Lessons I learned from the breakup that nearly broke me: Cari Weinberg at TEDxCollegeMound

hello my name is Carrie Weinberg and the name of my talk this evening is Kim Gordon is my spirit animal and other lessons I learned from the break-up that nearly broke me so a little bit of background earlier this summer I was on vacation with my mom and sister in France and we were on this fantastic cruise that my mother had you know spent lots of money to take us on a big family bonding experience and as we pulled out of you know as our ship sailed from San Tropez um somewhere you know right after

midnight and France my favorite and it was my boyfriend at the time and was like oh there he is and you know photo of my boyfriend at the time popped up he's holding our foster puppy Vincent and I'm like oh hi how are you my god it's a happy new year for you and it was a pretty devastating phone call and out of the clear blue sky he broke up with me while I was in France and on the ship and with my parents in a room that are with my mom and sister in a

room that probably stretches from where I am to where Tonya is right over there so it was a very very small place and a very small place to have to endure a lot of emotions that go along with the disintegration of a four and a half hour late four and a half year relationship you know especially when you've lived with this person for three and a half years and so I I was really really taken aback but as my friend Dylan has told me before and since you know sometimes the greatest difficulties he'll be your

greatest gifts and so these are the gifts that I have learned from you know the disintegration of this relationship and what I will know you know facing tragic situations which I'm sure there will be many ahead of me in my lifetime but first of all it's okay you know first of all it's okay to tell people you know when you are just out of your I'm sad my inclination was I've got to be strong and I got to power through this it's okay to admit to weakness and whether it was there was a lot of

financial hardship that was unexpected with this breakup I was not prepared for my expenses to double overnight but if I was Frank with people whether it was the lady that I was dealing with with my AT&T cell service or my yard-man people were extremely kind and understanding and elastic and they're like that's okay you know pay what you can and you know pay what you can and another three weeks okay thank you oh my god I could get my yard mowed you can trim the hedges and I can still use my cell phone people were

exceedingly exceedingly kind and another thing was you know I was far away but as soon as I hit the soil of the US and came back home to my house and realized that my boyfriend had completely moved out and like walls were bare closets were empty drawers were empty and I had a good friend who put me on the path she's like I know you were really sad right now but the first thing you need to do is come up with a game plan and she's like figure out every single thing that you need that

you depended on him for and figure out how you're going to circumvent this situation can handle it yourself so whether it was contacting yeah Roosevelt the guard guy or you know determining how I was going to handle the care of the many dogs and the foster dogs that I've handled like immediately I had to put my sadness to the side for a second and figure out how I was going to operate and having an operational plan was it was just very key to me moving forward as I went through all this and consulting my oats

and you know again you know just knowing how you're going to function and even mapping that plan out and you have it in your mind but even like typing it out in a Word document is to consult when you're sad and out of your mind is essential and so you know that moving forward another thing that I learned that I've never really practiced before it's okay to lean on your friends in fact it's okay to flop on them especially if they are offering and you know if your friends are offering kindnesses you're in a period

in your life where sometimes you're not strong enough to sustain yourself and it's okay I had friends that were kind enough to bring me dinner allow me to sit on their sofas and just you know a moat and get it out of my system I had friends that put me in the car and took me on road trips people that you know put me on planes to take me to different places to distract me and it was really hard because I've always been someone who has been very self-contained but I learned to accept this and

it was you know accepting these kindnesses and moving forward with what people wanted to help me with was essential to moving myself along to this path of recovery and it was you know you need to accept this and you know people are willing to reach out and help you and that's what you should really do and another thing that I learned especially out here at this land is sometimes it's okay to be rash sometimes you want to break stuff you want to burn and within moderation that's a good thing um so there was some breaking

of stuff that it was very symbolic there was some burning of t-shirts burning of books and you know with everything that I threw into this fire pit right here or everything that I smashed fits and then later swept up from the floor of my household um you know I knew why I was getting rid of it whether it was a guitar or a t-shirt and I you know I looked at it as okay I am severing ties to this very symbolic piece of my real life it's not that he is necessarily a bad person it

is just that this is something we've shared together and it needs to be gone and then you know and then finally not finally but one of the things to you that I learned if your brain is screaming for a reasoning give it to your brain I never really knew what was behind this breakup and I kept analyzing it and analyzing and finally I was like my brain needs something so I can move on and some people might think it's valid some people might think it's silly I opted to visit a psychic and I was like

okay whatever she says I'm going to accept as the reason this disintegrated without my knowledge and I'm going to take this as history and I'm going to move on I'm not going to question it I'm not going to dwell on it that will be my reasoning and just having that in place was just it gave me a peace of mind and I was able to move forward so you just kind of have to you know sometimes when you're braiding these answers and you can't get those answers you've got to seek them where you can find

them without dwelling too much with you know the intent of moving forward and then you know another thing that was key to feeling better was just getting busy as much as I wanted to sit in my house and watch the Royalton bombs for maybe the 20 2015 um I knew that it was key for me to be around other people so even though it killed me there's a lot of value and taking a shower going to work and when you come home from work when your house is silent in a way that you haven't experienced

in years it's important to get back out and be around other people especially people that love you around this point in time I was lucky enough like I had friends who were giving me tickets to all these different outings I took a job with the Kessler theatre so one of my first big outings was going to a film festival and I'm not a movie buff but I went and I watched every single movie that I could and I said in on every single panel that I could just to be around people who were talking about

things that were not involving my situation okay we're gonna talk about the Flaming Lips and your documentary on them perfect okay okay here's this action movie hey I am NOT a fan of such but okay you know it was just opening my mind to absorbing what was around me as opposed to absorbing what was in my reality that I was already very well acquainted with you know another great thing you know I mentioned that I was working at the Kepler theater at that point in time I went and saw every band that I could possibly

see even if I was not a fan of flamenco jazz whatever because I knew I had something to learn and there was something absolutely different there that I could wrap my mind around and distract myself with and see the value in and go from there and you know in in that process I really developed a sense of gratitude for all these wonderful things that people were placing in front of me and the wonderful things that my friends were doing and I tried to practice gratitude every single day and as I realized you know my problem

in this world are very small compared to the very real problems with people who were searching for food water you know try and keep their families together etc so I you know at that point in time I try to keep it in perspective and I would tried to read you know go on different you know newspaper sites from the Guardian the New York Times and just absorb myself into stories where people were facing very harsh challenges that you know where it was a matter of their day-to-day existence as opposed to like okay I just had

my heart broken I still have my house I still have my dogs I still have you know I have fresh water to drink and food to eat I'm going to be fine and and you know but sometimes that's not enough so sometimes you need to take drastic measures and be okay with that and with that it's okay to lose yourself I went on a couple of road trips where once I lost myself in a series of academic lectures that range from economics to physics to women in the military and it was delightful that I could

do this in this beautiful setting um you know and I whether you leave home or whether you try to find that in the aisles of a Half Price Books I think it's vital to just find something you can lock your mind on to and just distract yourself you know again from what's going on in your personal life and you know as I was trying to figure out yeah I didn't really know which way was up at that point in time but I could yeah I could decipher these things so um you know and on a

smaller scale you know I did things at home I rearranged my furniture I bought new sheets I had a friend come over and do you know I tried to do whatever I could to rearrange my reality she's a cleansing ceremony in my home and then you know another thing the final thing is putting stock in something and you know when I got to the point that I just really felt like I was like okay I've done all that I can do what can I look - and then something popped up online and one of my

major major heroes is the bass player for Sonic Youth and she's her name is Kim Gordon and she's always been fierce and fearless and very outspoken and also very fashionable and even though I had no money at all at this point in time I invested my very last cent and by clothing sale she put up this vintage clothing sale and so I bought this King Gordon's shirt and I was like Kim Gordon will guide me through the rest of this and you know and I had a lot of excitement about Kim Gordon and her Kutcher

you know wardrobe that she was off living through this vintage store and this is what I found out you know a this thing gave me strength B I felt like I had a lot more I just felt like I had this ferocity to go forward and power myself through recovering through this breakup and C I found out that Kim Gordon and I don't wear the same shirt size but it's okay and that is my story of how Kim Gordon is my spirit animal and I made my way through