1. “I didn’t delete his number, but I deleted our text message exchanges, all voicemails, I unfollowed him on Facebook, I avoided his Instagram like the plague. It was so instinctual for me to keep torturing myself by looking at ‘how great things used to be’ and I would go through that stuff like every day. But getting rid of all that stuff made me feel a thousand times better, even while I was still grieving.”
–Heidi, 24
2. “Said ‘yes’ to everything. Every single social invitation or work thing or whatever I got. Ended up having a mostly packed schedule every week and it helped keep me from thinking about her as much or calling her when I was at my lowest point.”
–Marc, 25
3. “Monday’s were always the hardest for me in the beginning, because I really hated my job and he would always text me in the morning to ease my anxiety at work. Once my best friend heard that, she texted me a couple Monday’s in a row and I asked her to keep doing it for a while. She did, and it helped so, so much.”
–Laila, 27
4. “Took a creative writing class just for fun. Turns out I had just been waiting to give myself ‘permission’ to write.”
–Saul, 31
5. “I wrote down every awful thing he had ever done to me or said to me or made me feel, and I made a copy and taped one to my wall at home and kept one in my desk drawer at work.”
–Lindsey, 30
6. “Running, running, running, running. Every day. I was disgustingly slow in the beginning but I kept doing it and shit it helped me so much mentally. Physically too.”
–Russ, 26
7. “Not saying ‘hey, that’s mean’ when my friends bashed him and talked about all the awful things about him in order to make me feel better. I just leaned into it and it actually helped – they ended up pointing out all these crappy things about him and crappy ways he treated me that I had been too smitten to see.”
–Ada, 23
8. “I reconnected with friends who I had kind of blown off while I was in the relationship (which was about 2 and a half years). I know it is possible to be in a relationship and still have good friendships at the same time, so I am definitely partly responsible for my friendships fizzling, but she also was very suffocating and made it difficult to do both. So I started reaching out to friends again, grabbing a beer with them or something. I even did a cross-country trip to visit a buddy. And even though I was still grieving a lot, those friendships evolving again really helped to lift my spirits.”
–Lewis, 29
9. “Yoga. Lol, but actually.”
–Joni, 26
10. “I had a list of multiple different friends or family members I could text when I was really missing her. So I always had someone to rely on when I felt like I was about to cave and call/text her, but it was a rotation of people so none of them ever got sick of hearing me whine.”
–Karlene, 25
11. “I started seeing a therapist, after enough friends suggested it and told me there was nothing to feel embarrassed about. They are good friends. I’m doing a lot better with the breakup but am still seeing my therapist for general life stuff – that I didn’t even know I needed until I sucked it up and went in for the first appointment. Can’t recommend it enough.”
–Wilson, 30
12. “I read a lot of writing about breakups from all sorts of people – teens, middle-aged people, people my age. It was so comforting. The key is to try all different mediums – websites, blogs, books, magazine articles, Tumblr. There is great, comforting stuff everywhere, you just gotta look out for it.”
–Klara, 29 
