Hi Shelbyville,

I’m so so glad it helped 🙂

Understand completely – at the time I also had zero idea what the future held for me and how I was going to cope with a life without him in it. I took it a day at a time, some were better than others by far. Each day I had to make sure to mentally look forwards, not backwards as much as I could, again, easier some days than other. I actually made myself a mini-mantra ( although I didn’t know that was what it was back then! ) that I would repeat to myself at the lowest points.

Cutting contact for me was the only way to give myself enough mental head space to do the above. Any contact just put me back into a nose-dive of ‘what-if’s’ and ‘if only I’d said/done the magical right thing to fix it all’ – when in reality and the wonderful but painful truth of hindsight there was no such thing I could’ve said/done – and interestingly now, I’m so glad that there wasn’t. It takes time and effort to reach that point – but it is so so worth it.

Choosing to want to be happy ( the more positive version of not wanting to be unhappy 🙂 ) at some point in the future is a huge positive step  – and not feeling guilty or panicked about it either as you do slowly feel better, which happened to me often as I looped through this process.

Mark has yet again said it in way fewer words but yes, to move forwards, take a big deep breathe – it’s scary as hell to jump into the unknown – but do it, trust it and grow.  Like anything else in life, the more you do it, the easier it gets.  You can do this and your future self will thank you so much.