Bucket Lists, Firsts & Movie Moments Chapter from Love Lost, Life Found

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My goal is to publish a self-development non-fiction book in 2016. The working title is Love Lost, Life Found and is a journey of how I left a toxic relationship, learned to love myself again and find a life that I love. The book is party story & part actionable steps I took to start healing my life. I want to start sharing parts of chapters so I can get your honest feedback. Leave me a comment or send me an email through the contact form (found in the top menu). Tell me what you think about the topic and how it can be improved or what should be added. It will be hard to know how it fits into the overall picture but thank you for joining me in the editing process.

If you have just found my blog you can read a bit about my story here and how I started to heal after calling off my wedding in 2012.

Painful memories from a past relationship with a significant other can ebb and flow through the mind. The good and the bad can come in waves. When dark moments were stuck inside my brain I was lost in a web of insomnia and grief. Pinterest quotes and therapy only helped so much. I would go to work, call my girlfriends, call my mother, go to therapy sessions and just try to keep my head above water. For me, to start living again, I needed to get back and discover anew all that I loved from before the relationship began. I already had my self-care habits that kept me afloat during the relationship so I wasn’t overhauling my life completely. I just needed to get back to what lit me up inside before I met my ex. I also wanted to learn new things about myself as I emerged a different person on the other side of grief.

I recognized that I gave up truly living an amazing life while I was in my toxic relationship. I can look back and see the things I gave up to try and make another person happy. I stopped going to the gym so I could be home to make him happy. I stopped eating healthy so I could cook his meals to ensure he was eating nutritiously. I was also emotionally eating my weight in worry and frustration. I thought that if I did everything in my power to make someone else happy then they would be happy. I had no understanding of the personal concept of happiness until after. I had no concept that we choose our own happiness. I didn’t understand that no matter what I did I couldn’t make another person happy. Especially someone who was so deeply unhappy with themselves. I forgot about the airplane oxygen mask theory. If the oxygen mask drops in an airplane we are told we must put the mask on ourselves first before helping another person. I had no concept that I needed to fill my cup before I could pour it into his.

So after the relationship ended I focused on myself again and started small. I went back to my habit of creating short term and long term goals. I started with my health first. I got excited about creating weekly meal plans and grocery shopping lists again. I knew I had to feel healthy again to help my brain in its healing process. So one week I set a goal to get back to eating 5-6 healthy meals a day. The next week I ensured that I was consuming 2-3L of water a day. The next week I got into the gym 3 times that week. Then the next week I went to the gym 4 times a week and then the next week 5 times. My routine gave me structure, purpose and kept my brain busy on the task at hand. Just feeling healthy again. I had gained several unhealthy pounds from emotional eating and lack of exercise and since I knew I needed to feel like myself again I focused on my nutrition, exercise and water consumption.

Once the happy hormones from health & fitness were running through me I started dating again. The man (mentioned in my Happiness Journey chapter) that was placed in my life taught me what I needed at that moment in time. I discovered that I love adventure, fun and creating moments in my life that truly make me feel alive. On top of introducing me to obstacle course races, he was an adrenaline junkie, a traveler and a bucket list completer. I saw something in him that I yearned for in my life. I am thankful for my time spent with him and know why he was placed in my path. I adopted new physical challenges into my life so I could push myself further than I had in the past. From 2009 – 2011 I was defining myself as a fitness competitor. I trained hard in the gym, got dolled up and pranced around on stage in a bikini. I had completed a physical challenge and become stronger by training but I hadn’t shown the world how strong I was at this point. I also wasn’t challenging myself to see how strong I could really become. On my goal spreadsheet that I complete every January I started dreaming big in my goals for the upcoming 2013 year. In 2012, I ran the Warrior Dash and knew I could complete an obstacle course but could I run three races in one year? I was introduced to the world of Tough Mudder so I planned to run my first Mudder in May of 2013. I planned on running Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder and Mud Hero that year so that I could see what my body could do. Little did I know that in 2014 I would complete 6 obstacle course races and then in 2015 complete 20 races.

I found a new physical challenge for my fitness goals for the year. I was back on track with my nutrition and feeling healthy again. My job and advertising career were keeping me busy during the day but I wanted to live life again and discover things that would make me happy. I found inspiration in the reality show star Lauren Conrad and a fitness duo I admire, the Tone It Up girls. They were posting on their websites about Summer Bucket Lists. I hadn’t really thought about seasonal bucket lists to make the most out of Canada’s four short but sweet seasons. So I created my first Summer Bucket List and lived an epic summer with friends by my side. I started by listing things that I thought would be fun. I copied some of the ideas from Lauren and the TIU girls. I wrote down that I wanted to have a healthy picnic, make kebabs on a BBQ, run Warrior Dash again, create a garden on my balcony, have a cottage weekend, run a Mud Hero race, go on a canoe trip like when I was summer camp kid, learn how to stand up paddleboard, do the Color Run, run the Night Race in Sunnybrook Park, do a fitness competition again and run my first half marathon. I completed all of these and my heart was filling with joy. There were a couple of things that I wrote down but didn’t end up completing. Which just means I would have stuff to start my list the following summer. I saved a random road trip, golfing and going to the drive in for the next summer. When winter started looming on the horizon and gloomy weather was around the corner I created a Winter Bucket List. All of a sudden the winter started to look exciting. I created my lists thinking of who I could do each item with but I also put things on the list that I could check off all on my own. Alot of the items that find themselves on my bucket lists are things I’ve never tried or things that I love. I truly believe trying something for the first time and accomplishing it is an addictive happy high that I know is an amazing way to live.

Just think about the smile that spreads over your face after you accomplish something for the first time. That moment and feeling is priceless and almost indescribable. For me creating moments in my life that are firsts or worthy of a movie camera following me around make me feel like I’m truly living my life to the fullest extent. I call them firsts & movie moments.

When you were a kid do you remember how proud you were when you stood up for the first time and took your first steps? Probably not, but I bet you your parents can remember the grin that spread across your face. Think back to the first time you tied your shoes, saw an animal at the zoo, rode a bike, hit a baseball ball. Let the feeling of accomplishment wash over you for a second and picture that feeling. For some it’s an amazing feeling for others they don’t put a second thought to it. For me as I started to do new things for the first time in my adult life so that I was able to recreate those feelings and I’m full fledged addicted to those warm fuzzy feelings.

As I started dating again, and as an Alpha Female I killed two birds with one stone by dating & trying new things at the same time. I don’t like the standard coffee or dinner date. It felt too much like an interview and to be honest it’s tiring going on a ton of first dates and talking about oneself over and over again no matter how much you love yourself. So I would create fun lists of things I’d like to do on dates and give potential first date options to choose from. It’s one of the reasons why I found myself doing the CN Tower edge walk, going snowmobiling, going bouldering at a rock climbing gym or snowshoeing through a vineyard on first dates. Although the men didn’t work out I have amazing memories of the event and didn’t view dating as a waste of time or a time suck.

I may have watched too many romantic comedies because I do actually try and create those movie-worthy moments in my life. I really try not to force them but just set the scene for awesome memories to be made. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve drunk tea in the back of a jeep backed up over an amazing Toronto outlook. It’s why I’ve sat on a lifeguard chair at the Scarborough bluffs listening to music and then swimming in the rain. It’s why I’ve stargazed on a dock talking for hours. It’s why I’ve had a campfire and lit sparklers at midnight. The movie moment doesn’t have to be romantic. They’ve actually been amazing starting points for the growth of great friendships and my friends can always count on me for ideas to make the day a little bit more epic. They can thank my love of romantic comedy for simply inspiring the ability to make memories that are just awesome with all types of relationships in my life.

My Happiness Journey Chapter from Love Lost, Life Found

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My goal is to publish a self development non-fiction book in 2016. The working title is Love Lost, Life Found and is a journey of how I left a toxic relationship, learned to love myself again and find a life that I love. The book is party story & part actionable steps I took to start healing my life. I want to start sharing parts of chapters so I can get your honest feedback. Leave me a comment or send me an email through the contact form (found in the top menu). Tell me what you think about the topic and how it can be improved or what should be added. It will be hard to know how it fits into the overall picture but thank you for joining me in the editing process.

If you have just found my blog you can read a bit about my story here and how I started to heal after calling off my wedding in 2012.

My Happiness Journey

I knew I wasn’t happy. I had just called off my wedding a month before it was supposed to occur. I had just lived for a year with pictures of a white tent lit up inside with my family and friends dancing the night away, myself in a white dress, standing beside a man that I loved. Throughout the last year of our relationship the ups and downs were so bad that I had held on to the happy pictures of our wedding hoping they would be a bandaid for our relationship that was falling apart. I was living with a significant other who was dealing with depression, abusing alcohol and I learned that he had cheated on me for the majority of our relationship. For some reason I thought a wedding could fix our deeply rooted problems. I am an intelligent woman. I like to think that I’m smart. I’m educated yet I still succeeded to succumb to a twisted view that societal pressure had put in my head. I thought getting married would fix everything. After I came to my senses and ended the relationship I knew I needed to “get happy” and fast so that I didn’t fall into a rabbit hole of self loathing and a deeper depression than I was in. I had allowed this relationship to occur in my life. My participation in the relationship was active and therefore I take blame for allowing things to happen and how I was treated. I needed to figure out what was going to simply make me happy again. I didn’t really know where to start.

My brain was telling me I needed to move on as fast as possible. To me moving on meant I needed to date again. It wasn’t the smartest thought that popped into my head but as I have learned my brain has a mind of it’s own and is going to do what it wants. In my head I kept telling myself that I had just wasted 4 years of my life with someone who was not right for me and despite me trying everything to “fix” it, we had failed as a couple. I knew that my energy was meant well so I wanted to immediately find a new loving relationship that was supportive and happy. A good thought was there but I can look back and know I was trying to replace one relationship with another. The alpha female in me was fighting to have a perfect looking life again. I started dating one month after my ex fiancée left my life. It wasn’t smart but I was going to do it anyway and it turned out to be exactly what I needed in that moment. The relationship I jumped into was flawed but started to teach me about what I wanted and needed in my life. I discovered I could have fun again. Who knew I was actually so full of fun? I discovered that I had truly put my life on hold for four years to “attempt” to make another human happy and I started to realize that I had been missing out on fun and adventure.

I learned how to have an amazing first date. My date took me out to a restaurant where you ate in the dark. He kissed me after I shared my story and I felt cared for and alive again. We went to Canada’s Wonderland for our second date and laughed until my stomach hurt! I simply felt like he was pushing me outside of my comfort zones. We had similar interests and he is the one that I can credit with inspiring me to attempt new fitness goals I never thought I was capable of. We dated briefly but he is the reason why I fell in love with adventures and with obstacle course races. So when I hear the saying “every relationship teaches you something” I know that he taught me to push my comfort zones and that I really do love fun and adventure.

During that time of dating I can say I learned that I was riddled with anxiety. Thoughts of my ex and how he had treated me invaded all my thoughts. When I didn’t receive an immediate text back I started being over run by thoughts of “Does he want to talk to me?” “Is he cheating on me?” “Is he dating other women?” It was bad. Plain and simple. I didn’t realize I could name what I had as anxiety but I had it. I was still living in the past and anxious about the future.

I had missed out on so much life. I had rushed home from work most days to spend time with my ex. If he was having a depression “episode” we would just sit on the couch and watch tv or movies. I stopped going to the gym as much to ensure I was home as often as possible so I was slowly realizing how much I had not done with my life during my years with him. I was discovering how to have fun again. During this time I started diving into self-help books. I picked up the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. The book taught me how to set goals again in my life to find my happy. I created theme months so I was tackling one thing a month in the upcoming year. It taught me to dive into “my aims” – what makes me feel good, what makes me feel bad and what makes me feel right. After writing down my aims I then created My 12 Commandments. These core values I would apply to my life in the next year to keep me on track.

There were as follows:

Be Robyn
Stop Overanalyzing & Being Insecure
Love Unconditionally
Smile At Strangers
Be Positive & Polite
Always Remember I’m Responsible For How I Feel
Why Do It Tomorrow When You Can Do It Today?
Step Out Of My Comfort Zones
Be Present
Be The Fun
Don’t Keep Score
Be Specific About My Needs

And there began my happiness journey…

“Be Robyn” was a difficult one. I had been there for someone else for so long I didn’t know what about my identity was my own. I had developed a seriously unhealthy case of co-dependency. So how do you unlearn that? I looked to my personal brand for guidance. I had branded myself on my blog with two strong words that embody strength and independence but as an Alpha Female I was lost on how to embody that in myself. I was able to teach myself how to be authentic again by learning to love myself again. The concept of self love was foreign to me but I started seeing it everywhere. As I sat alone by myself in my condo with anxiety I started diving head first into self-development to learn to deal with it as fast as I could.

The definition of self love is

regard for one’s own well-being and happiness (chiefly considered as a desirable rather than narcissistic characteristic).

the instinct by which one’s actions are directed to the promotion of one’s own welfare or well-being, especially an excessive regard for one’s own advantage.

I knew what my personality was like at work. I knew what my personality was like in a relationship trying to please another person. But I didn’t know what my independent, fun seeking, fun loving Robyn looked like. She had been gone for a while. I needed to discover her all over again. I had changed so much in 3 years that I was having a hard time remembering what I was like. Over the years since I started my happiness journey I look back each year and am blown away at how much I change daily, weekly & monthly. I’m so very different now and I truly believe it’s due to learning to love self love, finding things that make me happy, being true to my aims, my 12 commandments and finding a life that I love.

Chapter from Love Lost, Life Found

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If you have just found my blog you can read a bit about my story here and how I started to heal after calling off my wedding in 2012.

My Brain Was Conditioned To Think I Needed A Story

I believe to some degree I allowed the tough chapter to happen in my life. During therapy sessions 2 years after calling off my wedding and leaving a relationship that was hurting me I had an aha moment. I had experienced something so positive in my life in my teenage years but I believe it created a subconscious thought that I needed to have a tough storm in my life to be able to be more relatable and impact the world.

I grew up in a wonderful Christian Baptist Church. To this day I consider it a wonderful home. Some of the ladies in my mom’s Bible studies or church choir were/are second mom’s to me. They were always there to listen and to encourage. The better part of my childhood was spent in the church youth group. I was fortunate enough to get to know two different youth pastor’s who had a great impact on my life. Looking back I realize that this group created subconscious thoughts within me that would impact how I would choose to be in relationships in the future. I’m not faulting the church or my youth groups in the least. I am simply acknowledging how it impacted and shaped my life as an impressionable young woman.

I remember distinctly one night listening to someone’s testimony at a Baptism event. He shared how he had overcome drug and alcohol addiction and he was led to a life with Christ. These words were so beautiful and they really touched me. But as the goody two shoes who had never gotten drunk or tried drugs, I couldn’t relate. His story was impacting people who realized they could turn their life around. He had so many young people surround him after the service to talk and ask him questions. I started thinking in that very moment. Did I need bad in my life to be able to impact someone’s else life? Over the years my faith has always been there but I don’t overtly witness to others about being a Christian. I’ve always taken the stance that when someone looks at my life, if they were to find out that I am a Christian I would hope that they say I can see she leads her life in a Christian way. I believe I subconsciously decided that no one would look up to me if I led just a good life. That I would need to make mistakes and then turn my life around. I realize now looking back that I invited and allowed bad drama into my life to see if I could pull myself out and create a story. If I had a story then I could be more motivational and more inspirational. Even in therapy I struggled about not writing this book because then it would seem that this was finally the culmination of me telling my story that I allowed myself to go through.

I cannot change my path or what lead me to this point in time. I cannot change how my subconscious thoughts impacted my conscious thoughts. I can only educate myself and recognize what happened in my subconscious to see how I allowed my thoughts to become reality.

________________

My goal with this book is to continue to heal myself and hopefully help one other young impressionable girl to know that they don’t need a bad chapter in their life to inspire change in the world.

Wedding Cancellation Checklist

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Over the past 3 years, I’ve opened up three times on the blog about a time in my life that was quite painful. I was engaged to be married on August 25, 2012, and called off the wedding a month before. As I open up on the blog through different posts and allowing myself to be vulnerable I heal a little bit more. At the end of 2012, I shared my lessons learned. A year after I called off my wedding in August of 2013 I shared my story about how one year after the relationship ended went. In 2014 I stay mute but in 2015 on the day that was supposed to be my wedding I talked about what steps I took to heal after calling off my wedding. In that blog, I mentioned that I methodically worked through my wedding cancellation checklist.

After reading that post one of my friends messaged me and mentioned that I should offer it to others looking for guidance. As I work on my first full-length book Love Lost, Life Found about how I lost a relationship but gained an amazing one, I knew I’d be including it in the appendix of the book. However, there really isn’t any reason at all why I can’t share it now.

I’ve recorded a video for brides who may be faced with cancelling their wedding. I’ve put the cancellation checklist in PDF form (including an email template of what to send to your guests to let them know it’s been cancelled). You can watch the video and get the checklist at the link below.

Click here to go to WeddingCancellationChecklist.com

What I will ask of you is please share this with anyone that you know that is in need of this. This isn’t something people talk about and there really are minimal resources out there on how to deal with this type of storm in your life so please share if you can help someone else with this.

How to Heal After Cancelling Your Wedding

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This is being posted on the anniversary of the day I was supposed to be married in 2012. While the pain of the day is gone. While I’ve emerged on the other side of my healing journey happier and emotionally healthier, the day still brings back painful memories. This post is therapy for me however, by sharing this vulnerable piece of me I do hope this can help one other woman (or man) get through something this painful.

There is no manual for cancelling your wedding. There is no Pinterest board where you can find a checklist on what to do first. There are no self-development books I found that I could’ve read before this happened. When planning a wedding you are only seeking out articles on picking your wedding colours and the best wedding favours for guests. You aren’t seeking information on what is the best way to cancel a venue. There are no quotes to tell you how you should feel. There is potentially just feelings of embarrassment, of failure, of hurt and of pain. There is no manual to tell you how to cancel your wedding but I’m hoping I can help ease your pain with how I went about cancelling mine and starting to heal in the immediate weeks after I called mine off.

Steps To Heal After Cancelling Your Wedding

Call your mother, a mother figure to you, your father or a father figure to you. The person that will rush to your side for the moral support and comfort needed.
Allow yourself to cry. I tried to tell myself that I was too strong to cry but then I ended up bottling it up inside.
Work systematically through your cancellation checklist for one day, cry, eat ice cream and pizza (or whatever your body craves) and then go back to normal life.
I personally took one day off work to do the unpleasant things of cancelling the wedding and then went back to work the next day to keep busy.
Get someone to take your wedding dress and store it at their house. Seeing it cab be too painful. Also try avoiding looking at it when you visit. You can decide if you want to keep it, donate it or sell it at a later date.
Put what you can on kijiji and sell it immediately. If you can keep some things without it being painful put into a storage locker away from sight.
Allow your family and close friends to hug you even if it induces tears. Let yourself be comforted and know that it’s not pity but care.
When you send out cancellation emails to friends and family everyone will send you generic I’m sorry emails. I wish I had never read them. I wish I had just deleted them and worked through what I was feeling versus worrying about what everyone else thought. You can create an email rule to have them all sorted directly into a folder or the trash.
Once you emerge on the other side of pain, acquaintances will want to take you out for coffee. Unfortunately, everyone loves a great story and some are just curious about what happened vs care. If they weren’t someone you were going to see before then now isn’t the time.
Get back to basics. I focused on sleep, eating 5-6 meals a day and drinking 2-3 glasses of water a day. Focusing on my health basics gave me a purpose.
You might have horrible insomnia. I scrolled through Pinterest and saved quotes that spoke to me during sleepless nights. I downloaded the Headspace app to meditate and I took melatonin to help me fall asleep. I also bought eye masks to ice my eyes in the morning after crying myself to sleep some nights.
Set daily intentions on how you will attack every day in positive ways. Focus on your mental health.
Book weekly appointments with a therapist to deal with the pain.

Need the steps to actually cancel your wedding?

Download my wedding cancellation checklist.

Everyone will have a different way of healing but sometimes it helps to systematically put together a healing journey checklist or to do list to get you back to your new normal. If you are reading this blog and you are in the midst of calling off your wedding my heart goes out to you. This is a kind of pain not normally talked about so there is limited advice and resources. My heart goes out to you and is hugging you through the words of this blog. You will get through this stronger than you think even if you hate hearing these words at this moment in time.

Want more steps on healing?

Another part of my healing journey was to write the book Love Lost, Life Found. While the first few chapters share vulnerable parts of my story. I really wrote the book to put down on paper all the things I did to heal my heart and find a life that I love.