Step 1. Ignore the people who say it takes half the time you dated to move on. They probably learned this from Charlotte York. Newsflash, Charlotte and Sex and the City aren’t real. Your grief is. Accept that it will ebb and flow for five-and-a-half years, almost the same length of time you dated. I promise, that’s OKAY. Save yourself the anger, anguish, and self-doubt in year three by ignoring this advice from the start.

Step 2. Invest in a plush throw-rug. Fluffy, soft, big enough to fit half under, half outside your bed. You’ll find yourself there—half under, half outside the bed—more times than you can count. Life’s thrown you a curveball. It’s stolen the future you imagined and hoisted something wholly unfamiliar in its place. Hide from the new reality. But give yourself a comfy place to do so. The wood floors might be pretty, but they’re also cold.

Step 3. Invite people over, in, and out. You’ll need them for girls’ trips, taco Tuesdays, and Thursday-night margaritas. They’re weekend winery getaways, spontaneous Baltimore book readings, July 4th New York escapes. They’ll drag you to nightclubs to sweat, shake, and salsa your way back into sensuality. They’ll encourage you to adopt kittens. They’ll help you climb mountains.

They’re a phone call away the night he tells you it’s over. They’re on the other end of the line for your in-taxi panic attack the night you learn he’s moving in with someone new. They (along with the cab driver) remind you to breathe and give you permission to scream. On the days you think the world would be better off without you, they’ll pull you up off the floor. They care if you answer Sunday calls. They expect you for Friday climbs. They want you on Saturday runs. So be there.

Step 4. Go to therapy.

Step 5. Go home.

Spend Thanksgiving in Mom’s kitchen making Grandmama’s stuffing. Change the words to “Let it go” with your sisters. Make the song into a new creation like you did when you were kids. Laugh until your stomach hurts, until your breath is gone, until tears stream down. Quench your tears. Sing.

Surprise your grandparents with ornaments from your travels. Listen to their stories. Learn from their love. Let them know what they mean to you. They won’t be around once you’ve moved on. Soak them in now while you still can.

And when you make it home for Mardi Gras, walk the city’s streets alone, retracing the path you used to run with him down Magazine Street to Audubon Park. Walk past the apartment you shared. Feel that it’s the past. But keep sight of the present because, it turns out, today feels pretty good.

Step 6. Get out.

Visit Sandra in Puerto Rico for the first time since studying abroad. Laugh with her on beaches. Cry with her in her car. Because despite a decade and a Caribbean Sea of distance, she understands. Get lost in London after Tracy’s wedding. Spend an afternoon in the Tate Modern Rothko room. Take a post-fish-and-chips nap in Hyde Park because who’s there to stop you?

Surprise Clemence with a Paris weekend drop-in. Convince her and her friends to pose for cheesy tourist pictures you’ll frame. Drink Naxonian wine in Greece with your sisters (and kiss that cute waiter on the roof). Swim with giant manta rays in Panama.

I promise those moments abroad will feel more like coming home than the three apartments and five years you lived with him ever did.

Step 7. Buy the purple Jeep.

Step 8. Try new things. Go to the yoga retreat. Kick ass (and get yours kicked) in the Warrior Woman self-defense class. Salsa. Write. Climb.

Climb rocks indoors and outdoors. Because you’ve always wanted to. Because it looks hard (it is hard). Because it looks cool (it is cool). But mostly, because see Step 3.

Surf. The first time you stand up, you’ll forget the love, loss, and pain. It’s just wax under your feet, spray at your back, sun, sea, and stoke as you glide toward shore.

Buy a guitar. Take lessons (many). Learn Mama Tried and play it with Papa on those trips home. He won’t make it past year six, and when he’s gone, you’ll be thankful for the memories. And, as impossible as it seems, you’ll even be thankful for the breakup that pushed you to make them. And that is where the healing begins.

Step 9. Date. The wrong people. The right people. The people you meet at parties. The people you meet on apps. You’re scared. I know. Do you have to? You do. Will it hurt? Yes. But it’s worth it.

You’ll meet running buddies and hiking pals. Guys who’ll introduce you to Grouplove and—forget the guy—that music will become your anthem.

Some—like the guy you won’t know you’re dating until he breaks up with you on Valentine’s Day—give you stories. Others—like the closet Trumper you’ll kick out of your apartment when he confesses his MAGA ways (he knew this was nonnegotiable), or the guy whose trip to Burning Man introduces you to ghosting—teach you where your boundaries lie.

True, others will break your fragile heart. But you’ll pull on the threads, examine them, and bounce back better every time.

Step 10. Don’t work too much. You will. You’ll replace the hurt places with busy. You’ll seek validation from your job. But if you leave more you space and less workspace, you can shorten this whole process. Work takes more than it gives, and you give it too much. It won’t make you happy, no matter how important it is. So, put down the brief. Turn off the computer. Walk away. And if (when) you can’t, forgive yourself for that too.

Step 11. Let go. Of your imagined future, the promises, the expectations. There’ll be no around-the-world vagabonding together; no little girl named Adeline, at least not with him; no more Stephen Kellogg concerts; no couples returning to New Orleans. It was never yours. It was never promised. And it was never what he wanted anyway. So let go. Let it all go. It will feel better. You will feel better.

Step 12. Be grateful. For the life you’ll create in the purple Jeep, on trips, at home. For family and friends. For writing, dancing, strumming, surfing, and climbing. Be grateful when you run into him at the airport five-and-a-half years post-breakup and realize the hurting’s over. The life he’s updating you on is different from the life you’ve created, from the life you want. Turns out letting him leave was better for you. No. It was best for you. Every step of the way.

-Amanda Callais

Amanda Callais is an emerging writer and a voting rights attorney based in Washington, D.C. When not working to preserve democracy, she lives and writes in between worlds, navigating a transatlantic relationship with her partner who lives in Southern Spain—while writing about it, her Louisiana roots, purple Jeep, and other life experiences along the way. Her work has been featured in The Sun Magazine.