Every girl deals with heartbreak differently. Some prefer mourning the relationship by staying in and watching The Notebook and others prefer going all out and celebrating their newly single status with shots of tequila and a Rihanna dance party. Though there’s no one right path to overcoming the first pangs of heartbreak and its inevitable aftershock, but I can tell you what I’ve done in the past to get past heartbreak and its annoying friend, pain.

Lesson 37: Tricks of the trade when it comes to breakup heartbreak.

Closure can be treacherous territory. My go-to advice for my girlfriends and for myself is to create your own closure. Too many times I watch my friends go into post-breakup coffees and lunches with guys, using the veil of closure as a chance to talk things out and get back together. Closure is one of those great concepts in theory but not so much in practice because it’s so subjective. What seems like closure to one person could become a quest for more answers for another person. You have to ask yourself if you really want to know the reasons somebody didn’t want to be with you and if so, you need to be prepared for the feelings that could come with that.

The danger lies in relying on someone else to give you a feeling of security. If you’re serious about seeking out closure, start with yourself. The sooner you accept that sometimes relationships just don’t work, the easier it’s going to be for you to put down the breakup ice cream and pick up the pieces of your life and move on. Trust yourself enough to be on your own so that you can rely on yourself for security and not the guy who just walked away from you.

Next, you don’t have to forget a relationship to get over it. Still fresh from a breakup, blocking a guy out of your mind can be the hardest thing in the world, partially because you’re not ready to imagine your life without him but also because you’re stuck in that “remembering to forget him” phase. Stop stressing over whether or not you’re thinking about him too much, and allow your mind to go there if you can’t help but think of the memories you have of your relationship. At the risk of sounding cliché, time really does get you over a breakup. But at the same time, make an effort to go out, focus on new things that have nothing to do with your ex, be it school or your friends or your hobbies, and in time, the heartbreak that you thought you’d cling onto desperately will slip through your fingertips.

As much as you can’t fathom the thought of never thinking of him, over time, you will think of him less and less, even if it’s gradual. Believe me, if the relationship is something worth being heartbroken over, you’ll never fully forget it, but you can move past it. You can grow and learn from a past breakup, and even though it doesn’t seem like it now, you may even be able to look back on it fondly.

Breakups, whether you feel them coming or they catch you totally off guard, can really shake up your entire life. They remind us that at any point in our lives we can feel lost, rejected, and miserable. While the initial pangs of heartbreak make me the epicenter of a storm perfectly capable of complete destruction, I’ve found a sense of stability in knowing that heartbreak, as awful as it seems, is a pretty small problem to have considering the amount of pain out there in the world. There’s nothing more grounding than remembering that there are people in the world who wished that heartbreak was the worst of their problems.

I’ve been active in volunteer work almost my whole life and I’ll be honest that most of the volunteer projects I’ve picked started as a result of heartbreak. And even though this goes without saying, the time I’ve spent volunteering post-breakup never falls to the wayside once I’ve gotten through the heartbreak. Look, I’m not proud to admit that it sometimes takes me going through pain to realize that others feel worse pain, but I’m very proud of the person my breakups have molded me into. Heartbreak keeps me grounded and reminds me that even if the world throws heartbreak my way, I can peel myself off the couch, away from that sixth pint of ice cream and I can do my best from preventing pain in another person’s life.

So if nothing else you try seems to work, give paying it forward a chance because as much as heartbreak has the potential to be cyclical, so does happiness.

Got it? Feel empowered? Good. Now get the first 36 rules of the Single Girl Society

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