12 Techniques & Strategies for Healing Heart Break

So how do you turn the worst thing that every happened to you, into the BEST thing that every happened to you?

First of all, I want to say right off the bat, I don't have a magic pill. In fact I don't have any pills - that's the point - and if you have been reading along the last few posts you can see the stages of mourning, anger and acceptance one simply HAS to endure. No, no magic pill - this is good old fashion elbow-grease self work.

These are things that have helped me and things I believe will help others. Especially creatives who are suffering because they as authentic human beings with over-active imaginations have encountered some of the many heartless, less-authentic people that walk this earth who HAVE NOT learned to love themselves and are going around wreaking havoc in others lives esp. those who love them. Somethings may work for you, some may not, but they are as we speak working for me.

At the writing of this post I am happier and freer than I have been in years. digital art by m.diaz

• Cry - As much as you have to, no matter how afraid you are of getting permanent bags and dark circles- cry, cry, cry let it out. If you can cry, there is a cathartic letting go that those who can't and do not cry will never feel. Just like an exclamation of, 'ouch' when pinching your finger in a door is your bodies biological anesthesia, so is the process of crying. Eventually no matter the river you cried for days or weeks or months, you are mastering your mind and you are being aided by your own bodies systems of release, or at least tell yourself that.

• Walk- walking is an under valued and under-estimated sport. It is INCREDIBLY healthy physical activity and ANY physical activity gets you OUT OF YOUR HEAD and that is WHERE you most definitely want to go. So if the gym is not a reality for you at this moment, and yoga too pricey, and you have no system in place for physical challenge, than walk. Walk everyday more than once a day. If you need to cry and walk, than Cry and walk.

• Practice Visualization

• In Fact Visualize EVERYTHING and I mean every thing - VISUALIZE YOUR LIFE HAPPIER. VISUALIZE WHAT YOU IMAGINE SURVIVING to look like- Visualize you with none of the memories and none of the pain.

• EVEN VISUALIZE THE UGLY STUFF- In fact, imagine your WORST fears as a reality...and see how you are still breathing and living and surviving after you visualized the thing that hurts the most i.e., like a super hottie surfer babe working alongside of, living and sleeping in your x's love shack on what used to be your side of the bed... who cares??? They are now SOME ONE else's TOXIC problem, no longer yours and look you survived the vision.

dead bird photo by m.diaz

• Recognize and MASTER your self-destructive self not from lack of loving yourself (if you read my last post you know I don't subscribe to that ideology). No I am talking about the part of you that is simply reacting to something bigger than you are. When you are confused, knocked down, low self-esteem and your fixated thoughts don't let you get back up. The self-destructive self that simply subscribes to loving so big it was potentially the death of you. It can be as simple as mastering your minds endless replays, thoughts and daydreams that remind and hurt you. It could be the waiting to pack up items and triggers that have to go. It 'no contact rule'.

  For me it has come in many forms through out my life, and this time it came in the form of failing and not eating.

  Once you recognize it, you need to master it with forgiving yourself. i.e., Pick yourself up, forgive yourself, and start the no contact rule all over again. And if you fail again, start again, and if you fail again, start again and I promise if you can recognize your trigger, and see the toxicity playing itself out, you will master your mind and you will cease and desist. And before you know it you will have gone weeks and months without the contact...and healing.

• People. All People, people that in your past life you thought were irrelevant to your life. NEW people, strangers- Go to MEETUPS! Find people with common interests and or just people who want to do or go and see the same thing as you just not alone. There are so many social butterflies among us, that many don't understand the true hurt and pain of real isolated loneliness. It takes a phenomenal amount of inner light and strength to get yourself out of your cave to go meet strangers. You can try convincing yourself you are above it, that the folks you will meet will be sad, lonely, broken people and you couldn't be more wrong. They are like you, maintaining a bright life-force that refuses to stay beaten, defeated and alone, they like you, will not just survive BUT THRIVE. That takes inner light.

• Laughing. Laughing alone at home, at work, with comedies, in any way, shape or form. Laugh accept others trying to make you laugh. It is at once cathartic and DISARMING and it is light in its purest form. Allow yourself to smile at the little things like the dew on a leaf and to watch this extraordinary and hysterical gif collection on the 22 Things No One Tells You About Life After A Break up and laugh out loud. My faves are number 7, 11, 12, 13 and definitely number 21. Now that you’re in a much better place they might even try to get you back 'HELL NO' gif!!

• DANCE. Dance with no expectations. Go to club NOT to meet any one - just to dance, dance at home, move, feel a beat, envelop yourself in the affection of movement and musicality. Again physical activity gets you out of your head...but dance, well that's like striking the wonder woman pose to boost your confidence times 10! And yes, strike the Wonder Woman pose = Strike it often, and be documented doing it - you will rise to that pose.

• WORK Yes you can lose yourself in your day job and maybe for a while you should, But as creatives there is no more powerful time to produce our art or get lost into our process than when we are hurting. It has often produced some of art histories greatest masterpieces. But how to paint, write, sculpt when you have no drive? Master your mind or trick it, SIGN UP FOR a class with strangers or a workshop or a meetup. Put yourself in the place of deadlines, and expectations to help you, so you HAVE the illusion of being obliged to sit and work. And as a creative sometimes you don't work not for lack of drive, but instead for fear of what you might unleash. So be it. Unleash. Let your passion ignite.

• Learn something new. STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE - Break patterns by learning a new skill, shoot for something so out of your realm. I have chosen electronics and circuitry, more specifically Arduino. Meet others into this and get out there and pick their brains.

• REALIZE your life is so much richer, fuller (perhaps now of extraordinary people, places and things) that you had been missing out on while you were being drained of all your life-force by one undeserving individual.

Disclaimer NOTE- If you do not have a pet to care for, some of these strategies would most likely not have the same affect they had on me.

Pets, in my case, dogs, force you (even if you start off kicking, screaming and whining about it) to contend with a living creature OUTSIDE of yourself that needs you. Even when you are in a bed and unwilling to face the world and get up and out they are dependent on you. I would have most likely not discovered how much walking for example was helping me if I wasn't obliged to walk my dogs every day three times a day. The routine has lifted me. So I am grateful for having living creatures that I am responsible for, they have been my salvation.

Furthermore, I highly recommend being BETTER PERSON by developing the skill of nurturing a sentient creature other than yourself, IN ORDER to better care for yourself. Too many narcissists and self-indulgent people can be identified by their lack of even a plant to water or a cactus being the only thing they know how to keep living.

If nothing else - remember this- once you have truly hit the lowest point, and you accept that as far as your romantic life is concerned you have hit rock bottom you have one of two options. Either stay there (live there) in a place of perpetual negativity or be a little Buddha and detach. If you can manage to DETACH than the old cliche is 100% true- no where to go but UP.

Starting Over. Again. Dog fight

So it has been a year since I turned to the companionship of my blog. I have now joined the ranks of all of us who have learned about mourning a living person and the pain of traveling somewhere alongside someone that you shared so much with, just to have to walk back alone... the infamous break up...It has been a brutally painful road back, learning that intimacy and your authenticity does not guarantee someone else's or that your best friend is actually a stranger who is a phenomenal actor, able to substitute you, forget and abandon you instantaneously. It has been fascinating to see the time, energy and money some people are able to invest in inculcating themselves into your daily life and home just to cut you off and disappear.

How is it we can fall so in love, so completely give everything, so deeply, with someone who tells you, 'never let go - hold on tight with all your might' and then mocks you for not letting go when they change their mind? How is it everyday so many of us fall madly in love with fiction? That is art - ART...lies.

I have needed to accept my responsibility in giving so much loyalty and attachment to one person. Trusting, believing- in and falling for the same pain twice...leaving myself with absolutely no one in my daily circle. No one. Learning to be alone, replaying moments of betrayal until there is no more to extricate. Not to mention dealing with the social isolation of even this 21st century tech addicted group of which I and so many friends are a part of.

The most essential thing that I can do is to return to myself- no matter how old I'm getting, find my way back to 'my' own dreams that I had replaced with the ever present 'us' and 'ours' and continue to pursue happiness. Force that illusive sleep, stop the invisible missing from dominating and see the visible present, eat fruit, nuts and smile. That last one - put on a smile- post the pics, get the FB likes and try desperately to trick my brain into feeling not so alone, not so sad. Brain science says we can make new neurons and change our brain patterns so maybe there's something to faking a smile!

My most recent work in progress, Dog Fight. Enjoy.

Dog Fight Work in Progress by M.Diaz

Update on Sunday, September 14, 2014 at 09:55PM by Amarettogirl

Here is the pntg/illustration more finalized, as I contemplate what true romantic love like no other thing actually is, as it 'epically' palpitates, lives almost transcendentally believing you have something no two others have and as it finally manifests when pride and ego rip it apart leaving it for dead, we walk away.

Ink illustration by M. Diaz detail of love tattoo by m.diaz wolf bearing witness detail by m.diazdead birds/dreams detail by m.diaz

Spring, A Time of RENEWAL...especially for me... future

I Am Strong - Original Digital Art by M. Diaz

Anyone who knows me, knows that in the last two and a half years I got lost.

All the 21st century sages say that getting lost at least once in your life is a good thing. You know the old cliche- "get lost in order to get found..."

Therefore most people will say if getting lost is not on your bucket-list that it should be. Yet, for all the idealist advice so many of us live terrified of doing so. Like all the people with children in comforting marriages telling you, 'Live alone for a while - Spend time with yourself- enjoy yourself'...Really? How often are these same people faced with eating on a table with only a book to exchange with? Breakfast, lunch, dinner, day after day? I'd like to know if option and choice are ever considered. You see, when it came to getting lost - it was another one of those things...It crept up on me unwittingly. Even if I was faced with a life-altering action, moment, decision and choice, when I was PRESENT in that moment, I was far from fathoming the depths of cause and effect. Getting lost seems like the kind of thing we like to see other people do so we can live vicariously through them, gossip about it and stay perfectly cocooned in domestic comfort without ever getting our hands or souls dirty.

Well, I got lost. Am currently still a bit lost...

Unfortunately, I didn't get lost in space and time (something I think with all the GPS location technologies that exist would have been so much easier).

Nope, I got lost the messy way - the kind there's no road map in existence for. I got lost in another human being. And in turn, I lost myself. And on the way to losing myself, I lost the proverbial picket fence; the big house, the in-ground pool, the fireplaces, the chickens, the acreage, the husband. However, I found stuff too...just like when we were kids and our trip to the beach came equipped with special tools - that special sand colander you take along with your little plastic bucket and shovel. Watching all that mucky wet sand draining through the holes leaving you beautiful nuggets of polished beach glass. Nuggets unlike anything I have ever seen before - extraordinary novel experiences, blinding golden light.

So after much meandering in a purgatorial space of not recognizing anyone, thing or even myself - I am now on a mission to rise. Trust me, when you wake up in silence in a space you have no point of reference for, or history in, and people you thought were your most dear friends absent in a poof...crashing is easier than rising.

Now with time, I am understanding just a bit more of the abstraction that is my reflection than I ever have. I understand now there is no better anti-depressant than people, we are after all social animals no matter how much we rationalize ourselves away from our nature. And for me, one of the most dangerous acts I can commit is sequestering my soul from sharing with others. So without burdening you with anymore information than necessary, I'm going to start with my blog. For the record, it isn't about being found, or arriving, is it? It's more about helplessly and apologetically deconstructing, yet rising without apology, until the next time I fall. It is about the struggle and being strong enough to simply withstand and wake from it. It's about learning to be selfless for a while. It's a about learning to be happy in a place of vulnerable LOVE.

Lil' Red Is the Theme...

Until there is a CHANGE- I will continue to post this on Columbus day...

A Survey of Color in Mexico...

Here are a series of photographs that I took this summer in my travels to Ensenada, Mexico and Manzanillo, Mexico. They're a study of color that gave my camera a run for its money and hopefully they spark the iris of your eye.

As a writer, I am often reminded that reality is frequently much more bizarre than fiction- but the same goes for the visual arts - since no painting I could ever do could embody such colors without appearing contrived. So I hope you enjoy these and let me know which are your favorites...

Artist Assistantship with the De La Torre Brothers in Ensenada, Mexico

"Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality."-Arthur Koestler

This is the perfect quote to surmise my summer thus far. It implies taking a wet rag to the set ingrained dirty lines of dust on your windshield and wiping them clean of routine, it implies an end to the repetitiveness and turning your life inside out and upside down by taking a 6 hour flight and landing into undetermined circumstances...to endure something new, something unadulterated and fresh - never before witnessed by your sensory powers. Hence something original is born.

I was super fortunate this summer to be asked/selected by the my long time prof glass artist friends, the De La Torre Brothers, to assist them with their work for three weeks this summer.

And so after kissing my fam goodbye, flying into San Diego and driving down to Baja California, I am finally here. And I am loving the wine region, fish port land, the people, the spanglish and the creative studio gig! The flora and fauna is absolutely stunning...I'm mesmerized. I feel like the ranch we are stationed on is right out of a Georgia O'Keefe movie. So I thought I'd share some vignettes of my beautiful trip so far- oh n my trailer...I hope you like!!

A Way to Keep Your Secrets of Secrets

Was browsing at Urban and I found this adorable tin ... Made by Blue Q who I've blogged about before with their uber-cute reusable grocery bags as an alternative to those wasteful n pesky plastic bags. Anyhoo I digress, they now have this 'Top Secret' tin and two others, one with the words 'Random Things' written on it and another with a funny vintage cartoon about that illegal substance that some folks like to use for ...medicinal purposes?? Yes well ... how great is this tin and it even comes with an if found card!

Here's what I think you should do - get yourself any tin (but this one is so stylish- watch Amelie (for the umpteenth time if you're like me), don't forget to write your 'if found' card fill the little box with random things - souvenirs from your travel - secret sentimental things - maybe your greatest wish and go bury it somewhere that even you will forget where it is .... Then let's wait n see when n how n if, it ever emerges!

Doing Nothing, Disconnecting and Why it's Important (Just in Time For Summer)

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."- Leonardo DaVinci

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing by m.diaz

Not so long ago, I was not me. I was instead an inanimate object. To be clear, I was a rubber-band. I was stretched so thin from being pulled in so many directions that I was bound to snap, and I did. I snapped right in the face of some folks that I care deeply about. Folks who didn't even have a hand in stretching me to begin with, but unfortunately, they were close enough to feel my whiplash.

Now sometimes being stretched that thin is an aid in productivity. I successfully argue that point at every moment in which I accept a new task. In fact, I've just pitched the, "No Worries, I work better under pressure" tagline to myself and my co-workers, friends and students earlier today.

Come on lets face it, I have a superhero complex, ever since I saw that star-studded Chicana, Lynda Carter spin her brunette head into the Wonder Woman of my dreams.

So I'm super capable and yes I can, I can do it all... sound familiar??
But what I've been learning as I get older is not to ask, "Can I?", (because I probably can, but at what cost?) instead I need to ask, "Should I?"

So in lieu of this global race against time, productivity and efficiency, many of us have grown digital appendages that allow us to redefine multi-tasking: cell & smart phones, laptops, ipads, portable hotspots, apps, etc.

As a result, these appendages have become indispensable, and have us 'connected' indefinitely. Personally, if you ask me, the very thought of misplacing my iphone brings cold-sweats, chills and dizziness to mind instantaneously as though it equated a lost limb.

In the New York Times bestseller, Hamlet's Blackberry, William Powers does an astute job of reminding us that the goal of all of our highly efficient technological advances was to gain us more time. It is the 'spaces, gaps, the respites,and stopping places for the mind' that we gain from our ultra-efficiency that we are somehow losing. Despite all of our hyper-connectivity, we are less connected to authentic humanity by constantly being wired to a virtual one.

First I would like to define rest by including anything that alleviates action and restores absorption of the mental, physical, emotional and/or spiritual kind. If you’re like me, you’ll stress about making it to Yoga class on time, and well, that's just not ok.

Somehow we are all hearing ourselves say WE USED to have A LOT more time...

Now seeing as we now have all of these hyper-connective tools that allow us to do multiple tasks at once, we should have MORE time. Yet, instead if you're like me, you're most likely giving all that new found time away. Possibly that new time is being given away to being 'ON' and available in our digital personas/virtual worlds 24/7. If that's the case, well then I think it might be time to reassess our priorities.

Thoreau said that the man that goes back to the post office (substitute email in-box here) over and over is a man who hasn't heard from himself in a long while.

- From Hamlet's Blackberry

So why are these pauses, GAPS of Absorption and PROCESS, these 'moments' or if we dare, DAYS of rest in our busy lives so important?

Well we've all heard the cliché answers: relieving stress, recharging your battery, richer connection and self-reflection. These are indeed vital and incredibly important in gaining the depth/richness and quality of experience we need out of our daily lives (instead of being automatons of brainless routines).
But lets look at some of the rich reasons that I gleaned from Hamlet's Blackberry...

Creativity is defined by the ability to make mental associations ....

" When work is all about darting around screens, we're not doing something thats even more valuable than thinking quickly: thinking creatively.

Of the minds many aptitudes, the most remarkable is its power of association, the ability to see new relationships among things. The brain is the most amazing associative device ever created, with its roughly one hundred billion neurons connected in as many as a quadrillion different ways- more connections than there are stars in the known universe.

Digital devices are, in one sense, a tremendous gift to the associative process because they link us to so many sources of information. The potential they hold out for creative insights and synthesis is breathtaking. The best human creativity, however, happens only when we have the time and mental space to take a new thought and follow it wherever it leads. William James once contrasted 'the sustained attention of the genius, sticking to his subject for hours together,' with the 'commonplace mind' that flits from place to place. geniuses are rare, but by using screens as we do now, constantly jumping around we're ensuring that all of us have fewer ingenious moments and bring less associative creativity to whatever kind of work we do."

- William Powers From Hamlet's Blackberry

In working out and toning your body, muscles need states of strict rest in order to grow and develop. As an educator it is established that in order to learn we need to time to process. Within inter-personal relationships we need time for reflection. As humans we live dichotomously between an inward and outward states and that condition should be balanced. I personally feel we lose control when we do anything in excess and the only true form of satisfaction comes in a perpetual balanced state of moderation. It is how I have come to champion my body this year.

William Powers doesn't advocate disconnect and be a ludite. He advocates the notion that we need to learn to control the aspects of our lives that are controlling us- he advocates moderation and mitigation between you and the technologies that are inhibiting your ability to live a high quality, present, attentive and fully immersed experience of a life- learn when to turn your ON 'green' button OFF in order to truly be ON.

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. - Benjamin Franklin

So if I haven't convinced you yet to take a reading gander with Hamlet's Blackberry, let me add some previews of what's in store.
Powers takes on the challenging task of reviewing the philosophies of seven great thinkers throughout human history. He applies their thinking of what had once been the new technologies of their time and the concept of connectivity to today's surge of overwhelming digital data.
You might think this is a far reach, but I found it pleasantly surprising to see how relevant and applicable: Plato's notion of 'distance' is, Seneca's concept of Inner space, Gutenberg's manufacturing brilliance with technologies of Inwardness, Shakespeare's idea that old tools can ease overload, Ben Franklin's adaptation of positive rituals, Thoreau's Walden zones, McLuhan's lowering of the Inner thermostat and William Power's Internet Sabbath. These ideas can apply to you and me and help us moderate our on 24/7 consumption of digital juice.

Finally, if these thoughts don't stimulate your desire to ignite your spatial, tactile and physical awareness with the reality around you, here are some tech-saavy reasons that are not meant to be comical (though they may sound it) to self-moderate your digital connections.

TAKE YOUR REST AND LEARN TO SAY NO & shut off & time out & DISCONNECT every once in a while so you don't get things like:

• INFORMATION OVERLOAD estimated to be responsible for economic losses (lowered productivity and throttled innovation) of 900billion dollars a year *(result of a 2009 study done by Basex a leading research firm)

• ATTENTION DEFICIT TRAIT (ADT) symptoms include distractability, restlessness, a sense of gotta go gotta rush, gotta run around and impulsive decision making because you have so many things to do

• CONTINUOUS PARTIAL ATTENTION defined as the state of mind in which most of ones attention is on a primary task, but where one is also monitoring several background tasks just in case something more important or interesting comes up

• EMAIL APNEA a form of shallow breathing while checking email that in some extreme cases leads to an increase in stress related disease

• INTERNET ADDICTION DISORDER self-explanatory damage...

• NOMOPHOBIA Fear of being without mobile phone contact

Next, plan your day of rest. It can be any day of the week. Planning is essential to progress. Carve out time and you’ll commit. Practice turning down events, errands, chores, things you don’t truly need to get done under the gun. Plan meals in advance, turn off the iPhone, disconnect your computer, and stick your car keys in a drawer. Instead of being a slave to time, create it by accepting downtime. By taking time out, you’ll have more in the end.

Been Feeling like only a Sculpture could tell you ...A Day at the MOMA

Sometimes if you are over extended the way I have been or you are just torn between emotional forces and are overwhelmed by defeat- You Just Feel Like THIS:

The River By MAILLOL located at the MOMA Sculpture Garden photo by m. diaz

Interestingly enough Maillol Began this piece as a commission for a pacifist and as a statement against war- he had developed it as a woman who had been stabbed in the back and was falling...and that is what I saw when I first laid eyes on it - but the commission fell through and when he completed it - he developed it as THE RIVER - hence all the movement in the piece- something he had once felt had no place in sculpture - IF you have just a ONE MINUTE and 37 seconds you should listen to this description by chief curator of the Moma on the piece:

OR I can say I have been feeling like this one too - legless - immobile and confounded by the characters in my life...

excerpt of Crying in Public 2003 1 of 8 from a series of nine lithographs with chine-colle by CLAUDETTE SCHREUDERS </span>

A portrait can be illustrated in so many ways - Take for example these portraits - one male and one female, Henrik Olesen‘s Portrait of Scott, a deconstructed 13-inch Macbook, and Portrait of Kirsten, a deconstructed Canon PIXMA iP4200 Photo Printer. Lots of food for thought here...every little underestimated piece a vital part of the whole and the object, the tool the extension to the human...

Me behind Portrait of S. by Henrik Olesen Portrait of S. by Henrik Olesen

Then I kind of fell head over heels over an artist who employs ACTIONS as his art - FRANCIS ALŸS who the students and I see his work akin to Guerilla Art- wonderful for them to see this is not solely a result of the 21st century, but considered much earlier by minds like ALŸS'...I've been intrigued and have started to delve deeply into his concepts.

One of my Favorite ALŸS pieces, ZOCALO in which a social situation lends itself to a sculptural one...read on...

Zócalo (Mexico City, 1999 collaboration with Rafael Ortega) is a 12 hour documentary following the progression of the shadow of the flagpole in the Zócalo (the main square in Mexico City) during the course of a day. The Zócalo was redesigned at the beginning of the revolutionary era as a setting for huge propagandist spectacles and became with time the ideal space to express public discontent. Alÿs' film records how arbitrary social encounters can sometimes be perceived as sculptural situations.