home (and in my life); I’m resourceful, brave, and intelligent.

• I’m grateful for friendship —> My niceness and personability are still desirable and I’m still cute; I’m not a complete waste of time —> But do I want to be friends? I am a person worthy of their time and attention after all, but meh. I have plenty of other, better people in my life who don’t betray me with the next shiny thing. I don’t need to prove myself to anyone who left me for someone else.

• I’m grateful to not feel awkward and self-conscious anymore —> Being humiliated or made to feel like a blundering idiot in front of their friends is about their inadequacies and straight up asshole behavior —> This kind of person is not worth my time or attention. End of story.

To wrap things up, this particular journaling technique is about sitting down to acknowledge who you have grown into and taking a minute to appreciate your power and your identity.

I hesitate to call it gratitude because that word has been thrown around and overused in the cheapest ways. It’s so cringe. But that’s what acknowledging and appreciating is. It’s gratitude. Don’t tell nobody.

I hope this exercise gives you hope. And strength and confidence. All these gains, whether they’re gains over losses or gains from the actual loss, are now part of your life’s story, part of your identity. No one can take that away from you. It’s all yours. It’s who you are as a human being now.

So. Choose your favorites and lean in. You’re worth it.