A friend called me a few days ago for a catch up. It was a regular call, nothing out of the ordinary. We’ve both had a very busy travel summer, so we hadn’t met up for our biweekly Sunday of mimosa flights and flatbread in a few weeks. She’d spent her birthday week at Martha’s Vineyard along with FAMUly so it was a proper catch up.

Then we moved on to the topic of dating and getting ready for cuffing season. My adult child is leaving in a few weeks for grad school and ya girl will not be watching the sunrise alone this upcoming season. Stability and companionship is on the menu.

But I as expected the call took a familiar turn. It’s been almost eight months since her relationship ended, and she is still running the same tape in her head every time we talk. “I should have known. I should have seen it coming. I should have been smarter than this.” It was like she was beating herself up because she failed some test she didn't even know she was taking.

Here’s what I told her, and what I’ve had to tell myself a time or two as well. He probably believed he was who he said he was, right up until the relationship asked more of him than he actually had to give. That’s not something she could have or should have caught in advance.

It was also not a lie she was too naive to see through. That’s just what happens sometimes when two people try to build something together and one of them doesn’t have the capacity for it yet, or maybe ever.

She didn’t do anything wrong by believing him. She did something brave. And eight months later, she’s still punishing herself for it. Like every relationship she’s been in has ended in the same heartbreak because there’s something she keeps failing to recognize.

And while there is definitely some room for self reflection for us all and maybe even a little change, not every relationship that ends is a failure. Sometimes things just don’t fit and that’s ok.

So this one’s for her, and it’s for you too if any part of this sounds familiar.

You can replay the moment you trusted them a thousand times and list every red flag you think you missed. Or argue that you should have known better. But none of it changes what actually happened. And none of it protects you from the next person who might hurt you.

All it does is keep you living inside a breakup that already ended, paying for a decision that made sense with the information you had at the time.

I know the tape well. You want to make sure you “learned your lesson this time”…so that it never happens again. But there’s a difference between reflecting on what happened and interrogating yourself for it, and most of us blur that line the second heartbreak takes hold.

Reflection asks what you to identify what you can take from the experience. Interrogation just keeps building a case against you, using evidence you only have because you’re looking backwards with information you didn’t have at the time.

My friend can tell you the exact date things started to feel like a red flag was approaching. She can recite the conversation where she should have pushed harder for a better answer, or the text she reread too many times looking for a warning she now swears was there.

Eight months of that kind of total recall is exhausting and none of it has made her feel any safer going into the next relationship. It’s only made her feel less like love is worth the trouble.

Here’s what important to know, loving someone who couldn’t hold what you gave them isn’t a character flaw for you or them. It’s also not proof you’re bad at relationships.

It is proof you were willing to be seen and known by another person, which is the whole point of loving anyone in the first place.

The tape doesn’t teach you anything new after the tenth replay. It just wears a hole into your self-trust, and that hole is the very thing that’s actually costing you the life you want.

She’s not the only person who has told me that I make starting over look easy. But as we all know, looks can be deceiving. I’ve had relationships end, clients walk away, homes I loved that I had to leave and none of it has ever been easy for me.

I don't actually enjoy starting over.

What I’ve gotten pretty efficient at is grief itself, because I know what the other option costs. Sure, I could sit in a loss for months or years, replaying it, waiting for it to make sense before I let myself move.

Or I can feel it all the way through, while watching 8 seasons of S.W.A.T, and then keep going.

People see the part where I’ve already made it to the other side and assume I skipped the part in between. I didn’t. I felt every bit of it.

…and if I didn’t write this newsletter, you’d likely be none the wiser.

I’ve cried in cars, sat in silence for what felt like an eternity, and picked up my phone to send the S.O.S. come back text before snapping out of it. I’ve questioned decisions I knew deep down were right for the season I was in, and yet, I still questioned them.

The difference isn’t that the loss didn’t affect me. It’s that I’ve learned not to set up a permanent residence inside it. I choose let it move through me instead of allowing it to move in.

Sadly, I’ve known both men and women who are still talking about the same breakup three years later like it happened last month. They are still organizing their whole identity around what someone else did to them.

And I don’t say that with judgment, because grief doesn’t run on anyone’s schedule, especially not mine. But I’ve also seen what it costs to stay there that long.

Ultimately, life keeps moving whether you’re moving with it or not.

My ability to let go is also just how I’m wired. 1) I'm a Libra, ruled by Venus, the goddess of love, so I carry an enormous capacity for love, the kind that makes you question if you ever really experienced love before me.

2) I carry just as much compassion for what it means to be human, imperfect, and still trying. And I see the imperfections in myself just as often as I see it in others.

Balance.

I also know that most people are out here navigating their own lives with the weight of their childhood experiences and abandonments on their back.

…and they're doing the best they can with the tools they happened to be handed, even when that best falls short of what someone else needed from them.

Now, understanding that doesn’t mean you give them access to you again. It simply means you let go of the resentment anyway.

So, I don't hold grudges. It's honestly a waste of energy.

And every single time I let go, life on the other side has been better than what I thought I lost.

When I thought a relationship ending would be the death of me, it made room for a different kind of love, one that actually felt good in my body. When I’ve lost a client or a project I thought I needed, it made space for the ones who were a better match.

Each relocation landed me in a new city, with a new view, new friendships, and a version of my life I couldn’t have imagined while I was still standing in the old one.

Loss has never once been the end of the story for me.

I remember when I was going through a serious heartbreak back in 2019, I went to visit my aunt who was battling cancer, a battle she would lose a few months later.

I’d just returned from a dual country trip to Belize/Mexico and was about to fly out to Croatia in a few days to set sail on the Adriatic Sea aboard a mega yacht for 7 days.

She was so proud of my travels over the years and commented on every post and picture. That day, she held my face up close and she said, “ Teacia (tisha), one monkey don’t stop no show. You keep living. Don’t let anyone or anything rob you the joy of life. Because tomorrow only matters if you get to live it. So you go out there and you live with everything you have in you today.”

And so I live, every day, in honor of the days that she can’t.

Because the show will go on, whether we’re participating in it or not.

You are never too much for the right person and never too little to make someone’s heart skip a beat. In fact, you are exactly the right amount for whoever is actually meant to stand across from you in this life.

Have you ever considered that the version of you that felt like too much to them might be the exact version someone else has been praying to find and build a life with?

Loving you gets to be easy when you’re with someone who actually has the capacity for you, which includes your flaws and imperfections. And easy doesn’t mean it’s without effort, or without work, but easy in the only way that matters: it makes you feel safe.

I'm talking the kind of safety that relaxes your entire nervous system when you're with them. The kind that allows you stop bracing and editing yourself down to see if this is the version that finally sticks.

We’ve dimmed something in ourselves, softened our opinions, or held back a need, all in the name of making it work with someone who was never going to be able to meet us there no matter how small we made ourselves.

But the right person doesn’t require you to disappear a little at a time to stay in the room. Instead, they inspire you to expand to make room for more life and love to come in.

I almost told my friend on that call to forgive herself, but I stopped, because forgiveness assumes there was something to forgive in the first place. There wasn’t. It took courage to open up to someone.

It took courage to hand him a real piece of her life and trust him to be careful with it. That’s not a mistake she made. It’s evidence of who she is and the love she was capable of both giving and receiving.

But the reason we’re still having this conversation 8 months later is because what she’s actually grieving isn’t just him. It’s the version of the future she built in her head, the one where trusting him actually paid off.

That kind of grief is real and it deserves room to breathe, but it’s not the same as being at fault. She loved out loud, in the open, and without a guarantee. Most people never even get that far.

In the end, we live, we love, we learn, we move on. Or in some cases circle back, ideally as better versions of ourselves (no judgement).

And on occasion, it sticks, and you get to spend your life with someone that simply feels easy.

And in those times where it doesn't, the ending does matter. It's real. It happened and it likely hurt, but staying in it doesn’t honor what it cost you to love in the first place.

My sister said something funny in a text yesterday after bringing up my recent ex.

He and I haven’t spoken in about 6 weeks (I think) and she was encouraging me to call him (jokingly)…keep in mind, this was right after she said, “Hey, we fight for love, no matter how toxic.”

Loving someone means giving them the space to choose the outcome for their own life, even if it that choice isn't you. And loving yourself is not chasing someone whose choice wasn't you.

The show will go on.

Putting yourself out there is brave, but it’s also worth the risk.

…and with the right person (and apparently a little light-hearted threatening) it gets to be easy.

What are you still punishing yourself for that was never actually your fault? Where in your life have you decided that moving on means something didn’t matter, when really it just means you know how to keep living?

This week, pick one thing you’ve been replaying on a loop. It could be a decision, a conversation, or a relationship. And then write down one sentence that tells the truth about it without blame attached.

Not “I should have known better.” Something closer to the above statement “I loved someone, and it didn’t work out.”

Drop a comment and tell me what you’re finally ready to stop forgiving yourself for, because you never needed to be forgiven in the first place.

My friend is going to be okay. She already is, even if it doesn’t feel like it some days.

She loved someone fully, it ended, and she’s still here. That's proof the risk didn't break her.

Remember, loving you was never supposed to be hard work for the right person. It was only ever hard with the wrong one.

Let it be easy now.

— Donteacia 💛

P.S. *humming* “Cuz loving you is easy, Like a summer day. Fun without the games. You're good for me, oh baby. Loving you is easy. We do it every night. It's like paradise. Just you and I, oh baby.”

This song from Empire was stuck in my head the entire time I wrote this post.

P.P.S. I've gotten a lot of email replies to the last few posts. Y'all are funny and kind. I am doing really well. My life is good. My heart is full. My days are easy. My burden is light. I genuinely have no complaints. ❤️