00:00:00: Music.

00:00:07: Anybody I'm sending a short little announcement ahead today so The Following episode which is The Break-Up part 2.

00:00:15: Actually was recorded several months ago as was part 1 in case you've listened to the previous episode A lot has happened in the meantime thankfully.

00:00:25: And one of those things is that I've started a new job that requires me to work quite a few more hours than I was used to in as most of you know.

00:00:35: This podcast has been more of a hobby than anything else I've never,

00:00:39: had any sort of financial support or even ask for some financial support for it so for now I'm going to go on a little bit of a Hiatus but don't worry as soon as my batteries are a little recharged again I'm happy too.

00:00:54: Reach out to you and hopefully gather some more

00:00:58: really juicy and fun conversation topics when we get there until then enjoy this episode and let me know how and if it worked for you sending lots of love,

00:01:09: hey everybody welcome back to another episode of bitch breathe my name is ricardia,

00:01:16: today we're going to continue our conversation about breaking up this is the second episode.

00:01:22: For that particular topic if you like you can go back and listen to the previous episode but you can also just listen to this one as they do speak about the same subject but they don't necessarily build upon each other.

00:01:37: So today I want to talk more about the.

00:01:41: Feelings are how to get through the feelings of The Break-Up in the last episode it was more about tools to

00:01:48: really get through it on a day-to-day basis maybe some very concrete actions we can take to a company as through this time but in this episode I'm going to be focusing a little bit more on what we do,

00:02:00: with the inner World while The Break-Up is happening

00:02:05: but first of all I did have some more tools that I wanted to share with you that I thought were very practical nature but very helpful to me so this one might seem very obvious this tool number one which is get out of the house,

00:02:19: for me when The Break-Up first occurred it seemed very natural to stay at home all the time because I mean who wants to walk around with a crying face

00:02:29: all the time and might constantly looked like I had just cried because I had and I didn't want to be out I didn't want to be exposed to other people's energies and emotions and

00:02:41: in fact when I was it would often happen that I would cry in public I've mentioned this at another time in one of my episodes that I would have rather like shot myself in the foot

00:02:50: before then get caught crying

00:02:52: in front of people or in any public place but that would happen a lot and I would just fall apart all the time and didn't want to really good out of the house but the truth is getting out of the house totally switched up the energy.

00:03:05: Because of the distractions because of these other people and I was so grateful to have a job to go to sometimes because we would talk about things that had nothing to do with what I was going through in my life and even if the subject did come up,

00:03:20: I always found that I spoke to people who really got it who said things that I never knew about them.

00:03:28: I remember specifically I work as a voice artist a lot also and I remember speaking to the owner of this voiceover studio and I had known this guy for years but

00:03:40: somehow we got to talking about breakups and I mentioned that I had just gone through mine it had only been a few months if that.

00:03:47: And suddenly he was saying all these things that I thought was so compassionate and.

00:03:52: I saw this whole new side of this person someone hand professionally only connected to and I thought Jesus what a gift to be this vulnerable with other

00:04:03: people because it turns out it's okay and you're probably safe and that does bring me to my second point the vulnerability,

00:04:12: I have to say if there's one.

00:04:16: Prize and there have been many many many but if there is one prize of breaking up and becoming so raw and so emotional

00:04:27: it was a newly found vulnerability for me,

00:04:30: I've been raised in a rather strict fashion and in a Christian tradition so you pull yourself together by your bootstraps or whatever that is and you.

00:04:42: Don't let people know you're hurting you

00:04:45: carry yourself well my grandmother was an incredibly elegant lady and would have never she wouldn't literally been caught dead showing tears in a public place so for me too.

00:04:58: Become that degree of vulnerable which was involuntary but was definitely there was a real gift and one that I've cultivated and tried to maintain even all these years after this specific break-up and that really.

00:05:13: Really opened up new friendships perspectives and it gave me,

00:05:19: another reason to live when this breakup occurred I really was kind of stuck for reasons to go on I wasn't suicidal and anyway I would.

00:05:30: I don't think I'd ever consider that especially because I'm a mom and a daughter but I will say that there were some very very dark moments when I didn't see what's the point here

00:05:42: really what's the point if all I'm waiting for is more pain and age on top of everything else then I don't know what we're doing here.

00:05:50: So vulnerability was really a way for me to engage in new ways with life and the people that populated it.

00:05:59: That I cannot overemphasize how good that was.

00:06:03: Newly gained vulnerability am a huge fan and if you're still not convinced do please I've mentioned her before listen to Bernie Brown on that particular subject.

00:06:14: Tool number 3 a little more on the mundane side but very very important to me I started to devour.

00:06:22: A certain kind of literature genre of course and what else would it be but the genre of grief.

00:06:30: Letting go and separation and to be honest I even read books about people whose spouses had.

00:06:38: Passed on had actually died and not to compare these two.

00:06:44: Experiences in any way but the loss of this person I believe that the Dynamics that then step into place the emotional web of.

00:06:55: Aftermath if you will this whole web of of what happens next and how that is in context with other things it's it's very similar I think I will.

00:07:05: Speculate there and so I for example read Sheryl sandberg's book on when her spouse suddenly died and I read

00:07:14: what else was it I thought I'll probably pop it in the show notes but Pema chodron I think that's how you pronounce her name When Things Fall Apart and there are a bunch of other books that were really really helpful because

00:07:26: with heartache we all often feel or maybe this is just me but I don't think so that were alone with this,

00:07:32: that nobody could possibly possibly understand the pain that we hold in these little physical bodies of ours and to read about.

00:07:42: Other people who had gone through this was so comforting and so helpful and the language that they found around it.

00:07:49: Was also helpful to me because sometimes I literally was lost for words.

00:07:54: The emotions that were going on with so big that I thought how am I going to explain this this is a thing a monster.

00:08:02: In some way certainly a living organism and I don't even know how to label that so reading these books was really really helpful to me.

00:08:10: And that said this brings me to Tool number three is to redirect the energy and reading those books was part of that redirect the energy

00:08:19: into other relationships so in the previous episode on this issue I talked about how my friendships deepened so.

00:08:29: Significantly that there was no comparison with the four before and after their level of Engagement was such a different one and I to this day I've also

00:08:41: really try to maintain this kind of depth with my friends that if anyone is bullshiting their way around a difficult subject we call each other on it gently depending on your friends they might not all be gentle

00:08:54: mine aren't and maybe I'm not either sometimes but to really.

00:08:58: Dig deeper when we notice there's something else that you're not saying or something else that you haven't identified yet and so redirecting all this energy that now has been freed up because this other.

00:09:11: If it was that kind of relationship best friend and confident is now gone and no longer available to us and the most important relationship you probably guessed it that you're going to direct this energy,

00:09:22: into is the one towards you I don't think there's any way to over stress this point there are so many.

00:09:32: Levels and aspects of my personality of my way of doing things that I did not even know,

00:09:42: before this breakup happened keep in mind I am I wasn't relationships for most of my adult life that were very short periods only of being single so I don't think I had a full grasp of who this person is that I was now confronted with

00:09:56: 24/7 and let me tell you I was not amused with what I saw.

00:10:03: I didn't like myself at all I did not like myself at all I couldn't stand the sound of my voice complaining and grieving and and raging all the time I couldn't,

00:10:16: do anything with my time even in some ways because now my son was also fully grown so who am I

00:10:23: without this marriage and.

00:10:27: Roles that surrounded that you know the sexy wife the wife that cooks the wife that has a career the wife with the child,

00:10:37: I had so defined myself by this previous relationship that when it fell away I was like I'm sorry who is this person.

00:10:45: And sometimes I would look at myself in the mirror and of course there was a lot of grief there so I didn't recognize myself sometimes and lost a lot of weight and everything but it wasn't just the appearance it was also.

00:10:58: This re cognition if you will this recognition that there is someone here.

00:11:05: I don't know so well so again redirecting the energy towards ourselves it's so so important because.

00:11:14: I mean you've read this in all the books this is the longest relationship you're ever going to have.

00:11:19: His the one with you so how have we or maybe I should really speak of myself in this one how was I not capable of spending time with me at age 40 something.

00:11:32: And then of course I got upset about that because of course I should be further in my personal development after all wasn't I a yoga teacher shouldn't this look a whole lot more adult e and in control and you know.

00:11:45: Just knowing just knowing how to do this and the truth is I didn't.

00:11:50: And so part of redirecting the energy really became to re-meet who I was tool number 4.

00:12:00: I kind of touched upon it just now with the yoga teacher as a yoga teacher and therefore a breath specialist if you will.

00:12:08: I thought that I knew how to get through this in a way that looks composed spiritual and overall just.

00:12:18: Really really book Worthy.

00:12:20: Right like this narrative should have been so conscious and the truth is it was not at all yes I had my yoga and yes I had my breath exercises but you know what I had a whole lot more of was judgment,

00:12:34: I judge myself harsher than any person could have possibly done.

00:12:40: Especially that ex-partner who felt very judgy towards me and yet I beat him to it right I was so judgy I thought this should have been so much better as a yoga teacher and it wasn't.

00:12:55: Because I just needed to find a new way to deal with who I was and.

00:13:03: Living alone so I don't know which tool I'm at now but I want to talk about the living alone and the grief to be honest.

00:13:13: And I understand that this is a privileged situation to have been in at that time I don't think I.

00:13:22: Had experienced grief at that level before because I don't think I had a loud

00:13:30: to experience it at that level before but in this case I had no longer the option to choose to compose myself and carry on or to grieve and fall apart because the latter just happened

00:13:42: I remember sometimes and I've mentioned this before in another episode the grief was so strong or the pain was so.

00:13:51: It's hard to find a word for it because it was.

00:13:55: It was like this extra presence in my body there was ricardia and ricardia doing her life and ricardia who had just broken up with her.

00:14:06: Husband of 11 years but then there was this whole other being.

00:14:11: And it didn't have a name it just would find physical ways of manifesting,

00:14:17: I can only use a very mundane example I was at the supermarket.

00:14:23: And I was trying to pick some food for myself and I remember I started crying right then and there.

00:14:32: Because I didn't need so much food anymore I wasn't shopping for a family I was shopping for only two people one of which was my son and he was often gone so it was a lot less food

00:14:46: that I needed and suddenly this became a very big deal that I was not shopping for three people anymore and I just started crying,

00:14:54: and then I of course Very speedily made my way out of the supermarket and got home and I had only just walked through the door when I just,

00:15:03: I just sort of collapsed onto the floor with the

00:15:06: the one orange the one lemon or whatever it was I had bought just sort of spilling out onto the ground I mean lying somewhere among my groceries it's a it's somewhat funny to me now but

00:15:20: that's what pain and grieving,

00:15:22: look like for me that's how it would manifest I could not point it out it would just occur in day-to-day transactions that suddenly made it very clear that I,

00:15:32: was without my partner here I was at a loss.

00:15:37: Of words of my very favorite favorite person apart from my son and I

00:15:45: I didn't know what to do with the pain and the grief but I guess what I want to say about it is that that's all there and we don't always have to know our way through it we don't always have to know how to describe it.

00:15:57: But it's okay to sort of fall apart and move through these very complex emotions and they will look so differently for many of us but then there's also Universal aspects to it I'm hoping a lot of you.

00:16:10: I'm not hoping that you understand it because that will mean you're going through it or you've gone through it so I don't wish this on my worst enemy but I hope that we can relate to each other that this is what happens and that it wants to be dealt with that

00:16:24: pain and grief are this I always called it the pain monster.

00:16:28: Eckhart Tolle I remember I've mentioned him before calls it the pain body I certainly felt that and

00:16:34: the way for me to move through it was to allow it to move through so that even if I couldn't say anything about it I let myself cry at the supermarket I let myself fall on my door on my floor in the apartment I let

00:16:48: this monster if you will travel through me.

00:16:53: And I could just make sounds couldn't put it into words I couldn't do a decent meditation I couldn't do anything but what I was able to do and maybe this is helpful for you is to just lie down on the floor.

00:17:06: And be carried be carried by the surface beneath you.

00:17:11: By gravity and by the fact that you are still here that you're physically still here you feel diminished by the pain,

00:17:19: you feel smaller with the grief and you just want to shrink away from Life shrink away from not being able to buy groceries for our family,

00:17:29: going to the bank teller and letting them know that no there's only one name on the bank account now.

00:17:34: Whatever it is but let it move through you and know you are carried and you will be alright.

00:17:41: Because you will you really really will if you are able to allow the full set of emotions of grief and pain to come through you.

00:17:50: So I've lost track a little bit of what tool I was at but sometimes I think that's a good sign because then I know I'm.

00:17:57: Really connected to you guys so another emotion that came up from me in no ambiguous way,

00:18:06: was anger now this one was a lot easier for me in some ways and the grief and the pain because those sort of paralyzed me at times but anger.

00:18:15: Anger was a was a verb was a motion an action and anger.

00:18:22: Anger got a lot of space from me at first it didn't because I didn't know how to be fully angry because I was so sad I thought well I'm sad sad sad that I don't really feel angry but anger caught up with me,

00:18:34: and I had this wonderful

00:18:36: person that I know and she said if you don't know what to do then just roll up the bed covers like into a really tight roll pretend this is your ex,

00:18:47: get a big stick like from a mop or something and then just keep hitting that role that that sort of shape

00:18:57: that you've made there and so that's exactly what I did I busted out a CDC which I don't listen to that frequently but they have this song called Thunder I think

00:19:07: and it's I can only recommend this AC DC is the way to go

00:19:12: and I just kept hitting the shape over and over because the angered to became so big and yet it's a verb like I said so it needs to move and needs to do something and that's what I did I would just be

00:19:24: screaming

00:19:25: all the things I had wanted to say to my ex-partner that I didn't get an opportunity to and I kept hitting that that role of bedding until I was exhausted and just collapsed onto the bed itself and that felt so good.

00:19:39: And that is one way of dealing with the anger that's more the physical side to me the other one.

00:19:46: Was longer-lasting and much more complex and that was that I started to get really really angry with men in this case as a species.

00:19:56: And that was not separated because there's an aspect of bitterness there and we all don't want to be that aging person who gets bitter but it happened to me it really did I.

00:20:09: I was no longer able to have a conversation about heterosexual relationships in this case without saying that men just generally always fuck it up

00:20:19: they've been raised to be assholes they don't know what they're doing they're so unconscious and they have a completely different ethos from us meaning they'll just walk away.

00:20:29: They'll walk away from their families and they'll walk away from you like you never meant anything this was my narrative and this is what I got mirrored for those years because I did spend a good.

00:20:40: Two years I think being incredibly angry and the only person suffering was not my ex-husband which is what I really wanted sorry,

00:20:49: not as holy as I would like to be I was hurting because I couldn't engage with men without thinking of please.

00:20:57: And we all know what you're going to do well we all know what you are like I had such a cliche of the bad man in my head and in my heart that I could not.

00:21:07: Get out of and this.

00:21:09: This was harder to step out of than the grief interestingly long after the grief and the pain had gone or they hadn't obviously or the anger wouldn't have still been there but they seemed.

00:21:18: To be gone or their immediate impression on me had.

00:21:21: Started to dissipate but the anger I couldn't shake it off I was noticing it I was noticing how ugly I sounded how ugly I thought I looked when I talk this way,

00:21:32: because it really is it is ugly after a while when you're so bitter and so full of prejudice towards 50% of the population I mean think about that every second person technically you meet is an asshole in your mind

00:21:45: that's a lot of assholes.

00:21:49: In one world and so how do you move through this and it wasn't helped by the fact that I had rebounded with someone who

00:21:59: was a replica in some ways of the person I had been with this person wasn't a mean narcissist like.

00:22:08: How I felt my ex was he was just sort of the nice kind but he also couldn't care that much for you and so I wasn't helped by the fact that he also behaved badly with me so.

00:22:22: It took me a long time to figure this out and I'll tell you.

00:22:27: In the end it wasn't me who fixed my perspective they're the person who actually fixed it was my son.

00:22:36: He said something that was so incredibly honest and I know it was very brave of him to say this to me and it was very painful to hear and I felt so ashamed that my,

00:22:47: then 19 or 18 18 and 19 year old son had to say this to me but say it he did and he said mom do you think.

00:22:58: It's helpful that you keep hanging out with women.

00:23:02: Who are in your spiritual set and who are also very disappointed.

00:23:09: By men I don't think I don't think you're going to meet anybody new because you're so angry all of you all the time.

00:23:17: That was hard to hear me angry the yoga teacher the one who knows better who knows all about the toxicity of anger me.

00:23:27: Deep cut into my ego and.

00:23:31: I felt so ashamed in that moment because I knew the loving place this comment was coming from and so I knew it's truth and that was oh yes it was sobering to say the least but it propelled me forward

00:23:44: it really did because for somebody for your child to speak so authentically and lovingly to you about the fact that you are being 10 types of bitch at this point

00:23:55: that made an impact.

00:23:57: So if you also notice that you're holding on to this belief that no one is ever going to be different from the disappointing x that you might have had know that it's not true it really isn't there are.

00:24:11: And this I discovered afterwards,

00:24:13: and I had seen it before in my life let's face it I just didn't want to pay attention to them but there are really some wonderful wonderful man out there and I'm lucky enough to date one of them as I speak so I know that my perspective after this conversation had shifted

00:24:30: I know that I started to pay attention

00:24:33: to a different kind of man whereas before I seem to have looked at a certain

00:24:41: energy I had now shifted things around so stepping away from the anger.

00:24:47: Ceasing to be locked into it really was another game changer certainly for me personally and who I was because now anger no longer resided here but also for my dating life.

00:24:59: This really freed me up to look at some very very different men it was really really helpful and even if dating isn't immediately on the horizon after a break up eventually,

00:25:12: eventually we do

00:25:14: want to engage again and we do want to put ourselves out there and I will probably have a whole episode on how we can return to dating.

00:25:24: After we've lost.

00:25:25: Somebody after we've lost the trust in relationships or in people and after we've broken a certain pattern of dating a certain kind of person.

00:25:37: So that was the second episode on The Break-Up.

00:25:41: I think I could have a whole podcast just on how to deal.

00:25:47: With breakups until then stay well stay good to yourselves and.

00:25:54: Music.