H.a.h.r.p.

[Wild_Honey_66]

Welcome to Honey's Aggressive Heartbreak Recovery Program! Or, HAHRP.

No harpy jokes, please.

This afternoon I am going to collect my things from the guy I've been seeing since last summer. After I close the door on that chapter, it's full steam ahead into my glorious future!

For the next six weeks, I vow to:

*Handle some business I've been putting off (dentist, etc.)
*Invest in relationships that I value
*Declutter my house
*Read more
*Write every day
*Eat less sugar
*Move my body
*Make actual phone calls to people I love
*Cook with my children
*Walk my dog
*Try new things
*Do art
*Sing!
*And whatever else seems worthwhile

I am anticipating a rewarding time of self-reflection, personal growth and development, and six weeks hence, i expect that I will be able to look back and be grateful for the motivation to clear some dead wood out of my life and bring in some new energy that will better suit my goals and life purpose.

Yay me!

Please join me on my journey, I appreciate conversation and feedback, even when I'm not always great at responding.

 

[gracie920101]

I'm sorry that you are going through a breakup but you will become stronger for it even though it may not seem so at the moment.

I love seeing aggressive goals!

I'll applaud each and every one that you accomplish because I'm so lame when it comes to meeting my own.

For instance, my decluttering the house has been ongoing for about 6 years! Don't follow my example, please?

 

[pfflyerhot]

Hey! I've been missing you!

Impressive list and I support you full heartily. I feel like you, Honey, can do anything you want to do; You've got the moxie... and a glorious future is certain.
Hang tough and keep loving yourself! Yay you, indeed! Best wishes on your journey.
PS: Funny. Like gracie, I've been trying to unclutter my house, purge my belonging for the last six years, too. I've made a little progress, but now, thanks to this thread, I'm inspired to really get to it.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

You guys.

Thank you for being here.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

Music?

Not angry, but not soft, either.

Calm and sure. Hopeful.

Got anything for me?

 

[Moochienanu]

 

[barefootgirl69]

I love that you've put a time frame around it. It makes it seem less daunting. You've been growing so much this past year and I'm watching and learning from it.

Self reflection is never a bad thing.
I'll be with you on your journey!

 

[cookiecat]

https://youtu.be/Cvrzqcfv9mY

This song helped me through some dark nights

Colin Hay - Waiting for My Real Life to Begin

Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
I'll stand on the bow
Feel the waves come crashing
Come crashing down down down, on me
And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in
But don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin
When I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened
But in my dreams, I slew the dragon
And down this beaten path, up this cobbled lane
I'm walking in my old footsteps, once again
And you say, just be here now
Forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin
Just let me throw one more dice
I know that I can win
I'm waiting for my real life to begin
Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
And I'll check my machine, there's sure to be that call
It's gonna happen soon, soon, oh so very soon
It's just that times are lean
And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart, let the light shine
Don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin
On a clear day I can see, see for a long way

 

[cookiecat]

https://youtu.be/KJqL1yIm9e0

Brandi Carlisle - The Joke

I saw her for the first time on TV at the Grammy's. It was this performance. I was floored. I just watched itand I still get goosebumps!


And the lyrics... the joke's on them. It works.

 

[hotoldrguy]

hope this helps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqR8zO0vpG8

 

[ToPleaseHim]

Love your goals and approach, Honey. You got this!

 

[gracie920101]

No music. Poetry.
Merritt Malloy helped me through a lot of tough spots in my 20s and 30s.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

Thanks everyone.
I listened to all the songs and added the poetry book to my Amazon wish list.

My girls and I just finished watching Enchanted. It was sweet and funny and lighthearted, perfect for tonight. And, you know, Patrick Dempsey.

I'm off to read, and then early to bed. Goodnight!

 

[cookiecat]

One of the things I've been mulling on since you started this post was how I tend to get lost in a relationship, with a lot of my focus going to my partner and to us. Sometimes I lose me.

I am reminded how putting those steady things in my life first, the things I love - ME, friends, family, being outdoors, hanging out with friends, exploring my city, reading, music - and incorporating my new partner in to those things. I tend to let things slide as I put my energy in to the new relationship.

It's hard to do when the partner and the relationship are new and sparkly.

Anyways. Good post, Honey! It does my heart happy to know you're here; because of that, you've (once again) reminded me of some good stuff I will attend to as well.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

One of the things I've been mulling on since you started this post was how I tend to get lost in a relationship, with a lot of my focus going to my partner and to us. Sometimes I lose me.

I am reminded how putting those steady things in my life first, the things I love - ME, friends, family, being outdoors, hanging out with friends, exploring my city, reading, music - and incorporating my new partner in to those things. I tend to let things slide as I put my energy in to the new relationship.

It's hard to do when the partner and the relationship are new and sparkly.

Anyways. Good post, Honey! It does my heart happy to know you're here; because of that, you've (once again) reminded me of some good stuff I will attend to as well.

Yes! I've done that! The losing myself. With almost everyone I've been involved with. And when things ended, there wasn't much left of me.

I've been very intentional about not doing that with this guy. It's been hard work, and deeply ingrained patterns are hard to break free of, but i feel I've done a good job this time around. I'm feeling the pinch of his absence much less than if I were still the person I was even two years ago.

In the beginning, I spent lots of time going to him, waiting for him, getting butthurt when he wasn't giving me enough attention, expecting him to read my mind, etc. Falling back into the only way I'd ever known to 'do' a relationship. But I'm not the same girl I was in those other relationships! THANK GOD.

A couple of months in, I started getting a hold of myself and going back to living my life first, and being with him after that. Sitting on the couch at his house, bored watching TV? I got up and went home and did something I enjoyed more. He wasn't doing something I wanted/needed? I opened my mouth and asked him for it. He was busy with his own life? I didn't wait for him to call, and I didn't sit around fretting about it, I happily got on with my own activities.

Eventually, he'd get a hold of me if we'd been out of touch for three days, and that felt great. Giving him enough space to want to reconnect, and feeling good about maintaining my separate self during our time apart. We even came to the mutual conclusion that we are not good bed buddies, and I stopped spending the night after sex. No hard feelings, we actually laughed about it.

So when it came time for me to return to life without him, I still had a life to return to. I expect there will be difficult days, but not the emotional devastation that I've experienced in the past. My local friends are telling me that they're proud of me for not letting the ending drag out and get ugly, and I know that I've grown.

I have finally created a life for myself that I want to be in more than I want to be in a relationship that isn't working, and that's saying a lot. It's a good place to be.

I'm glad you're here, too, and I'm glad you're happy.

 

[ultramarineblue]

Yes! I've done that! The losing myself. With almost everyone I've been involved with. And when things ended, there wasn't much left of me.

I've been very intentional about not doing that with this guy. It's been hard work, and deeply ingrained patterns are hard to break free of, but i feel I've done a good job this time around. I'm feeling the pinch of his absence much less than if I were still the person I was even two years ago.

In the beginning, I spent lots of time going to him, waiting for him, getting butthurt when he wasn't giving me enough attention, expecting him to read my mind, etc. Falling back into the only way I'd ever known to 'do' a relationship. But I'm not the same girl I was in those other relationships! THANK GOD.

A couple of months in, I started getting a hold of myself and going back to living my life first, and being with him after that. Sitting on the couch at his house, bored watching TV? I got up and went home and did something I enjoyed more. He wasn't doing something I wanted/needed? I opened my mouth and asked him for it. He was busy with his own life? I didn't wait for him to call, and I didn't sit around fretting about it, I happily got on with my own activities.

Eventually, he'd get a hold of me if we'd been out of touch for three days, and that felt great. Giving him enough space to want to reconnect, and feeling good about maintaining my separate self during our time apart. We even came to the mutual conclusion that we are not good bed buddies, and I stopped spending the night after sex. No hard feelings, we actually laughed about it.

So when it came time for me to return to life without him, I still had a life to return to. I expect there will be difficult days, but not the emotional devastation that I've experienced in the past. My local friends are telling me that they're proud of me for not letting the ending drag out and get ugly, and I know that I've grown.

I have finally created a life for myself that I want to be in more than I want to be in a relationship that isn't working, and that's saying a lot. It's a good place to be.

I'm glad you're here, too, and I'm glad you're happy.

I really needed to read this. I’m going to also join you on making some goals like you have in the first post.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Music?

Not angry, but not soft, either.

Calm and sure. Hopeful.

Got anything for me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLj7S1QShdk

Maybe a bit soft.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLj7S1QShdk

Maybe a bit soft.

Beautiful, thank you. . I never would have discovered that on my own.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

Music request for today: passionate, lyrical, heartfelt. Inspired by Brambly's contribution, above.

https://youtu.be/tQMKGcvMQME



I'm in a good place this morning. Peaceful. The further I get from how things were, the more I realize how much I had compromised, and how much stress it brought into my life.

There are moments I feel like a traitor, leaving him. I think that's my own abandonment issues. But I also realize that the most loving thing I can do for myself is to release him and the baggage he brings.

Social media talks about self-care like it's all bubble baths and new purses (and I'm a big fan of both), but I think this is self-care, too.

 

[cascadiabound]

Just want chime in and say I'm proud of you for your obvious growth.
Good on you. I posted about self care on the Dlg thread some weeks back. I'll find it and repost here in hopes it might be useful to you and others.

Great list of goals.
You can do whatever you put your mind to.
Take care of you. Always.

cb

 

[cascadiabound]

Came across this thoughtful bit of writing and thought it belonged here.
**********************

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
-Brianna Wiest

Selfcare has been somewhat elusive to me this year, but still, I am mindful of the importance of and huge variability of what self care means... today I saw the eye doctor for routine eye care and updated glasses Rx. definitely not a particularly sexy activity, but definitely self care.

cb

 

[Bramblethorn]

Beautiful, thank you. . I never would have discovered that on my own.

The rest of that album (Ghosts V) has a similar kind of mood to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qm9SV0nuTQ

Music request for today: passionate, lyrical, heartfelt. Inspired by Brambly's contribution, above.

Not sure if this is today's song, but it's for one of these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13jLDyjIB7U

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

Making myself check in today.
It's been three weeks since I've seen him and I'm a little sad, and feeling quiet.
I miss him.

Work is busy, so that's helpful. And it's good for me to have people here to touch base with, as well. It keeps me from isolating myself as much as i would naturally be inclined to.

 

[cascadiabound]

Cassie, may I steal this?

Of course. Original author attributed.

 

[cascadiabound]

Making myself check in today.
It's been three weeks since I've seen him and I'm a little sad, and feeling quiet.
I miss him.

Work is busy, so that's helpful. And it's good for me to have people here to touch base with, as well. It keeps me from isolating myself as much as i would naturally be inclined to.

It's completely understandable to feel sad.