1) Don’t look to your ex for answers, ever. Write down your list of questions if it helps and work through them yourself – you know everything, you have everything you need to help yourself. You do not need anything from your ex.

2) Be ever so kind to yourself, really really important. If it helps picture yourself as a child and extend the same care to yourself that you would if you were a vulnerable child. Be protective, hold yourself, be kind and patient.

3) Learn to cry alone. Sometimes. I know its hard because you just want someone to come and make it better but trust me, no one will ever be able to heal you like you can yourself. When the tears come, let them, welcome the release and don’t always rush to others for support.

4) Find something to get lost in – you will need breaks. Books are great, films sometimes work, GPYP blog, running, whatever works for you and is healthy.

5) When you really hit rock bottom, let yourself. Break – it will be the making of you if you let it.

6) When you really have nothing left, nothing left to help yourself then don’t.  Help others.  Find someone else who needs your help and take a break from your own crap to help them.  Its magic and it will help restore your energy.

7) Find things that make you feel tough, ‘Women who run with the Wolves’ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes did that for me first.  If you have not read it, do.  Other things along the way for me were journalling, running, talking to people, writing on the GPYP blog, volunteering etc.  It took a long time, but eventually they started to restore me to life.

8) Believe that healing is possible, please.  Cos it really is.  One day you will look back and be shocked as to how low the lows were.  It will not always hurt like this

9) Find something to make you smile, it doesn’t have to be for long. It doesn’t have to be often at the start but everynow and then make it your mission to smile.

10) Don’t feel ashamed.  Own your own crap, not theirs.

This book is a simple and beautiful account of a complex journey.

I read it and felt connected to his experience somehow.  My relationship came to an end, there was no death.  But grief is grief and i understood his experience so acutely.

The book is very short and charts C.S.Lewis’ journey from when his wife dies and he is angry, to the point where is loses his faith in God to the point where he finds it again and realises himself on a whole new level.

I can’t convey why you should read this book properly, so instead here is a flavour of his quotes and the things they made me think about.

ON GRIEF

‘Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything’

‘There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place i can’t avoid.  I mean my own body.  It had such a different importance while it was the body of H’s lover.  Now its like an empty house’

ON HIS BELIEF IN GOD

“The case is plain.  If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards”

later he says

“…if my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was knocked down the better”

I love that quote, Lewis is talking about his faith in God.  For me it applies to my faith in myself.  If i was really that ready, really that happy would i have had the same experience to T that i had.  Would i have let go earlier? Does that make me a better person? 
“Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and merely notional beliefs.  He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth.  Only under torture does he discover himself”

A man like him, for certain – a woman like me.  If i had not met him would i have been granted these insights into myself?  Or would i have carried on with this general sense of disatisfaction with life, not knowing how deep it went or what to do about it.  Has this set me on a different better path towards myself?

ON FINDING GOD

‘My idea of God is not the divine idea.  It has to be shattered time after time.  He shatters it Himself.  He is the great iconolast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?’

‘ The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.  A cruel man might be bribed – might grow tired of his vile sport – might have a temporary fit of mercy as alcoholics have fits of sobriety,  But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.  The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless’

Have a go and see where it takes you.  If you want to share feel free

……………………………………………………………………………………

Im sad about next Friday, if we had stayed together it would have been our anniversary.

Why does that make you sad?

Cos I feel like im missing out on being with him, like my life was better when I was with him.  I feel sad that he doesn’t want to spend that special day with me as his girl.

Why do you feel like you are missing out?

Cos he just threw me out of his life with no real explanation or time.  He just withdrew and treated me like I was nothing.  Its made me feel worthless and like im worth nothing – that’s why he rejected me

Why do you feel like you’re worth nothing?

Cos I’ve always felt like that, at my very core I’ve felt not good enough all my life.  To have him confirm that after I let him in so far, its like a whole new source of pain has been cut loose.  I never let anyone in before, certainly not so far. So rejection from him hurts more than I could have imagined.

Why don’t you feel good enough?

Cos I grew up always being made to feel like there was something wrong with me, everything was criticised.  I learnt to make myself tough by not feeling.  I’ve achieved so much in my life but it all seems empty at the moment, nothing feels real.  I hurt.

Why don’t you value your achievements?

I learnt to stop feeling, I just did.  I achieved cos I had no other choice I just did it and did it and did it.  Now I feel everything, every tiny emotion.  Every emotional flaw is under a microscope.  I don’t value them cos they can’t be anything that special if the person I let in looked around at what he saw and didn’t value it enough to stay.  He saw my achievements and chucked me away like I was nothing.

Sometimes my brain will run off into fantasies of us getting back together, you know ‘the grand reunion scene’ that only happens in the movies.  I try to remember this song then as it reminds me of the crap that my rose tinted brain can block out sometimes.  It reminds me of the moments i was so tried of feeling worthless/pain/hurt/raw/upset/ashamed/rejected that i would go out and pound the streets running, anything that would get him out of my head for a while.  I replaced nonsense romantic notions of a reunion (thats never gonna happen) with me shouting this song out at my ex and it helped.  Sometimes drumming up a bit of anger is exactly whats needed to take the glasses off.

My advice?  Find songs you can take some measure of strength from.  Put the sad love songs down and step away, find more.  Find you.

“Better Do Better”

Oh I’m back up off the floor,
and I won’t get hurt no more,
I’ve been waiting for this day when,
you’ll be back here with your lies,
I hope you realise…

Say something, say something…
Say something, say something…

I do it a diservice, its not a negative book.  Its not a sad tale.  Its the account of a lifetime of lessons learned.  Its an attempt to tell the stories that made up a life cut short.  Its a story of love.  Its the story of a father.

You can google it for the story theme etc but let me just say this, you really need to read this book.  Its made me think of my own stories, what stories do i have to tell? where did i learn life’s lessons?  I don’t think anyone could read a book like this and not consider their own version so to speak.

To leave such a legacy, its awesome.

A thought occured to me.  His daughter, although she will never know him, she will feel his love.  He has set everything up to ensure that happens.  I’ve had my father in my life always and yet he is a stranger to me in every sense that it matters.  When he needed to be there for me, he wasn’t.  His attempts now, they are never consistent and they never make me feel loved.  When Randy talks about his daughter he says that he wants her to know that ‘he was the first man to ever fall in love with her’.

He daughter will never know him yet she will feel his love. I’ve always had my father and NEVER felt any love from him.  Along with Randy’s story, this is what broke my heart.

Read this book.  Make good stories.

On the GPYP site there has been alot of talk about the Little/Big excercise lately so i wanted to share my experience of it.

So first off, what is it?

Its based on the principle that we all have a child within us, often a child who needs help or who we have lost touch with.  Its called Seperation Therapy to the Doctors here.  Its about having a dialogue with yourself.

The Anderson book goes into alot of detail which i would suggest you check out but in brief…..

STEP ONE – Create a vivid pic of your abandoned child, pic yourself as a child of about four and imagine yourself observing this child.  This child embodies your needs and feelings.

STEP TWO – Visualise yourself as an adult.  If thats hard then think about yourself doing something you are good at.

STEP THREE – You are now in a triangle, the adult you (BIG), the child you (LITTLE) and of course you as you are now.

• Little’s job is to express feelings, your most basic fears/dreams and hopes/fears as a child would
• Big’s job is to provide Little with what she needs, belonging, praise, time, attention and love.  Kinda like a good parent.
• Your job is to be the mediator and conduct the dialogue with yourself.  When you are Little you speak like Little would.  When you are Big you speak like Big would

Believe me, no one was more skeptical than me about this.  If you are sitting here thinking ‘hah like thats gonna work, im not a child!’ trust me, i was there too.  But give it a go.  If its not for you then you haven’t lost anything.

I’ve done the excercise in paper format twice (detailed below).  I also find it useful to try and keep in touch with myself by doing it in my head when im in the car sometimes or when im just not sure how im feeling.

CONVERSATION 1 – 31st July 2008

Little: Im not good enough.  Im not special to anyone.  T left cos im ugly.

Big: You’re special to me.  T would always have left.  Its his pattern.  We have each other now and i will never leave you.

Little: Never?

Big: Never, you are the most important person in the world to me.

CONVERSATION 2 – 10th August 2008

Little:  Im scared

Big: Why?

Little: Im scared this will always happen to us – that we will never be good enough.  That people will always leave.  Im scared we won’t ever get better

Big: I’ll never leave you

Little: Yes you will – even now sometimes you can’t hear me.  You forget about me.  You put me away for so long and ignored me.  You think im weak and pathetic.  YOU don’t even want me.

Big: Im sorry, im so sorry that i ignored you.  I didn’t mean too.  I didn’t realise how important you are to me.  I can’t be happy without you.  Its hard sometimes, i don’t want to ignore you.  I just find it hard to find you sometimes.  Help me.  I won’t ever try to shut you up again.

Little: How can i believe you?

Big: I will prove it to you.  Now that i have found you i don’t ever want to live without you again.  I can’t be happy unless you are happy too.

Little: Promise?

Big: Promise, cross my heart xxx

(I just spotted something, when little says that she thinks Big thinks she is weak and pathetic, Big never denys this. Ouch)

Anyway, i wish anyone doing this the best of luck.  For me it was useful cos when i imagined Little i let her have a voice, i did not censor her cos she was a child so to speak.  You let a child get away with more simple (and thus core) truths that you would an adult.  I did not judge Little as weak cos she was a child and allowed to feel like that.  Ultimately, it’s let me access a part of me that im not sure i had before, or at least not for a long time.

For those wanting more detail try Susan Andersons book (Page 102 – 115) or you can try ‘Big you Little you: Seperation Therapy’ by Richard Roberteiello and Grace Kirsten.  I’ve not read it but Anderson describes it as Groundbreaking.

How have you got on?  If you want to share then do.

“We are reminded again and again of the power of this great feeling.  There is drawing power in tears, and within the tear itself, powerful images that guide us.  Tears not only represent feeling but are also lenses through which we gain an alternative vision, another point of view”

“We have all made the mistake of thinking someone else can be our healer, our thriller, our filling.  It takes a long time to find it is not so, mostly because we project the wound outside instead of ministering to it within”

“You can dent the soul and bend it.  You can hurt it and scar it.  You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and the scorch marks of fear.  But it does not die, for it is protected by La Loba in the underworld.  She is both the finder and the incubator of the bones”

To me this represents defying the odds, defying the easy path and making your own – something i think we can all identify with.  After my ex left i listened to this song on repeat for weeks and took strength from it.

GLINDA 
Elphie, listen to me. Just say you’re sorry:
You can still be with the Wizard
What you’ve worked and waited for
You can have all you ever wanted:

ELPHABA
I know:
But I don’t want it -
No – I can’t want it
Anymore

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules
Of someone else’s game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

It’s time to try
Defying gravity
I think I’ll try
Defying gravity
And you can’t pull me down!

GLINDA
Can’t I make you understand?
You’re having delusions of grandeur:

ELPHABA
I’m through accepting limits
”cause someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I’ll never know!
Too long I’ve been afraid of
Losing love I guess I’ve lost
Well, if that’s love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I’d sooner try
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I’m defying gravity
And you can’t pull me down!

I wish moments of clarity and strength like this for everyone who needs it.