I love the above quote because it is true. It’s all the advice I read when I was struggling, and in the end, it was the only thing that worked. Trying to manifest things back failed. Making a love altar in the northeast corner of my apartment failed. Even crying for weeks in a therapist’s office and retelling the story failed. Nothing worked until, on the night of my birthday, I sat up straight and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I have to let go; I have to move on.” After that, and only after that, did the other stuff begin to work.
You have to make the decision that you’re going to live through it.
Even if something has happened and you hate that it’s happened, acceptance is a non-negotiable part of the process. From acceptance, you can kick your way back to the surface. But you can’t paddle through the murky depths of what’s happened if you’re in denial, or you think it’s a mistake, or you think it’ll change if you just hang on.
I saw this image on Pinterest last night and thought about sharing it with you guys, and then I got an email in my inbox this morning with several links on grief.
“Got it,” I thought, “I’m supposed to go say hi to them.” 🙂
So…hi!
Here’s a great link on the 3 Kinds of Grief Nobody Talks About. This is a good one for those going through a breakup because it can often feel like someone has died, when in reality, the person you’ve loved for so long has just changed drastically.
And here’s another one on How Love Helps the Brain Recover from Grief. (It so does! This is why I tell you guys to go out and date people even when you don’t want to!)
What else is going on? Well, we’re in the third trimester over here, with less than 10 weeks to go before baby V comes and less than 8 weeks left of work. (WHAT?!) It’s freaky. On one hand, pregnancy feels as though it lasts forever. On the other, it zooms by in an instant. Most days, it hasn’t even hit me; I just think that, you know, this is my new reality: I’m just pregnant. It doesn’t usually sink in that there’s a baby at the end of this journey! Other days I look in the nursery and I am like, “Holy SHIT, a baby is gonna be here soon.”
Slowly, the nursery is coming together. Not everything matches (the gray rocking chair + the gold pillows + the brown in the rug = eeeeek), but I just fell in love with that rug and I can’t bear to return it, so I’ll figure it out. My mom is coming over to paint one of the walls this weekend!
I’ve been good the last few weeks at savoring time by myself, sleeping in when I have the opportunity (knowing that’ll be soon gone), talking over my fears with C, throwing myself into work and seeing friends as much as I can. Freedom is one of my core values, so I am expressing it as much as I can, knowing that it’ll look really different soon. I’m also realistic with myself and I know that freedom will be back one day (and then I’ll probably miss the long days I got to spend with my little nugget).
The other thing that happened recently that’s amazing is that I got to goal coach some of lululemon’s partners in this incredible house in the Hollywood Hills.
“Wait a second,” you’re saying. “You never mentioned that you’re a goal coach?!”
Haha, yeah. I love goal-setting and always have. In my early twenties, I would hand-write my weekly and monthly goals and tape them above my bed. There was a strange magic to writing it down and I was captivated by watching goals materialize. Much later on, when I heard that all lululemon employees receive goal coaching as part of their on-boarding, it’s what made me want to apply to the company. Fast-forward almost four years (I can’t believe June 22nd is my fourth anniversary with the company!), and I’ve been goal coaching employees, and now, non-employees, using their system for a couple of years now! Recently, I’ve gotten to do it a LOT. I love it…it totally lights me up inside!
But this was the biggest opportunity I’ve had by far, and my gosh, it was just incredible! I loved connecting with these amazing human beings! Photos below.
This is the house in the hills. It is literally my dream house.
These are the incredible business owners I had the pleasure of spending two days with, talking about their biggest wants and dreams.
On the second day we were visited by Energy Muse for a meditation + crystal reading, and we even got to make our own bracelets using precious stones. It was SUCH a cool experience and I highly recommend looking them up. I treasure my bracelet and have been wearing it everyday! (When I saw this photo I thought, “Oh cute, who’s that pregnant lady?” before I realized that I’M the pregnant lady!)
All of us wearing our bracelets! My hand is in the top left corner. 🙂 I picked stones symbolizing love, adventure, clarity and abundance. I thought this could be such a cool experience for someone going through a tough time: picking stones to represent healing and then wearing the bracelet until the grief has passed.
That’s what’s been going on around here!
I’ve been interacting with some of you in the comments recently. Please know that even though I’m not updating weekly, that I still read every single comment and think of you all the time. True, I’m still not answering (most) comments about break-ups and exes. Please know I’m not doing that to be mean. I just need to stick by the commitment I made to interact with you on a different level. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. ❤ I care a lot!
The next post you see on here will probably be a baby announcement! (EEK!) Wish me luck!
small life, slow life 
Jen,
What a great update! I wanted to update you on a really cool experience that I have been doing. I am embarking on El Camino de Santiago with my former classmates. We are walking a total of 70 miles in 6 days. Yes, it sounds crazy, but I feel so honored to be walking along such a famous route that many people have walked before me. If you don’t know, El Camino de Santiago, is a famous (originally Catholic) pilgrimage. It was created by Saint James the Apostle. If you get the chance, you should definitely do it. Yes, it’s a lot of walking, but it’s great to see other walkers and hear their stories. Everyone is so nice and the cities are so beautiful. Most are really small and full of so much culture. It’s definitely a great way to live slow!
Lots of love to you and baby to be!!
Oh my gosh, that is the coolest thing I’ve heard in a really long time! And I imagine it will be so cathartic too. Will you please post/send photos of your experience?!
❤️
Another great post,Jen!
It’s lovely to come here and read your post from time to time. But guess what, I used to come here with a total broken heart, reading your blog over and over again, hoping for someone who doesn’t even deserve to be in my life to come back to me. And now what, I could care less about that person. The pain is gone, just like when I finally learned to move on and let go.
Take a good care of yourself and the little baby inside your tummy.
And last but not least, please continue to keep us being inspired.
Send you lots of love.
Annie
What a beautiful comment to receive. ❤ Thank you, Annie! The pain really is removed after a while, like magic. It just feels very permanent while going through it.
I will keep writing here. I hope you keep reading. xoxoxo
Jen
Hi Jen,
I love this post! I’m a HUGE fan of lululemon – not just the fact that I have WAY too many of their clothes haha but the company as a whole. Very envious of your job 🙂 Thank you for writing so much about letting go. I finally decided to cut mental ties with my ex and accept that its over, which is extremely difficult after 7 years together. I have a strong intuition he’s hanging out with a girl he works with. I don’t think he has it in his heart for it to be serious since I saw him 3 weeks ago and he told me he was still a mess and crying to me that he still doesn’t feel like himself…its been 7 months since we broke up. But its time I start living my life – I even went on a first date yesterday for the first time in 7 years! I just hate getting these crazy signs still about him and this gut feeling its not over, but i’m pushing past it. I know you were dating someone when C came back…do you think if the roll was reversed and he dated someone and it didn’t work out but came back, you would be able to take him back? I’m not moving on hoping that he comes back, but just curious how you would have handled him being with someone else. It may help ease some of the sickness I have in my stomach knowing he may be seeing someone…
Thank you again for your transparent posts on the reality of break ups an moving on!
I’ve thought about what I would have done if the roles were reversed, and the truth is that I don’t know. I think if he had moved on with someone else with the emotional intensity that I experienced, that it would have been impossible for me to take him back. As things were, it was already very hard to rebuild the trust just from him leaving. It took so many months of talking + six months of counseling. But everyone is different so you shouldn’t base your experience off of mine! The important thing for you is to keep pushing forward the way you have been!
CC – I am a strong believer in signs – and actually have a really strong connection to the angelic realm (I had a light show in my room one night after lots and lots of crying.)
I too received a lot of signs (especially in the form of repeating numbers) that my ex and I were going to get back together and “just knew” we would. But we didn’t. In hindsight I realize the signs (and my feelings) were only there to help move me through the pain – when I saw a sign I could relax a little and with that was able to eat and sleep and get myself out of the house (all those things my body / mind /spirit needed to heal). And when I got to a place where I didn’t need the signs and feelings anymore, they disappeared.
As a highly intuitive person it was hard to understand how I could have been so wrong about the situation and there were times when I felt let down by the universe / my angels but I am so so SO GRATEFUL my signs and feelings were wrong and that I didn’t get back with my ex.
I hope you’ve continued to heal. xo
Sara,
I cannot even begin to tell you the shivers I got when reading your comment…I have moved through the pain of my breakup and feel very happy for the first time in a long time, of course I still miss him in my life, but I’m happy and have been hanging out with someone who makes me see that things happen for a reason. Strangely, over the last couple days, I have been thinking about all the signs I saw that I believed indicated I would get back with my ex and felt disappointed by how wrong I was. But I also had the same realization that those “signs” helped a tremendous amount during a very difficult time. There would be times I would be crying hysterically while driving (so unsafe) and then would look up and there would be a car in front of me with a sticker on the back of the university my ex went to and like magic, I would feel a sense of relief and stop crying. Or I was at a store and felt my anxiety and tears build and then out of no where, the song playing caught my attention – it was the song playing from when we first kissed. Moments like those happened very often and I am grateful for them. But now I just wonder what are true “signs” from my angels/universe and what are just “coincidences” Im looking for?!
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment – I truly appreciate your words. Especially coming at a time when I have grown and healed and was thinking the same exact thing! Now thats a sign 🙂
Hi CC, so glad my comment resonated. I haven’t been on this site in months but felt a strong inclination to come on last night and a strong push to comment on your comment. And then as I was going to bed after commenting I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye and knew I did the right thing by following my intuition and commenting. I think this is a perfect example of the saying, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” and I love that!
Re: True signs vs. Coincidences – I don’t believe there is such thing as a coincidence – from my experiences the universe / angels / guides / always have your back and when they “see” you in such pain they will send what you need in that moment to feel better.
A month after my relationship ended I had to get myself on a plane for a 2 week trip to Scotland. What was suppose to be the trip of my life was consumed by extreme sadness for my ex. A few days into the trip I asked my angels to give me a sign that everything was going to work out and right in front of me drove three (3!!!) cars with the license plate number 222 (222 means ‘have faith’). I said “thank you” and asked to be shown one more 222 if that was my sign. Right then I stepped out into the street and almost got run over by a car with a 222 on its front plate. The 222s followed me the rest of the trip. When I got home I had to move back to my university town (where my ex was) and I plummeted into a deep sadness again. We live in Canada and my Mom always finds dimes as her ‘signs’ and on my moving day my Mom walked down the hall of my apartment and picked up what she thought was a dime to give it to me. I looked at it and noticed it was a Scottish 5-pence and not a Canadian dime – which was super eerie because I made a point to leave all my Scottish coins at the airport in Scotland. I knew it was my angels reminding me that everything was going to work out. I taped that coin to my wall so I would always remember that moment. You’d think these obvious signs meant my ex and I were MEANT to get back together – but they only meant that I was incredibly supported and everything was going to be OK. Signs and synchronicities are beautiful but don’t let them dictate your actions – if I stayed convinced my ex and I were going to get back together because of my signs I would have never taken the leap to apply to school in Sweden and through that met a new (and better suited) love. Be open to whatever comes next and remember: “some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.” XO
I was thinking of you and thought I’d check in to see if you were still writing – so glad you are! I don’t know if you remember me but I found you exactly a year ago (!!!) and as I sit here reading through your most recent posts I can’t help but have tremendous gratitude for you. It might sound silly but I have a really hard time remembering the pain I was in… but I do remember very clearly reaching rock bottom and asking for help a few minutes before finding your site.
A few months after my breakup I started to live by the quote “raise your standards and the universe will meet you there” by Danielle LaPorte and things have turned out so beautifully. I’ve met a new love that has all the traits / behaviours / hobbies and passions that I wished my ex had… full proof of the power of the law of attraction. More importantly though — I’ve been accepted to do my Masters in Sweden (!!!) and will be heading there in August 🙂
Thanks again, and so much love to you and your blossoming family!! You’re already an amazing Mom!
Sara
Of course I remember you! It made me whole day to get this comment. And I absolutely love Danielle LaPorte, I’m glad that’s your mantra! How amazing to be studying in Sweden and I am not at ALL surprised that you met someone in line with what you envisioned for yourself. ❤ So happy for you, Sara!