Dear Heartbroken Reader,
We’re writing to you from the other side . . . sort of. If you’re here, you might be wondering: How will I ever get over this? Will I ever feel better? Well . . . it’s going to be a while. But sadness, like the weather, does eventually change, even if our moods don’t believe in each other. And anyway, who can predict the future?
At the beginning of a breakup, you will experience a tumult of emotions: shock, disbelief, pain, relief, exaltation, and/or sadness, to name a few. Friends and family want you to move past your pain. Maybe even to “get over it.” But that’s just not how your brain works.
Studies suggest that emotional pain activates the same receptors in our brain as physical pain. That’s why “get over it” is not a reasonable strategy. Because you actually hurt. A lot.
Maybe you feel like your chest is compressing. Maybe you feel like your throat has a knot in it or your hands tingle when-ever you think about the breakup. We’ve felt, at times, like we’re literally drowning. Waves of sadness creep up and threaten to pin you under the tide.
This book is the life raft. Or maybe, let’s just say, this book is one of the life rafts (there are plenty more inside this book to choose from).
We are two friends who have held hands through many heartbreaks, and we wrote the book we wish we’d had. We wrote the book we needed when our friends just got tired of hearing about it (again and again).
So, what is this book? It’s a judgment-free place to put the pain of breaking up. It’s a 240-page acknowledgment that your grief and your experiences are real. If you use it actively— and we hope you do!— it will become a record of this time in your life that you can look back on once the clouds have shifted. You can thumb through the pages and think: WHOA, I made it through some tough shit. I am FREAKING AMAZING. Because really, you are.
All you need is a pen or pencil. You already know the way.
With all our (hopelessly broken, endlessly romantic, stupid deadbeat) hearts,
Vera & Carissa
Copyright © 2022 by Carissa Potter and Vera Kachouh. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
