I didn’t realise it had been a YEAR, if I’m honest. I’ve been uncomfortably aware for some months of how neglectful I’ve been of this space - even as the Substack app has replaced Instagram/ X/ Politico/ the Guardian as my commute-scroll of choice. I’ve been here - lots - but I’ve not been here.

I have some beautiful Heartbreak Sevens to share with you. I have recommendations from Ishi Robinson and Alice Vincent and Nadine Matheson sitting waiting for me to write them up and I am beyond embarrassed that they went to all that trouble - for free! - and I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain for months and months.

Why? A million nonsense reasons.

Nice things: Writing (of which more below). Beyond the writing, a new job. Travel to beautiful places - being able to afford travel to beautiful places. Peregrines nesting on nearby chimneys. Coffee gelato and lemon sorbet. The best chips in London. Turquoise swimming pools. Reading my dad’s old school reports. Taking my children to places that mean a lot to me. West End Girl live in Newcastle with some of the world’s best women. Building work and choosing a new kitchen - being able to afford building work and choosing a new kitchen. Greenwich Park. Teaching my four-year-old how to ride his bike, and the soaring-tugging bittersweetness of dropping behind as he pedals on, no longer looking for my waiting hands.

Not-so-nice things: Chaos around the new job. The short, sharp heartbreak of bereavement. The long, slow heartbreak of anticipatory bereavement. The building work inevitably taking longer than planned. Falling off the bike.

Kissing knees - so very many kissings of knees.

Life is rich and full and how very grateful I am that it is rich and full - and how hard it becomes, then, to find more slivers of time on top of all the other slivers to carve out space here.

I’ve spent a decent chunk of that Substack-less year writing - and editing - my second novel. Cue disbelieving inhale. Lucky, lucky, lucky. I wrote in scraps before work and after work and after bedtime and with coffee and with wine and often with some adored writer friends in silent solidarity video call (THANK YOU ALL).

And it’s here. It’s about rich and full lives. It’s a little bit about heartbreak (how could it not be?!) but it’s mostly about falling in love, and how falling in love might, or could, or should be. It’s about two people called Seb and Emmy and two more people whose names I won’t share for now. It’s about London - my home now - and Northumberland - my home then, and always.

It’s called We Have Forever. And yes, there’s a whale in it.

(In my husband’s words ‘the tagline isn’t a comment on how you missed your first deadline, is it?’)

I’m going to try - I swear I’m going to try - to find more slivers of time to dedicate here, starting with the Heartbreak Sevens so generously shared with me and so thoughtlessly sidelined by me. Much of the motivation for this is, inevitably, a ramping up of the old self-promotion engine. So a apologies in advance for the endless wheedling about how pre-orders are so important to authors and how much I’d love you to read about my favourite second-hand bookshop and what happens when Seb and Emmy find some old love letters there.

But much of it is, also, a reflection of how much I love being a Substack reader. Enough of us have waxed lyrical about how this feels like the internet used to feel. I want to try and add some more bricks.

Thanks for sticking around. Lots of love xxx

Meet Katie, Dee, Liv and Rosa - the four fictional girls - women - navigating every question heartbreak throws up, from the big (where exactly am I going to live?) to the not so big (should I cut off all my hair?)

I spent so long with these women in my head, thinking through their favourite outfits, how they felt on their first day at work, their nail varnish colours, the jokes that make them laugh - it’s been a joy to revisit them this week and have them share their Heartbreak Sevens.

If you’d like to get to know them better - or if you’d simply like to support this otherwise freeeee Substack - I’d of course love it if you could buy a copy of the paperback. For yourself, for your sister, above all for your friends - it costs less than - okay, two cups of coffee - and it helps me keep going as a writer. And I have lots more words I want to share with you…

1. Something to read

Katie: The ultimate sentimental childhood comfort read - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

Dee: Hilarious escapism without a romance in sight - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Amazing design in the illustrated edition, too.

Liv: A seductive, complex story of desire and finding oneself - Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson.

Rosa: Classical romance in all its glory - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

2. Something to listen to

Katie: Any Jon Hopkins - for dancing, for dreaming.

Dee: ‘Dancing On My Own’ by Robyn.

Liv: ‘Is That All There Is?’ by Peggy Lee. Devastatingly spare. Let’s keep dancing.

Rosa: ‘All By Myself’ by Jamie O’Neal. From Brief Encounter to Bridget Jones - lean into the melodrama of your feelings in all their glory.

3. Something to watch

Katie: The Sound of Music. When to indulge your love of musicals if not when heartbroken? And the Baroness should be everyone’s best friend

Dee: Hilarious escapism without a romance in sight - This Is Spinal Tap.

Liv: The Way We Were. A sweeping saga of political idealism and creative dreams. Be the complicated girl.

Rosa: Well - Brief Encounter or Bridget Jones, naturally. As The Last Romantic should.

4. Something to eat

Katie: Initially nothing - because who can actually eat when they’re heartbroken? Followed by chocolate. All the chocolate.

Dee: My mother’s moules marinière.

Liv: Something sharp, astringent and numbing - pickles and chilli. Followed by the ultimate childhood comfort food - Heinz tomato soup with grated cheese.

Rosa: Roast chicken. Cooked elaborately over an entire afternoon, to a disco soundtrack.

5. Something to drink

Katie: A Baby Guinness - that’s a shot of Guinness topped with Tia Maria. And then another one. And another one. Dance with your eyes closed. Trust me.

Dee: My mother’s margaritas - shaken in a pickle jar.

Liv: Honestly, I just want to get trashed.

Rosa: I don’t think you can go wrong with a cup of tea.

6. Somewhere to go

Katie: The scruffy little flat where my three best friends live. I can’t imagine any other reflex.

Dee: Brighton. Vitamin sea, the most joyful night out and a heart-to-heart with my mum.

Liv: Half of me wants to run away to the Northumberland countryside and stomp along a beach under a huge grey sky. Half of me wants to run away to Soho and disappear into the dirtiest night out I can find.

Rosa: It all just feels like running away, doesn't it?

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

All: Lean on your friends. Ask them how they moved through their own heartbreaks. Write it all down and hold it close.

And if in doubt - put on your tiniest dress, break out the booze and have a ball.

One final plug - maybe you have a friend’s birthday coming up? Maybe you have a friend navigating a heartbreak of their own? I can’t promise this’ll make everything better - but I’m pretty sure it’ll help.

And above all - thank you for supporting Instructions for Heartbreak in all its forms. It means the world xx

Jo’s fantastic novel The Night Lagoon has just come out in the UK - and under the equally compelling title Lime Juice Money in the US. It’s a twisty, bewitching book set in the remote Belizean jungle which has been described as ‘combining the transportation of The Beach with the earthy intoxication of The Paper Palace’. You can visit Jo’s website to sign up for her newsletter and read a sample of her novel’s opening pages - and in the meantime, read on for a whole new take on the cheese toastie and a description of Paris that will make you want to jump on the Eurostar immediately.

Eat the cake, roll in the grass, call that friend. When your head is a surreal and scrambled mess, it’s okay to take your mind off the hurt but then don’t be afraid to feel the loss –– deeply. Give into the pain, cry the cries, and mend. But go easy on yourself. In my debut novel, THE NIGHT LAGOON (titled LIME JUICE MONEY in US/Canada), when one of my characters is suffering from their first heartbreak, her stepfather tells her, ‘The biggest trap in life isn’t money or popularity or success; It’s self-rejection. It’s those voices in your head telling you that you are unlovable or worthless or not good enough.’ After a shock to the heart, don’t fall into the trap of believing you’re not enough. Your heart may be broken, but it’s also cracked a little more open. Delve into that gap and explore it with curiosity and kindness.

But also, eat the cake.

1. Something to read

Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star is totally arresting. I discovered this novella in my early twenties and fell in love with the writing which was like nothing I’d ever read before. Lispector finds passion in the abyss, beauty in nothingness. A balm to a writer’s broken heart.

2. Something to listen to

‘Blackbird’ by Beyonce. Hauntingly beautiful, this song gets to the guts of me. It’s like a broken heart power anthem, compelling you to rise up and find strength in adversity.

3. Something to watch

After our miscarriage I made my husband watch The Sound of Music. He hates musicals and had never seen it, but I got to choose. There’s comfort in familiarity and the Von Trapps. Also, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls. Basically, Amy Sherman-Palladino always has your back.

4. Something to eat

Melted cheddar cheese on sourdough toast with lashings of marmalade. Trust me.

5. Something to drink

English Breakfast tea. Strong. Endless pots. Or dirty martini (with vodka, and tears).

6. Somewhere to go

Paris. I lived there twenty-five years ago, and I love going back. All the old haunts and memories are still there, so it feels like coming home. I love walking the cobbled streets, staring in café windows after dark, imagining I’m a flâneur comparing notes with Baudelaire. Wine and baguette lunch beside the Canal St-Martin, then dinner at Chez Janou, strolling arrondissement to arrondissement; all enough to mend a broken heart.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Friends. My best friends are my oldest school friends, and I’m so lucky we all still hang out. They are tonic to my soul when I’m feeling low. A weekend away in a cottage somewhere with too many drinks, some old Kate Bush classics, and some foraging and communal cooking works wonders for the heart and for the soul.

Photos provided by Jo Morey, and by Earth on Unsplash.

Natasha’s newsletter Conversations on Love started life many years ago - I’ve just searched through my inbox and found them going back to 2021, and it was already a beautifully established missive then. Natasha is a wonderful interviewer, always finding the most original and personal questions to ask people on this most multifaceted of subjects. What is the meaning of connection? How does love change over time? How does romantic love differ from familial love, and from the love between friends? And, of course - how do you navigate the loss of love?

Natasha was my dream guest from the moment I came up with the Heartbreak Seven, and I am beyond delighted that she’s sharing hers today. Do remember to subscribe to her newsletter, buy her book - and read on for the most elegant, thoughtful set of recommendations. Liv, who is maybe my favourite of the four girls - women - in my own book, has a particular soft spot for Little Women’s Amy too - and I like to think she had Greta Gerwig’s/ Florence Pugh’s version in mind.

1. Something to read

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.

This short, special book always makes me feel more determined to live the life that I’ve got as well as I can. It’s a good reminder that we cannot escape heartbreak if we are open to love — and this is a terrifying thing, but also a universal one, and something that connects us.

2. Something to listen to

‘Dancing in the Dark’ by Bruce Springsteen.

Just after I broke up with my University boyfriend, my brother put on Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark and we danced together in his bedroom singing, You can't start a fire / Sittin' 'round cryin' over a broken heart. I felt so happy in that moment, despite having cried a few minutes before. The song fits that particular mood of heartbreak perfectly; when you’re sad, but you also know deep down that the ending is a new beginning. In moments like these, you get a surge of energy from the knowledge that you're going to make it through. You’re still sad, you’re also ready to let go, and you can start to hold the loss and the anticipation of what’s next in your mind simultaneously. Because you know that it’s true: There's somethin' happenin' somewhere / Baby, I just know that there is.

3. Something to watch

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

One way through heartbreak is to get back in touch with your sense of agency, and I think this version of Little Women invites that. There’s plenty to get lost in if you just need to escape your sadness: the gorgeous costumes, Timmy perfectly cast as Laurie, Florence Pugh’s incredible Amy, and all the joyful, chaotic scenes of March family life that capture the complexity and beauty of sibling love. But there’s also something about the way Greta writes about purpose and ambition that plugs you back into what you want to pursue in life. I think it’s because she puts ambition in a realistic context. She doesn’t ask her characters to choose between purpose and love. She also acknowledges how lonely life can be. Jo’s speech towards the end- and Saorise Ronan’s delivery of it - is such an accurate description of how it can feel to pursue love and ambition, to not want to be defined by love, but also to know that you need and crave connection. The truth in those lines makes space for you to feel all your emotions at once. Watching it feels like being understood, and I think that’s very comforting in the midst of heartbreak.

4. Something to eat

Cacio e Pepe!

Or if there’s no Pecorino in the fridge, then just cheese, garlic, oil and pasta will do.

5. Something to drink

In my worst moments of heartbreak, I’ve always ordered a cold vodka martini. Unlike a margarita - a happy drink which I love the taste of - a martini feels medicinal. Perhaps it’s the pure instant hit of the vodka on the throat, which almost makes me wince, that distracts from any other feeling.

6. Somewhere to go

Anywhere that makes you feel small. I remember going to an art gallery once and standing in front of a huge painting that made me feel tiny, and that was helpful. The sea is another place I return to, or driving on a flat open road with the windows down with views for miles. I think when you’re heartbroken you lose perspective, and remembering that you’re a small part of a bigger world, full of lots of other heartbroken people, is a comforting thing.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

I think that dancing and singing and listening to music is the best way to make it through heartbreak. Music connects you to the best thing about those periods — how they make you feel more alive to the little details in life. That’s painful, because you feel so sensitive to everyone and everything, as if you might burst into tears if someone says the wrong thing. But you also notice so many new things around you because every emotion and sensation is heightened. You notice nature more, you feel the elements more, and when someone does offer you a kind gesture or word, those things seem more meaningful too, maybe because you need and appreciate them more. Music only intensifies all those feelings. Instead of avoiding the full pain of your feelings, it invites you to go all in, to feel them all fully. The freedom that comes with that process is exhilarating, and sad, and beautiful.

Photo by Robert Gareth on Unsplash.

Yes, it’s been a whole month. Excuses? Sicknesses (not mine); missed deadlines (definitely mine); weekends away (deep in the South Downs National Park, utterly gorgeous); some little heartbreaks (such is life); some balm for the same.

But what a beauty I’m back with.

Olivia Ford’s debut novel, Jenny Quinn’s Rise to Fame is exactly the sort of buttery comfort read to make a beeline for when you’re heartbroken (or hungover, or fed up, or knackered, or dreading Monday, or flattened on Friday).

The eponymous Jenny has just won a spot as a contestant on a prime-time TV baking show. It's only the second time in her marriage that she's kept something from beloved husband Bernard. And now she's got a chance of being crowned Britain's best baker.

But as her ordinary life collides with unexpected stardom, the other secret Jenny's been keeping - the one supposed to stay hidden forever - is in danger of surfacing.

No, you don’t need to be a Bake Off fan to devour this - though it won’t hurt - nor do you even need to be a cake fan - though doesn’t the cover look good enough to eat? Just get stuck in - there, and here - where you’ll find a crush on a fictional serial killer (me too, Olivia, me too), a theory of legs healing the heart which my pal with the ‘you never regret a run’ fridge magnet will particularly love, and, of course, cake. Thank you, Olivia.

Every time I’ve had my heart broken it’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me, disguised as the worst.

Let me explain. I think that one of the core devastations of heartbreak is that the future you envisaged for yourself is no longer. It’s as if the universe is reminding you that YOU don’t get to choose what happens to you.

I had a warm up at heartbreak around the age of seventeen, and then again at twenty, when the future I had envisaged for myself shattered into pieces (to put it dramatically, which I was at seventeen). I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I auditioned for dance school, but I didn’t get a place. I then decided I wanted to study Journalism at university, but on results day I was informed by the UCAS website that I had narrowly missed the grades that I needed for my first choice. I went on to study at Leeds University, and in my third year I interned every Friday for NME magazine, with dreams of becoming a music journalist. When a graduate job came up, I got to the final interview, but I didn’t get the job and I distinctly remember informing my father in a sobbed phone call outside of London Bridge station. My plans, ones I had worked so hard for, kept not materialising in the way that I’d hoped and I felt some level of heartbreak. In my debut novel Jenny Quinn’s Rise to Fame, 77-year-old Jenny Quinn pursues her quiet ambition despite everything being stacked against her, and I realise now that much of myself is in her character.

These warm-up heartbreaks evolved to be the best things that happened to me, but I mistook them for the worst. I went to Leeds University and had a wonderful time, enjoyed my course and made some very dear friends. I went on to get a graduate job in TV which enabled me to spend a decade creating, travelling and learning. My debut novel was then informed by these experiences. It’s almost as if it was meant to be.

My first real, romantic heartbreak happened in 2016. I met a man in a bar and fell completely in love with him. Fast forward a couple of years, and without going into too much detail, I was forced to break up with him against my heart’s will. Being with him had made me very unwell. I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to break up with him face-to-face, so I wrote everything down in a letter and I posted it through his door, along with his keys. The next twelve months were the worst of my life. I thought about him constantly, I missed him desperately, I had a panic attack in Pret when I saw that he had posted pictures from Glastonbury Festival looking happy, his arms around a group of strangers. Nine years later, I can say with confidence that this heartbreak was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I went on to meet and then marry someone kind, the butterflies settling into a feeling of security, safety and contentment. I also now have a little girl, who wouldn’t have existed if I had continued down this fraught path. All of which is to say, that heartbreaks are the absolute worst, but more often than not, they make room for the absolute best.

1. Something to read

Escapism is everything when you’re heartbroken. ENTER fiction. Read anything and everything. But for the purposes of this article, I’m going to say Little Women by Louisa May Alcott because Jo March has the sort of energy we all need. Amy Poehler’s Yes Please really helped me at the time and I’ve not actually read it since, but it was a tonic and I recommend it if you’re struggling with heartbreak. Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love is also a balm.

2. Something to listen to

‘BTSTU’ by Jai Paul – This song always makes me feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes of heartbreak. It’s simmering and smouldering and it lights a fire in my belly.

I am also a fan of Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, which didn’t exist at the time of my heartbreak, but it is so interesting, inspiring and I love the sentiment that we should embrace and celebrate our failings.

3. Something to watch

Ask yourself this: do I have a crush on anyone at all besides the person that broke my heart? Watch something with them in it. I remember feeling convinced that I would never have a crush on anyone ever again, and then I watched James Norton in Happy Valley.

Also, Nora Ephron movies.

4. Something to eat

I would advise eating exactly what you fancy regardless of nutritional content. For me: my father’s lemon meringue pie, a gingerbread man, an almond croissant, a cinnamon bun, a tangy piece of lemon drizzle.

5. Something to drink

Cups of tea. They are SO much more than tea leaves, water and milk, because they usually come with a side of conversation. When you’re talking about your heartbreak whilst nursing a steaming cup of tea, you’re not actually feeling it. Talk and slurp, my friends, talk and slurp.

6. Somewhere to go

I would say where you go is less important than who you go with. Go somewhere with a best friend, a sibling, a parent, a grandparent. I went to Norway with one of my best friends and to the Lincolnshire countryside with my mother - both were endlessly healing.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Run. I have this theory that my legs healed my heart. At the time of my heartbreak, I lived with my best friend in a flat in Camberwell. She reminded me recently that, of an evening, I used to put my dinner in the oven, announce that I was going for a ‘quick run’ and then disappear for two hours. The timer would ping after 30 mins and she would remove my dinner from the oven and leave it on the side before it burnt to a crisp or caused a house fire. She was very kind about this and never complained, and I was too self-absorbed at the time to realise I was doing it. The truth is, when my legs ached my heart didn’t. I was making endorphins, and I really needed them.

Dream. Pursuing my quiet ambitions always made me feel strong, gave me purpose, enabled me to imagine a future. Keep at it, whatever it is.

Find solace in words. My 2016 camera roll is full of lines from books, articles, quotes. I was searching for answers to my heartbreak, for meaning. This one still rings true today: ‘Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable’ (Mary Oliver).

Photos provided by Olivia Ford - and the BBC’s Happy Valley microsite, which I enjoyed perusing A LOT.

Gabrielle’s Heartbreak Seven is a beautiful window into the lyrical, thoughtful writing you can expect from her novel. Here’s the blurb:

1915, the Cabrach, Aberdeenshire. An isolated Scottish community is disturbed by a strange discovery: a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved. Two people haul the body from the ground: Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearthside and inn, people whisper: what have we unearthed?

One unveiling brings others. For Lizzie, tenacious but trapped, the discovery reveals unanswered questions about her past while for Johnny, it threatens to uncover a history he’s trying to outrun.

As their stories entwine, a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community: ruinous weather, a damaged soldier, strange occurrences that cannot be explained. Against the echoes of distant war, and with the boundaries blurring between right and wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame…

Greater Sins effortlessly combines complexity of character, an extraordinary sense of place, and a cracking mystery - what exactly did happen ten years or so before this body was pulled from the earth? Get your hands on a copy now.

And in the meantime - thank you, Gabrielle, for sharing such an eclectic and glorious lists of recommendations - including the soundtrack to my own teenage yearning, too, the perfect lean-in to Bridget Jones and a Scottish reference that I know will mean a huge amount to my pal Clare in particular.

I think there can be a certain beauty in a little bit of woe. How many great books and songs have been written in a pique of creativity only made possible by yearning, disappointment, pain? Without going full emo (that was left in 2005 with the over-straightened fringe), I think I’ve always been drawn to the melancholy. I’m not sure I’ve been heartbroken, truly, but I’ve certainly been heartsore. I have gathered a collection of small pains that still needle, if I think of them, but I like to think they make me a better writer. I am drawn to write characters who too have amassed many little shames, who have found themselves rejected or betrayed but trudged onwards, found hope somewhere (it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life, etc.). All of which is to say that leaning into the blues, sometimes, mightn’t be such a bad thing – I’ve chosen my Heartbreak Seven accordingly.

1. Something to read

Miranda July’s collection No One Belongs Here More Than You has been a much-loved companion – her stories manage to convey our human hopes and frailties in the most beautiful way. They make me feel less alone.

If I really wanted to embrace the sadness, perhaps I’d finally re-read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which is both tragic and extremely beautiful.

If I wanted to forget the heartbreak, getting immersed in a big historical novel is a surefire way to escape, if only for a while – something like The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, or The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.

2. Something to listen to

I think the best heartbreak music has to be melancholy, with just a little bit of hope in it somewhere. Nick Drake’s Saturday Sun is the perfect expression of this, as is This Feeling by Alabama Shakes (I was a bit cross when Fleabag used it at the end of the final episode as I’d reserved it in my head for a non-existent broadcast project of my own). Jeff Buckley is also a good shout – the soundtrack to my teenage yearning.

3. Something to watch

I do not have high-brow television tastes. I think, in the depths of heartbreak, I’d binge an old favourite like The Office (UK only, don’t talk to me about the US one) - I still think it’s perfection.

4. Something to eat

I like to think I’m the sort of person who’d look heartbreak square in the eye, put on some lipstick, and go for a ruinously expensive solo dinner, but in reality I’d eat pizza on the sofa (with dip for the crusts – I was once snobbish about this but I tried it and it changed my life).

5. Something to drink

A self-pitying bottle of Chardonnay, in pyjamas, channelling Bridget Jones.

6. Somewhere to go

The sea, the sea. I’ve always been drawn to the water – my dad was in the Merchant Navy and loved all things nautical, and some of my happiest memories have been by the coast. Last summer during a transitional period in my life, I spent a day alone at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, looking for fossils and interesting rocks on the beach, and was reminded of the pleasures to be had in disconnecting from the noise of life and just being very present in the moment. I also had a day out a couple of years ago to Crovie in Aberdeenshire, near to where I grew up – it’s this amazing little row of houses at the foot of a cliff, the sea practically lapping at their doorsteps. It’s the setting for a novel that I’ll finish one day.

I’ve recently moved to Brighton and I love it – I can watch the waves for ages, the wilder the better, and there’s something comforting about their constancy, the cycle of it all.

7. A bonus seventh – balm for a broken heart

Dancing does it for me – un-selfconscious, embarrassing dancing. I have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones which are one of the most important things to ever have been invented, and a playlist of stone-cold bangers to lift even the most morose of moods. Throwing myself around the room to that ought to help.

Photos provided by Gabrielle Griffiths.

Pitched as ‘more a warning than a wish’ and ‘haunted and haunting’, these are not cosy, comforting bedtime stories. They are immaculate fragments of twenty-first century intimacy and emptiness, yearning and questioning.

Here’s a line I underlined. There are lots more.

Harri kissed him. He smelled of lime and cold air. Oh, she thought. So this is something I want.

Marni’s Heartbreak Seven is just as worthy of an underline. Here, she meditates specifically on the heartbreak of the end of a friendship, rather than a romantic relationship. Its specific pain, separate as it sits from our cultural touchstones - and specific suggestions for healing it, from that glorious quartet of novels to one of my own favourite episodes of Girls. And I’m always here for the specific pleasure of sitting in a bar alone.

Thank you, Marni, for sharing your Heartbreak Seven!-

For my Heartbreak Seven, I wanted to focus on a devastating heartbreak I experienced in recent years – a friend break up. Heartbreak is traditionally associated with the end of romantic relationships; the loss of an important friendship is not spoken about anywhere near as often. There's no social script for how to deal with it, and therefore it can be an incredibly lonely experience. As a society, we don't understand and appreciate the pain of friend break ups in the same way as we do romantic break ups. And yet, the end of a friendship can be just as, if not more, gut-wrenching an experience. It is a very specific form of rejection – for me, it meant the loss of a friend I spoke to every day, who I'd known since childhood and who I thought of as family. It shook my whole sense of self, which is something I had never felt from a romantic rejection. Who was I without her? And if she didn't like me, did that mean I was fundamentally unlikeable? Who would I voice note about the minutiae of my day? It was painful, but I survived – thanks, in large part, to some of my recommendations below...

1. Something to read

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Whatever you’re feeling about your brilliant/ bad friend, Lenù and Lila have been there - and then some. A truly engrossing series of novels, and with plenty of pages, they’ll provide a substantial amount of heartbreak distraction!

2. ⁠Something to listen to

'No Hard Feelings' by Wolf Alice. This song reminds me that after the storm and the chaos of heartbreak, acceptance will creep in day by day. That doesn't mean it won't hurt anymore, just that you'll learn to live with the pain and it won't always be the undercurrent to every moment.

However, if you're not at that stage just yet, try 'Becky' by Be Your Own Pet. An angry, hilarious song about the turbulence of girl friendships.

3. ⁠Something to watch

I was discussing films recently with a friend and she declared: you love singing Ryan Gosling. She might be right. My two go-to movies when I’m feeling blue are 'La La Land' and 'Barbie'. Ryan's beautiful voice aside, both films boast bright, beautiful colouring, a healthy dose of sunshine, banging music and genius performances, which will lift your spirits. They both also have a little emotional moment at the end so you can have a good cry.

My bonus something to watch for a friend breakup, especially if you're still at the angry stage, is the Girls episode ‘Beach House’. Shoshanna finally stepping up to tell the other girls just how awful they are is incredibly cathartic.

4. ⁠Something to eat

My favourite comfort food is macaroni cheese. I use the recipe from Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love for hangover mac and cheese, but I also throw in a little bit of smoked cheddar. Perfection.

If you’re feeling a bit fancier, I adore Nigella’s chicken in a pot with lemon and orzo. A nourishing, delicious one pot meal — and you can top it with cheese too. Okay, maybe my number one food recommendation is cheese.

5. ⁠Something to drink

An aperol spritz, ideally on your own. Drinking an aperol in a bar alone is strangely empowering, and it will remind you that better times are coming. (But make sure the bartender doesn’t skimp on the ice or use flat Prosecco.)

6. ⁠Somewhere to go

Take a brisk walk outside, then slip into the comforting darkness of the cinema. The great thing about the cinema is that once you’re inside, it requires very little effort (you just sit there and enjoy) and there are no distractions. Any movie works, but my top choice for heartbreak would be something high budget with a decent amount of action – whatever gets you out of your head.

7. ⁠A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Book a trip – whether you’re treating yourself to a day at an art gallery, visiting pals in a different city, or spending a month backpacking in Thailand. Having your diary full of things to look forward to makes heartbreak that little bit more bearable.

Photos provided by Marni Appleton.

Though her fellow students all seem to come from money and to have known each other their whole lives, outsider Ivy is determined to belong. She embraces the world of secret societies, and as she discovers the legacy of her college, the parallels between its past and her present become striking. Because however hard she tries to ignore it, Ivy has always felt one with water and her own personal talisman, a heron, is never far away.

In just one life-changing year in these hallowed halls, Ivy will have to decide how much sisterhood means to her and how far she’ll go to become the person she was destined to be.

These Mortal Bodies is described as ‘a richly atmospheric campus novel perfect for fans of The Secret History and dark academia […] an intoxicating story of obsession, infatuation and toxic friendship in the world of the elites, where rules are made to be broken.’

Elspeth also runs a Substack of her own, (Neurodivergent) Notes on Writing, in which she interviews, as suggested by the title, writers on their experiences of neurodivergence.

So - go hit the subscribe button, go get your preorder in, and settle down for a lyrical exploration of how Elspeth’s own writing journey was inflected by heartbreak - and a new vegan chocolate brand to check out.

2020 was a year of both societal and personal heartbreak for me. As pandemic raged and everyone struggled, particularly disabled, chronically ill and other marginalised people, I also had other, more intimate heartbreaks to deal with. Several family members were seriously ill, I was bereaved, I was separated from my partner, my work were being awful and my PTSD was triggered badly. Every day, of course, people are dealing with similar heartbreaks but having to face them in isolation made them all the more acute.

At a time when everything felt so insular and my world had shrunk beyond recognition, I found that the only thing that began to heal my shattered, raggedy heart was to look outwards. To help support and care for others whenever I could. To think about the kind of world I wanted and how I could play a part in getting to that. Even just to smile at strangers on my short daily walks. This might sound cheesy, and obviously at times you just want to sulk (which I also highly encourage), but I've found again and again that contact with the world in whatever way you can manage is the best reminder that life goes on and that you can be a part of that life.

It's no coincidence that this is the time where I started writing my debut novel, These Mortal Bodies. Although writing can be solitary and requires a lot of looking inwards, there's a reaching in it too. I wanted to escape into my imagination, yes, but also to craft other settings to lose myself in and characters to relate and empathise with. Sometimes I'd write a sentence or a paragraph and read it back and not remember having written it; in the most liberating moments, it was like I was writing from somewhere beyond my narrow confines. Like I was part of something bigger, even when I was alone in my small, cold flat.

So this advice comes from what I learnt during the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching year of my life. That being in community and caring for and with others reminds you of so much goodness in the world - and also reminds you that you can help support others too. My recommendations try to capture the combination of holding yourself close and letting others in that I have personally found to be the things that light up the path forward when it seemed everything was in darkness.

1. Something to read

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer is a saga that follows a friendship group where everyone is flawed but (almost) everyone also has many redeeming qualities too. Kind of like life, right? This is a long novel which you can really sink your teeth into and see how the characters pull through the various heartbreaks- and joys - of their different life stages. It's not light and it's not fluffy, but it is very human and very beautiful.

On the non-fiction side, I'd recommend Dear Dolly, a collection of Dolly Alderton's agony aunt columns. It's a very readable book that reminds you that no matter what your specific heartbreak is and how alone you're feeling, someone out there has almost certainly felt similarly. Plus, Alderton's advice is warm, generous and non-judgemental.

2. ⁠Something to listen to

Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan - a song all about the joy of finding home in the right community and how that can help heal the heartbreak of having to mask and hide parts of ourselves from loved ones. A truly stunning piece of art that manages to be incredibly moving - in the literal sense too! And if dancing around your living room isn't a cure for heartbreak, then I don't know what is.

3. ⁠Something to watch

Watch one thing to escape - and another to dream. Escape for me would be something like Clueless or another 90s/ noughties teen drama which is full of nostalgia and comfort.

And something to dream would be something that helps me look to and imagine a future because that can feel like a real challenge when you're heartbroken - something like Simone Biles: Rising where someone else is generous enough to share their journey through heartbreak and out the other side.

4. ⁠Something to eat

Something that feels like a hug. For me that's a chocolate bar by Rhythm 108 - one of my absolute favourite vegan chocolate companies.

5. ⁠Something to drink

Something you love and you can share with a friend - whether that's tea or a G and T. Just make sure you're making at least two cups/ glasses/ pints and you've got enough to keep you going as you set the world to rights.

6. ⁠Somewhere to go

Anywhere outdoors, whatever that looks like for you. It could be just leaning out your window to get some fresh air on your face. I think it's helpful to be in the company of other animals as well, not just people, whether that's through listening to the birdsong or spotting cute dogs in your neighbourhood. Sometimes we need to focus on ourselves and really acknowledge the rubbish time we're going through, and sometimes it's helpful to recognise we're just one part of a whole world and life is going on around us all the time. I often find a whole lot of comfort in thinking about how tiny a speck I am in the scheme of things - that doesn't mean I don't matter (quite the opposite) but it puts whatever is going on for me in perspective.

7. ⁠A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Movement. For me, yoga, swimming and dancing (very badly) can't help but to make me feel better. I have never, ever swum and not felt better afterwards. What movement works for you will be different for everyone and will depend on factors such as mobility, access to nature and disability. But I do think that some form of bodily movement means that our thoughts and feelings get stirred up a bit and they won't land exactly the same afterwards. It's by no means a quick fix but it can be the start of a shift.

Photos provided by Elspeth Wilson and by kike vega on Unsplash.

Shahed is a writer and editor specialising in features and reporting on politics, feminism, culture, and social issues. You might recognise her from Stylist, which I fell in love with back when it was the best weekly freebie, and fell in love with all over again recently when it featured Instructions for Heartbreak in a list of thirty uplifting things for under £30… (Yes yes humble brag I know).

Anyway. Shahed’s upcoming book The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women is a contemporary collection of essays that expose the harm which the white feminist movement has inflicted, and continues to inflict, upon Muslim women worldwide. You can pre-order it now.

And now - on with her recommendations, where I was delighted to find someone sharing my own weird film-soundtrack-inflected listening habits, a welcome acknowledgement of heartbreak ruining your appetite, and a gorgeous reminder that ‘your friends, especially, will lift you up out of the greyness and raw emotion and make you feel human again.’ Amen to that.

1. Something to read

There’s no better way to get into your feelings than reading a devastating love story or two. A favourite of mine for heartbreak is David Nicholls’ One Day. I have an old battered copy that I regularly go back to or fully re-read when I’m feeling sad, weepy or just down. And now with the excellent new Netflix series, I have even more One Day to call upon in my time of need.

2. Something to listen to

The pain of heartbreak always needs a sad girl playlist and mine is quite the mammoth list at this point. Putting Taylor Swift aside (who features heavily on the playlist), I really enjoy wallowing and getting in my feelings listening to Hans Zimmer arrangements, particularly the film soundtracks to Inception and Interstellar. There’s an existential feel to them that I weirdly love and find comforting.

3. Something to watch

My favourite ever trilogy of romantic films is To All The Boys I Loved Before. Jenny Han, the woman you are! It’s sweet, wholesome and so comforting. It honestly feels like a warm hug around your fragile heart. I adore those silly, goofy kids.

4. Something to eat

My appetite tends to go out the window when I’m feeling sad or heartbroken. But a go-to easy but tasty and filling meal is a simple bowl of pesto pasta — with grated cheese on top. Or a takeaway from Dishoom if I’m feeling particularly fancy that evening.

5. Something to drink

Honestly? A cup of tea. A drink that truly cures all ailments of the heart (albeit temporarily) and makes me so happy. And I say that as someone who drinks around six or seven cups of tea a day. I used to rely on cans of Diet Coke too but they were ruining my gut health and at 30, that is now something I unfortunately have to think about.

6. Somewhere to go

Heartbreak tends to keep me inside, usually in my bedroom for days on end. So, as long as I can get outside to some sort of green space then it makes such a difference. I live in North London so Hampstead Heath isn’t too far from me and has seen me many a time on long walks with my headphones on, blasting my sad girl playlist. Or even walking in silence and just people watching and reminding myself that life is still going on and the world hasn’t actually ended.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Feeling heartbroken is such an insular and lonely feeling and it can be so easy to succumb to this and isolate yourself from your family, friends and loved ones around you. But your friends, especially, are who will lift you up out of the greyness and raw emotion and make you feel human again. So, go to the pub and see your pals! Call up your best mate on your way home from work! Reply to the group chat and arrange a girls’ night! It won’t fix your heart but it will slowly start to put itself back together.

Photos by Victoria Aleksandrova on Unsplash and David Wilson on Unsplash.

Jessica is an Australian novelist living in London. Her Substack READ.LOOK.THINK is a rich dense delicious cocktail of recommendations that encourages you to do precisely - oh man I’m writing at half nine at night after a day involving a COMMUTE so I really can’t think beyond ‘what it says on the tin’, I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s great. Go subscribe.

Even more deliciously, Jessica’s upcoming novel Consider Yourself Kissed is being praised as ‘one of the big love stories of 2025’, ‘a marvel of a book’, ‘a true treasure’ and many other very good things. Here’s the pitch:

What’s the grown-up meaning of ‘happily ever after’?

When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter of an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal.

But ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something she once had: herself.

Set against an eventful decade that included the soap opera of five Prime Ministers plus Brexit and Covid, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, showing how the intimate dramas in our homes inescapably compete for energy and attention with the shared public dramas of our times.

Consider Yourself Kissed is an unforgettable novel which effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humour with heart.

I for one can’t wait.

Huge thanks to Jessica for so generously giving her time and recommendations today - featuring our first diary as a reading rec, one of my own favourite comfort foods and a particularly wise suggestion for how to engineer the ever-important walk-and-talk.

As soon as Sarah invited me to reflect on heartbreak I was overcome by memories of my own broken hearts (‘hearts’ plural, even though it was presumably the same heart, just breaking again and again at different times).When a future we dreamt of gets taken away, it really hurts. What are you supposed to fill the time thinking about? Where does all the dreaming go? It’s horrible and unfair!

1. Something to read

The Australian writer Helen Garner is now in her eighties. She’s a real genius: people have called her short novel The Children’s Bach ‘perfect’, her non-fiction is some of the best there’s ever been. But I think the work of hers that will last forever is her diary in three volumes, published in the UK soon with W&N. In the diaries, she leaves her second husband and meets the man who will be her third (and - for good reason - her last). She also writes and fails to write, cares for her child, family and friends, spends a lot of time rigorously cleaning, cooks odd little meals and does many satisfying laps of the pool. She feels terrible, shameful, vengeful, vigorous, inspired, empty, serene -- all beautifully captured in her clear, strong language. 'I've been there and survived,' every single page seems to say.

2. Something to listen to

Something soothing needs to fill up the space where the dream used to be. Ideally there would be a major tennis tournament on that was followable on BBC Radio 5. In its absence, a podcast with vast archives like This Jungian Life? Or a podcast hosted by two fun friends? My current favourite in this mould is See Also - I actually pay extra for longer episodes on their Patreon.

3. Something to watch

Anything on at a midday showing at a cinema during the work day is perfect to hide in and cry over.

4. Something to eat

Buttery toast.

5. Something to drink

A cup of tea with a sugar (it's an emergency).

6. Somewhere to go

If you're lucky enough to live near a friend, it's massively, massively helpful to arrange a time you can both semi-regularly go for a walk. You never have be your best self on a walk -- you don't have to look your best or bring your best chat. You can just do a lap of the park together and go home. If your friendship is a good one and lasts a long time, the role of brokenhearted friend will swap back and forth. If you live far away from your closest friends, can you arrange to walk in the park and talk on the phone?

7. And a bonus seventh – balm for a broken heart

I just want to offer a very practical suggestion that it took me a very, very long time to learn. When you get broken up with, or very disappointed by someone, you WILL do something embarrassing, something you feel ashamed about. If possible, try not to get caught up in trying to UNDO that. 'The last text I sent was insane, I'll send a new one to fix it.' 'The last time she saw me I was sobbing, I want her to see me at my best.' More than likely, the new thing you do to try and 'fix' it will feel like it goes wrong in a new way, and you'll feel worse and worse. Just accept: you have been wounded. Nothing can fix it in the short term. It's time to take some space from that person and look after yourself.

Photos by Sophie Davidson and by Yukiko Kanada on Unsplash.

Today’s Heartbreak Seven is truly a publication day celebration! Celia Silvani’s wonderful book, Baby Teeth is out today and I really urge you to buy it, like, now. It’s the unnerving tale of a woman drawn into online communities whilst struggling with infertility; it’s been described as ‘horribly relatable’, ‘dark and intense’ and ‘propulsive’. It’s also on Kindle Unlimited.

Celia’s Heartbreak Seven, like all my favourites, spans the emotive and profound - I was undone by her description of telling her family about her pregnancy loss - and the delightfully domestic - ‘what my heart always wants is a beige platter’. Mine too Celia, mine too. This is also the very first Heartbreak Seven to feature someone who invented AN INCREDIBLY CHIC-SOUNDING COCKTAIL. If only the Handyside Daiquiri had a better ring to it, hey?

Thanks for sharing, Celia.

I wanted to write about a kind of heartbreak I think people don’t talk about enough (outside of this brilliant Substack): the quiet, aching kind that lingers just beneath the surface - non-romantic heartbreak. For me, that heartbreak is tied to pregnancy loss. If this is something that might hurt to read, please do skip this piece. I completely understand.

My debut novel, Baby Teeth, follows Claire, a woman consumed by infertility and drawn into the darker corners of online communities. It’s about trust, control, and the lengths we go to when the world feels impossible to navigate. I wrote it during lockdown, long before my husband and I had even started to discuss having children. Back then, the idea of starting a family felt abstract, like a “someday” conversation. The story began to take shape after I read a devastating article about freebirthing - the decision to reject all medical intervention during pregnancy.

Curiosity turned into obsession. I spent months infiltrating private groups and watching unassisted birth videos. My feeds filled with placenta preservation tutorials (in Tupperware, garnished with herbs), breathing guides promising pain-free labour, and a lot of blood and babies. I interviewed midwives and obstetricians and explored the philosophies behind these choices, fascinated by the way trust and community intersected with fear and risk.

I naively had no idea that one day it would all feel painfully personal.

When we started trying for a family, we felt so happy it happened so quickly. And then, we weren’t. My first loss happened early, but it shattered me. Untelling our families broke something inside. I was reading Hamnet at the time, and Judith’s line stayed with me: “What is the word for someone who was a twin but is no longer a twin?” I felt untethered, a mother but not a mother, perhaps someone who might never be one. The grief was immediate, raw, and physical, like my body was mourning alongside me.

The second loss came later. My body, as the doctor said, “wanted to keep the pregnancy.” So did my heart. I had two surgeries and struggled to process what had happened. Instead, like Claire, life imitating a fiction of my own creation, I turned to the internet. Forums became my lifeline, spaces where strangers’ words could hold me. I found it so hard to communicate to my wonderful loved ones despite their best efforts. These anonymous people gave me solace and reminded me I wasn’t alone.

And then, somehow, the days continued and I would get to the evening and realised I hadn’t cried that day. Although grief isn’t linear - it’s spiky and stubborn, showing up at unexpected moments. The third pregnancy, which I was certain would end the same way, brought us our son. He arrived in the most medicalised environment I could arrange. Now, somewhat miraculously (although the head of HR at my employer did say, “You do know how babies are made, Celia,”) we’re expecting another child.

Through it all, I learned something extraordinary: a child’s DNA never leaves their mother. I will always carry fragments of the children I’ll never meet, siblings who could have been.

To answer Judith’s question: A twin is always a twin. A mother is always a mother.

1. Something to read

Heartbreak in all of its forms requires you to be transported, I think. A Woman in the Polar Night by Christianne Ritter is perhaps the most astonishing book I’ve ever read. It’s a memoir of a year spent in Svalbard, in the Arctic Circle. It’s about survival and hope and how powerful the human spirit is.

2. ⁠Something to listen to

I have never not been calmed by Pure Shores by All Saints. It actually works for every mood and emotion, in every context. (It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a place where I can suggest the aux cord controller puts it on) but especially when you’re feeling sad. Try it!

3. ⁠Something to watch

I’m a reality TV superfan. Something about people screaming at each other soothes me. Vanderpump Rules, Southern Charm, and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City are three absolute favourites and balms for the soul. This is a world where people are raw and rude and so outrageous that it transports you from whatever is causing you pain and into this alternate universe of acceptable behaviour.

4. ⁠Something to eat

Whatever you fancy. The heart is fully linked to the stomach, and what my heart always wants is a beige platter. Preferably all cooked on the same oven tray, with absolutely minimal washing up.

5. ⁠Something to drink

I want to say something that sounds so chic, so I’m just going to pretend this is what I’d have. My husband’s great-grandad was a bartender at the Ritz and invented a cocktail called the Coronation Silvani.

(But actually, mine’s a spicy marg. It really helps).

6. ⁠Somewhere to go

Outside. Everything is so much better when you go outside, even if it’s horrendous weather. It’s always so shocking to see how small your life is when it can feel so large, so difficult. Everything continues to turn even when your personal world is shattered. And you notice that, with absolute certainty, so many people are putting on a brave face too.

7. ⁠And a bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Karaoke. My go-to song is The Rasmus - In The Shadows. My favourite karaoke place is Jihwaja in Vauxhall because it also does delicious Korean food and their booths have a disco button that is irresistible.

Photos provided by Celia Silvani.

Rachel’s new book The Love Fix (Square Peg, £16.99) is publishing on 30^th January 2025 - that’s this Thursday, people! Pre-order here.

Sooo many comforting recommendations here- I gave Flour and Grape a shout-out in my article on the best places in London to heal a broken heart, and can testify to the power of its pasta. Also enjoy the very well thought-out heartbreak playlist, truly one to take you through sadness, anger and everything else, and the most touching endnote I think I’ve featured yet. Thank you, Rachel!

1. Something to read

Sometimes I like to revisit an old favourite — Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. If I need a lift and a bit of escapism, I read an Emily Henry book — I loved Book Lovers and Beach Read. A recent big fave: Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld.

2. Something to listen to

Yebba’s “Evergreen” got me through the last bout of heartbreak over someone I saw a future with. Chappell Roan’s “Casual” is the perfect theme tune for the messy end of a situationship (add to that: Lola Young’s “Messy”). My best friend and I were in the top 0.01% of listeners worldwide according to our Spotify Wrapped 2024 – so that tells you a lot about our love lives. When I’m down bad: “People, I’ve been sad” by Christine and the Queens. Then, when I reach the angry stage of the breakup I blast Beyoncé’s “Homecoming: The Live Album”. Specifically: “Don’t hurt yourself” “Freedom” and “Sorry.”

3. Something to watch

A period drama to remind you that the course of true love never did run smooth. And to remind you that the situationship who could barely text you back had absolutely nothing on Mr Darcy and his rain-drenched “I love you. Most ardently.” That’s the bar. When I’m not rewatching Pride and Prejudice (2005) for the umpteenth time, I’ll rewatch Normal People, My Brilliant Friend, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, anything with Julia Roberts.

4. Something to eat

Beef Hula Hoops. Truffle Taglierini from Flour and Grape in Bermondsey (I had fantasies about this dish during lockdown). My mum’s homemade prawn cocktail. Steak and Bearnaise sauce.

5. Something to drink

Cotswold Gin and tonic with SO much ice, one or two slices of lemon, served in a copa glass. A crisp glass of Cremant de Loire or a cold glass of bone-dry Italian white wine.

6. Somewhere to go

To my childhood home in south Warwickshire. Then, perhaps a walk around Chipping Campden or Broadway in the Cotswolds.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Remember who you are. When I’m feeling really heartbroken, I try to focus my attention back on myself. I used to torture myself imagining all the possible reasons why someone wouldn’t want to be with me. What purpose did that serve (other than adding insult to injury)?

Now, I remind myself of everything I have going for me in my life. I think about the qualities my friends and family appreciate in me; the things I’ve achieved in my life; the projects I’m working on; the new hobby that brings me joy (currently: learning to throw pottery on the wheel); the friendships that enrich my life; the people who love me unconditionally. Soon you realise that one person not valuing you is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Photos provided by Rachel Thompson via, as you can see, the very cool Candid Studios.

Her debut, Who Wants to Live Forever, is out in March. Check out this description: ‘What if Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow collided with Normal People in the universe of Everything Everywhere All at Once? It would spawn WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER, a time-bending, decades-long quest for immortality catapulting you from Japan to Silicon Valley to eternity.’

Hanna’s Heartbreak Seven includes a book that’s also got a prominent position on my own bookshelf, a dessert I am skipping off to try immediately, and the best act of post-breakup self-care I’ve come across.

But before you enjoy those, please dive into the treat of an extract from Who Wants to Live Forever – a moment when the protagonist, Yuki, is forced to explain her heartbreak to a stranger. If you haven’t already preordered Hanna’s fabulous-sounding novel, let this delicious and delicate scene convince you.

A server signalled Yuki to an empty table near a window. Soon, she was lulled into the rhythm of being waited on, smiling at the back and forth of tea and the assortment of ceramic dishes that bore nuggets of steamed fish, omelette and swirls of finely sliced pickles in neon pink and lemon yellow. She picked up a colourful slab of sashimi and it melted away in her mouth, leaving just a memory on her tongue.

There was one other lone diner at the table to her left, who appeared to be watching her. His hair was short and combed back, his temples brushed with grey. He’d look over whenever she attempted basic pleasantries with the server, then pincer another gob of white rice into his wide mouth.

‘You American?’ He said it like a detective who at long last had found his suspect.

‘No, actually. I’m British.’ She hoped her tone was polite while not inviting further enquiry.

‘British!’ He said it loud enough for a couple of other guests to turn in their direction. ‘I love London. I studied there, lived in Paddington thirty, no forty years ago!’ He slapped a palm to his forehead, shocked by how much time had passed. ‘Lot of punks.’ He fanned his fingers above his head, mimicking a mohawk. ‘I saw the Clash at the Roxy. You like the Clash?’ He reached for his bowl of miso and brought it to his lips.

‘Do I like the Clash?’ Yuki repeated to herself, feeling her new-found peace slip away. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t spent much time with them.’

‘You hāfu?’

‘Hai, hāfu des.’ Yuki was now in the familiar Q&A that had punctuated her life wherever she was – an interrogation of her origins and motivations that seemed necessary to settle the unease of those around her.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, hoping to lob the ball back into his court.

‘Kenshi.’

Yuki needn’t have worried – he had no trouble talking about himself. He was a Japanese businessman – something to do with electronics – who had done a lot of work abroad and married a Swedish woman. His wife was visiting their daughter at college in Stockholm, studying something called Material and Visual Culture, which he found hilarious, rolling the words around his mouth and shaking his head as if the subject were an excellent joke. In his family’s absence, he had taken the opportunity to come to the beach for the weekend.

‘You married, Yuki?’ Kenshi asked.

She was always asked this question when she travelled alone, and always by men.

‘No, not married.’ She wanted to keep things simple.

‘Ahhhhh.’ He nodded, bringing his hand up to his chin. He had cracked the case. ‘You have children?’

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘No, actually.’

He was incredulous. ‘A beautiful woman like you?’

She smiled while her brain scrabbled around for another question to launch his way. It came up empty. ‘No, it’s true.’ She felt suddenly that she might cry.

Kenshi’s face opened up in a dawning realisation. ‘Ah, I see – you didn’t want to make the sacrifice. Marriage and kids takes sacrifice.’ He shook his head again, lost to his own martyrdom.

She took a deep breath, lungs filling with the scent of roasted tea and orange wedges that now sat on her table, almost wishing that IVF had left physical scars so that she could pull her top above her stomach and have something to show this man. ‘No, that’s not it. Here’ – she plucked out the gold chain from underneath her jumper where her wedding ring dangled – ‘I was married…I still am…but it’s a bit…messy. We’re on different paths.’ She let the ring tap against her chest, then shrugged. ‘These things happen.’

His face rearranged itself. His voice grew quiet.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Well…’ He looked up and scanned the room, searching for another point of view. Turning back to her, he placed his hand on top of his head again, unfurled his fingers into a mohawk and smiled. ‘Stay free.’

1. Something to read

One of my favourite books is I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, and heartbreak is the perfect state in which to read it. An epistolary novel and work of autofiction, it tracks the married narrator’s obsession with a man called Dick, who never returns her love in the way that she wants. Part One reads as a straightforward confessional, but Part Two is where it gets really interesting as she resolves to treat her infatuation as she would an academic exercise. She quotes the artist Hannah Wilke:

If women have failed to make “universal” art because we’re trapped within the “personal,” why not universalise the “personal” and make it the subject of our art?

The book opens up, transforming into a philosophical treatise. Why is women’s desire seen as embarrassing? What would it mean to celebrate the fact of one’s desire, to find it unbelievably interesting, even if it is not requited?

To the unresponsive Dick she writes, ‘What hooks me on our story is our different readings of it. You think it’s personal and private; my neurosis…I think our story is performative philosophy.’ So read this book if you want to take your heartbreak and transform it into something else: a great, weird work of art!

2. ⁠Something to listen to

If you want to cry, listen to the ‘Living Room’ episode of the podcast Love + Radio, which tells the story of one woman and the couple who lived opposite her. If you want some pep, you can’t go wrong with Sabrina Carpenter. When in the throes of heartbreak, whispering ‘that’s that me espresso’ to yourself can be very healing medicine.

3. ⁠Something to watch

Co-created by and starring the comedian Michelle Buteau, Survival of the Thickest is so funny and should be getting a lot more attention. Perfect for those who enjoyed Nobody Wants This, and season two is coming soon!

4. ⁠Something to eat

My ultimate comfort food is oshiruko, a Japanese dessert which involves mochi and a warm, sweet soup made of red beans. It reminds me of being very small and when things get tough, this is what I turn to.

5. ⁠Something to drink

Sweet, warm comfort is a theme, as hot chocolate is my drink of choice when sad or cold (I am often known to confuse the two).

6. ⁠Somewhere to go

Anywhere you can be with people and still cry silently without disturbance – the cinema or a mat at the back of a yoga class are perfect for this.

7. ⁠A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

After my last big break-up, I immediately booked myself in for a course of acupuncture and massage at Herbal Zen in Hackney. A bit of balance and soothing touch to get me through those first few weeks.

Photos provided by Hanna Thomas Uose.

I so very nearly used ‘will tell you everything you never realised you needed to know about fisting’ as the headline for this…

Say hello to Laura Price. She is the author of Single Bald Female (what a title, right?), a novel inspired by her diagnosis of breast cancer at age 29 and her subsequent experience of dating with a bald head.

When she’s not working on her second novel, Laura presents Life in Food, a podcast where she interviews inspiring guests through a culinary lens. She also hosts the Breast Cancer Now Podcast and writes Doughnuts for Breakfast (this woman has an eye for good titles!) on Substack. You can also find her on Instagram @LauraPriceWrites (I am obsessed with her wedding photos).

Blending light and dark is something many writers attempt (hi!) but not many do well. Laura’s work (and her Heartbreak Seven!) will make you snort-laugh right before it brings tears to your eyes. Read on for four books to add to your list, an unexpected suggestion for when in a meal you should initiate a breakup, and the most quietly pragmatic bonus seventh I’ve come across yet.

1. Something to read

Here are some options for different moods, depending on where you’re at in the grief-shock-anger-revenge cycle:

For relatability, I loved Heartsick by Jessie Stephens, a non-fiction book of three real-life heartbreaks. The term ‘heartsick’ itself is great: I love that it conjures the real puke-making, sick-to-the-stomach feel of heartbreak.

For lolz, it’s got to be Oh My God What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

For filth, you need In at the Deep End by Kate Davies, a spit-your-tea-out hilarious but also smart and sensitive book that will tell you everything you never realised you needed to know about fisting.

For all of the above (sort of), there’s my debut novel, Single Bald Female, where Jess has the double blow of breast cancer and a breakup – which, if nothing else, might help you see your own heartbreak ain’t so bad after all…

2. Something to listen to

There’s only so long you can cry down the phone to your best mate before you need to move on – that’s when podcasts come in, and I recommend listening to the ones that feel like a chat with your pals. My favourites are Miss Me? with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver and Mamamia Out Loud, Australia’s answer to the long-discontinued High Low with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes.

On my own podcast, Life in Food with Laura Price, I interviewed Jessie Stephens (writer of Heartsick) about Food and Heartbreak. We covered such important topics as why you should always break up with someone at the start of a meal, and how it’s possible to ruin a good restaurant with a bad date.

3. Something to watch

It’s an oldie, but I love New Girl, which kicks off with Zoey Deschanel’s character Jessica discovering her boyfriend in bed with another woman. More recently, I recommend anything escapist: The White Lotus, Bad Sisters or Schitt’s Creek.

4. Something to eat

An old-school box of chocolates, all to myself. My favourites are Charbonnel & Walker. Is there a greater indulgence than spending £30+ on a box of chocolates then devouring every single one, solo?

5. Something to drink

Tea solves everything. I drink earl grey or a simple builders with a splash of milk, but heartbreak calls for special measures: a spoonful of sugar.

6. Somewhere to go

Nothing cures a broken heart like hopping on a plane – or train or bus – to somewhere far away. Brazil is one of my favourite places on earth and the sudden surge of new colours, smells and sounds will quickly take your mind off your ex. But you don’t have to go that far to cleanse the soul. Closer to home, I love a trip to Margate for some fresh air and a bracing dip in the sea.

7. And a bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Write a diary – put down everything in your head about how you’re feeling. Cry it out, let your tears soak the page. Then put it in a drawer and move on.

Photos provided by Laura Price and by Jorge Garcia on Unsplash.

Her debut, Homesick is an elegantly melancholy (but also very, very funny) portrayal of what it is to feel lost in your twenties and nope, I’m not reciting the blurb, I’ve been lucky enough to read this one in marked-up proof form. Its final line made me weep. Pandora Sykes just gave it a lovely writeup in her Substack.

I loved these beautifully thought-out Heartbreak Seven recommendations, from the exact amount of pinot grigio to imbibe, to precisely why walking without a destination is the right thing to do. Enjoy. And pre-order.

1. Something to read

Honestly, sometimes the only thing you can cope with is the back of the cereal box, and that’s okay. If you’re feeling brave and can handle slightly more than that, I say go right back to the books that made you happy as a teen. Were you a Sweet Valley High guy? Did you lap up all the Georgia Nicolsons?

Marian Keyes is always good in times of strife. My best friend once sent me Rachel’s Holiday in the post, when I was living in the South of France and feeling homesick. I felt a lot less homesick by the final page.

2. Something to listen to

You can’t afford to be too sophisticated here. I have a Spotify playlist called ‘Help.’, which works a treat. It’s full of Beyoncé (if you can find somewhere noise-insulated, play Best Thing I Never Had and belt it out at the top of your lungs), Amy Winehouse, Missy Elliott, Cassie, Kelis…

Banks is good if you’re in the anger phase.

If you need some narrative, put on The Streets A Grand Don’t Come for Free. Listen to it from start to finish, and take in the story. Mike Skinner is very, very good at going through all the stages of heartbreak. Blinded by the Lights is a good one to put on and really revel in the drama of the feeling. Works extra well if you’ve had a couple of (1.5 — see below) wines, to be honest.

If you need to really sob, you can be a bit sophisticated after all: put on some Etta James or Sam Cooke, and call it a night.

3. Something to watch

ANYTHING BUT OLD VIDEOS OF YOU TOGETHER.

After a particularly rough breakup, my phone gave up and I lost all my photos and videos.

Did I see this as the sweet gift and clean break it was? No. Did I make my best friend (the same one of Rachel’s Holiday fame) re-send me every photo and video of me and my ex I’d ever sent her? Yes. Did that help? No, of course it didn’t.

What might help are the following TV shows: Parks and Recreation, The Office (UK), Summer Heights High, Broad City, Girls, Sex and the City, People Just Do Nothing, Stath Lets Flats.

4. Something to eat

You have to treat the symptoms a bit like you treat a hangover, really. Carbs. Plain food. Plenty of pasta. Potato waffles. Toast with real butter. Vegetable broth with pastina. Late-night noodles. Cheese and crackers. Rice with olive oil and parmesan. A baguette stuffed with breakfast foods. Chocolate, especially Lindors (treat yourself, babe!) Ice lollies. If it needs to be a kebab, let it be a kebab.

You know the drill. It’s not the time to be mindful.

5. Something to drink

1.5 glasses of pinot grigio or Chenin blanc. It’s the perfect amount. 2 and you’ll cry. 3 and you’ll call them. Trust me — stick to 1.5.

6. Somewhere to go

After my last breakup, I walked. I walked and walked and walked. There’s a surprising amount of energy involved in being heartbroken, and I personally don’t think it’s best used up by ‘getting under’ someone new. I think you need to pound the pavements. In silence, in tears, with music perforating your eardrums. You can’t have an end destination in mind, or it won’t work. You need to go where your hurt and anger take you. In all likelihood, you’ll end up doing laps, but, like me, you might also end up outside the Clarks outlet shop in Peckham. When you finally come to, look up and realise you’re either, a) lost, or b) incredibly far from home, all that pent-up adrenaline can go into finding your way back.

If, on the other hand, you need to sit still, I favour going to the cinema. I once flew to Paris, thinking I was getting back together with a French ex (he did invite me!) Once I got there, he told me he had a busy week, and so what were my plans? I said I had loads, and went straight to the nearest cinema to sob, alone, in the back row. A bit of glamour never goes amiss.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

If you’re lucky enough to have one of those friends who doesn’t mind being on the phone for hours, HOLD THEM CLOSE. Don’t take the piss — obviously — but you’ll be surprised at how much of heartbreak is missing that one person you can narrate your day to. You have more people willing to be that for you than you think. If you’re blessed to still have either/ both of your parents, you have full authorisation to be a child again for a little bit. I’ve had some of my best chats ever with my mum at 4 in the morning.

Oh, and don’t change your hair. This is not the time to change your bloody hair.

The main character of my debut novel, Homesick , goes through her fair share of heartbreak. When she’s sad, she eats goats cheese and honey pizza, listens to HAIM, and reads old Baby-Sitters Club books.

Photos provided by Silvia Saunders.

But there’s so much more to heartbreak than the collapse of romantic relationships - as I have learned very acutely in the years since. And so I’m especially grateful to today’s Heartbreak Seven contributor, the very wonderful Chris Bridges. Like Katie Anderson-Morrison a few weeks ago, he has captured here a moving and profound account of the heartbreak of chronic illness.

Chris has also channelled this experience into a fabulously twisty psychological thriller, Sick to Death, published by Avon (HarperCollins) and out on March 27. I am particularly taken with Katy Brent’s quote: ‘Emma is simultaneously totally chilling yet totally believable. A twist to rival Gone Girl left me gasping.’

Remember what I said about pre-orders? Go go go!

I didn’t know heartbreak until I was in my thirties. That was the time when it was habitual. Being left became my thing and I did it well. My long-term partner ended our relationship and my attempts at a new romance were unfortunate. One relationship ended on Christmas Eve. Another man unceremoniously dumped me on the way home from a not-so-romantic weekend in Paris. My tally of broken hearts grew ever higher each year. And I handled it as badly as expected. I howled over self-help books, sent drunken texts, wept and wailed through sleepless nights. Alcohol was my best friend and worst enemy. Then, each time, there was a resolution and I moved on, diminished but also different in more constructive ways.

The other thing that happened in my thirties was that I started to become sick. Like Emma, the protagonist in my psychological thriller Sick to Death I was scanned, poked and prodded at and often dismissed as a neurotic or hysteric. It took over a decade and a half before they concluded that the malady I have is multiple sclerosis. They told me this over the phone on a freezing January day in 2020.

This was a whole new form of heartbreak. Similar to my dating woes but with my immune system deciding to cheat on me. It was like bits of my nervous system had walked out on our coupledom. Only this time I couldn’t see an eventual resolution. There was no process of healing, coming to terms with this and moving on, grazed but standing tall. This was a new league of desolation that I needed to learn to live with.

I’m a nurse by profession and my experiences of multiple sclerosis involved seeing people with advanced disease who were sick enough to need to be in hospital. I’d been diagnosed after years of bizarre and haunting symptoms, including an episode of blindness in one eye, that mercifully passed. When the defining episode finally came I was numb down one side and felt day-drunk and queasy. My catastrophising mind instantly took me to visions of inevitable decline on the horizon. My future felt bleak. I holed up, numb and wide-eyed in disbelief. ‘Sad-girl’ music was my best friend. I worked. I read to escape and banish the images in my head. I occasionally told my partner how I felt. (Yes. I found one who stuck around).

I’ve always been less than spiritual and hate inspirational quotations but sensible mantras had helped me in the past. I was lucky enough to quickly find one to hold onto. A doctor colleague took me aside and told me that I should try to contextualise this as a ‘spectrum illness’. One where I was currently at the end of the spectrum where I was more functional and able to work. Where I was being offered a treatment that might stop the disease progressing. The words ‘spectrum illness’ were a soothing refrain for me. Even if or when I became sicker, I’d still be somewhere on a spectrum with no inevitable conclusion.

I somehow navigated this new version of heartbreak. I learned how to work around my less than optimal body and the crippling episodes of fatigue. I had therapy from a specialist psychotherapist. I talked about how I felt till I started to bore myself. And I found ways to live with the uncertainty of disease. I learned to exist alongside the Sword of Damocles that hangs over me and whispers ‘What if the treatment stops working?’ ’What if it gets worse and then worse and worse?’

And I wrote, which was something I’d dabbled in and always meant to commit to. I took my experience to an extreme and conjured up someone who didn’t have the advantages that I do. Someone without money, with no support network and with medical staff who treat her with little respect. A person who is in a situation that makes her desperate enough to commit a fiendish crime. I upended the trope of the sickly sweet ill woman in fiction who has to either die or get better by the end of the novel. Or be proven to be a faker. My protagonist had no plans for any of those outcomes.

It was joyful and cathartic to indulge my love of crime fiction and put some sickness rage down on the page.

I haven’t found a resolution to this particular heartbreak and never will. It’s a shifting thing that changes shape. It’s already morphed and I’m not who I was. I’ve had to retire early from my job and my life is a stark contrast from the one I had four years ago. There have been losses but it’s also a joyful life, rich with things I love to do, like reading, making up stories and spending more time with my dog and my partner of thirteen years (who hasn’t left me and who understands and supports me).

1. Something to read

Listening to and reading other people’s stories of their own sickness has helped me to understand and cope with my heartbreak over my own illness. I’m a natural information seeker and a ‘knowledge is power’ person. For accounts of chronic illness I particularly loved The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke, A Still Life by Josie George and A Matter of Appearance by Emily Wells.

I’m also a fiction addict. It’s my escape to another world during troubled times. I read widely and voraciously but crime fiction has been an enduring love. For an elevated and layered book that envelops and engrosses you I’d recommend Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra.

2. Something to listen to

For total catharsis during heartbreak my go to is Lana Del Rey. I love her lyricism and storytelling in song. During the period after my diagnosis I homed in on Lana’s saddest songs for catharsis. I proudly learned from Spotify that I was in the top 0.001% of listeners that year.

3. Something to watch

Fatigue seems to be a commonality in many chronic illnesses. I have long periods where MS-related fatigue hits hard and I’m barely able to leave the sofa. When this happens, and I’m too tired to read, I like either something light and diverting or something dramatic with a multitude of episodes. I revert back to the recent past My favourites are Mad Men (I’m a mid-Twentieth-Century fan) or Girls, which always makes me laugh.

4. Something to eat

Trauma always robs me of appetite and I struggle to eat at all. My heartbreak food is limited to working my way through packets of sugary biscuits.

5. Something to drink

My early thirties romantic heartbreak remedy was always a vodka bottle but that was never wise or entirely helpful. I’m now abstinent and sugary, black decaffeinated coffee is my drink of choice.

6. Somewhere to go

There’s an amazing book called Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin, which is about nature and chronic illness. I find nature healing whether it’s just looking at the tree outside the window, walking into my garden or venturing further to the local park. I grew up near to the Peak District, although now live in London. I’d recommend Derbyshire for some nature with added scenic drama.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

For me it’s dogs. I was once crying at a motorway service station and asked a random stranger if I could hug his dog (he looked startled but said ‘yes’). It helped. I now have my own dog, a nine-year-old miniature poodle called Frida Kahlo. She’s a perfect companion on bad days and is endlessly loving and entertaining. She also forces me out of the house when I don’t really feel like going out which is always a balm.

Photos provided by Chris Bridges and by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash.

“You should find some other 2025 debuts to talk to.”

One of the many bits of advice my formidable agent Lucy Morris has given me over recent months - and one I was pretty intimidated by the idea of - christ - actioning.

There have been three main contexts which I’ve made new adult friends - starting university, starting a new job, and starting parenthood. All have relied on kicking off the same rollercoaster together (check) in the same geographical place (um…?) in order that communal coffees pints get the common ground beating faster.

This debut thing feels…very different.

So. I quite literally slid into Emma van Straaten’s DMs one day bleating about how we share said formidable agent and how exciting it was that she had won the 2021 Discoveries Prize and how the hell do you write around babies and a job and could we please stay in touch as we approached publication together?

Emma is a writer of British-Mauritian heritage living in London with her husband and two daughters. She works at The London Library part time, with one precious day a week to write. Her debut novel, which is very preoccupied with its delulu heroine's heartbreak is called This Immaculate Body and will be published on 6 February, with the title Creep in the US.

I am going to repeat this line so many times over the coming weeks, but pre-orders are an incredible way of supporting individual authors, and the publishing industry more broadly. So - give yourself the treat of a book arriving through the door in February, and pre-order This Immaculate Body (what a title, eh?!). In the meantime, soak up Emma’s wise and wonderful thoughts on heartbreak below, featuring a shout-out to the greatest period drama of all time, a delightful description of pizza-eating and this beautiful line I nearly used for the title: ‘Even puddles reflect the sky’.

I think you can approach heartbreak in two ways - one is to blanket it entirely, muffle the sorrow, attempt to shoo it away with socialising and activity and fun. Or, you can revel in it, wallow deeply. I oscillated between the two when I had a miscarriage in 2023; I kept a long-standing arrangement to meet friends for supper, still dreamy on prescription painkillers the day it happened, then very deliberately and repeatedly listening to a song that suffused me with such pain and longing that I couldn't breathe (more below). And so, partly because I love questions like this that seem easy (but aren't easy), I am going to cheat and offer an option A (banish the pain) and B (wallow). You can choose the same option all the way down, the grim, grinning mask of comedy, or the tragic one, with its delicious permission to unravel entirely - or you can try each on, alternating, which I think is perhaps best, or the least exhausting; letting the waves of sorrow overcome you, just briefly, just enough, before being buoyed again on a crest of hope.

1. Something to read

A (banish the pain): Surely, a comic book. I recently cried laughing at the short story The Shadow over Little Chitaly from Eliza Clark's She's Always Hungry. Anything by Nina Stibbe and PG Wodehouse are good alternatives.

B (wallow): I can't think of a better alternative than to suggest a favourite book from your most impressionable years (aged 10-15), in my case, I Capture the Castle, so a bitter pang of nostalgia can accompany your grief.

2. Something to listen to

A (banish the pain): Choose your queen of Princess Strut Pop (Charli, Sabrina, Chapell, Ari, Taylor etc) and find the most obnoxiously titled Spotify playlist of their music.

B (wallow): Bigger Than The Whole Sky, by Taylor Swift. Tell me this wasn't written about a miscarriage. It was cathartic for a while, its emphasis on the loss of a future, what could have been (should have been). I have never listened to it without crying. I don't listen to it any more.

3. Something to watch

A (banish the pain): The 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice. Absorbing, gentle, wonderful comfort.

B (wallow): The 2005 Keira Knightley/Matthew MacFadyen Pride & Prejudice. For some reason it always makes me cry.

4. Something to eat

A (banish the pain): Spicy pizza, hot honey. It's what I had that evening with friends when I was miscarrying. It's impossible to feel entirely sad while reeling cheese into your mouth like a fishing line.

B (wallow): Cereal, by which I mean "fun" cereal that your mother wouldn't let you have when you were little. £10 granola. That ridiculous curls-of-chocolate Crunchy Nut. Minimal preparation, very little nutritional value, and allows you to feel extra pathetic (in the Greek sense) that you've been brought this low.

5. Something to drink

A (banish the pain): I'm a huge proponent of the half-bottle of champagne. The perfect cheering drink; a tiny luxury, with no pressure to drink a whole bottle, and no ill effects if it's a work night. The act of popping a cork is always optimistic.

B (wallow): Time to get horribly drunk on whatever you've got.

6. Somewhere to go

A (banish the pain): Anywhere where there are other people. You can be swept up in the normality of getting a coffee, or the diversion of a gathering with people who love you.

B (wallow): Nowhere. Online. Protect yourself from the wide world; burrow.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Both A and B: Get yourself to a body of water. Sit, watch, listen. Rivers remind us of the onward flow of life. Seas show our insignificance. Ponds are a microcosm of our silly little planet. Even puddles reflect the sky. You can let your thoughts sink beneath the water, your head filled with its sounds. I'm not sure if that's banishing the pain or wallowing in it, really.

Headshot by Robin Christian, photo by Gary Ellis on Unsplash.

Today’s Heartbreak Seven guests is one of the women who takes pride of place in my book’s acknowledgements. She has scooped me off more floors - real and metaphorical - than I can count and her good-humoured patience back when I was asking unhinged questions like ‘after you broke up with X, exactly how many weeks was it until you were ready to date again?’ helped germinate the idea for Instructions in the first place.

So - endless thanks to Clare Skelton-Morris, not just for being here but for being in a thousand vital places before this. And to return some of her incredible generosity - do check out her Substack and keep an eye on her writing project - part memoir, part other very clever and beautiful things.

A big thank you to my friend and writer Sarah for inviting me to write this post for her Substack. I’ve been following her writing for years, a super fan from the sidelines, as her novel Instructions for Heartbreak has grown from personal reality to early creative idea, draft manuscript to edited work, to finally an announcement in The Bookseller and a reveal of the beautiful cover design. I’m so excited for Instructions to make it onto bookshop shelves in January and to hold a copy in my hands (on that note, I’m going to a plug that you can pre-order yours here). 

When she asked me if I’d like to write about heartbreak for this newsletter, I faltered. I’ve been lucky to not have the rug pulled out from under my feet in the way that Katie, one of the main characters in Instructions, experiences, but the more I reflected - making notes in my phone and scribbling thoughts on the backs of menu - yes, I could write about heartache, if not the classic heartbreak. 

This is a piece about when you’re the one that does the hurting, rather than the one that’s hurt, the one to break a heart rather than the one piecing theirs back together. This has been an uncomfortable piece to write, like scratching at an old scab that has long since healed; I don’t come off well and there’s guilt that comes with being the one to call time on a relationship and how you handle that. 

From our early years, we’re taught not to hurt others, and being the person that causes someone else pain carries with it guilt, embarrassment, and shame. You relinquish any owning or control of the narrative; you become the person that did the wrong and you need to stand by that. 

But, what about the similarities between the breaker and the broken? Surely there are some, even if they’re in a different way and you’re the one to have made them happen. You’re still mourning the end of something, you still have to navigate the same path of nostalgia, pour balm on pain, and rewrite memories which now need to be filtered through a new lens. There might be the loss of friendships, the loss of the life you had, a loss of a home maybe and an extended family you were brought into - and all of this of your own doing. 

Crucially, I think, there are still the same visceral moments when something makes you realise with a jolt that you’re no longer with that person. Both kinds of heartbreak experience the same jolting pang when you catch the scent of someone you once loved on a stranger, or hear the intro to a song that once meant something. The heart can’t distinguish between who did what: all it knows is the short circuit between the senses and the pain of a love that once was. 

When I bumped into an ex-boyfriend a couple of years ago, it was the first time we’d seen each other in the eight years since I’d called time on the relationship. Unlocking my bike with a friend, I sensed something and looked up, seeing a face I’d not seen for a long time. He walked over, arms open, and I felt bile rise in my gullet. Afterwards, my friend held onto my forearm as we walked away. Are you ok? she asked You look like you’re about to be sick - and I cycled home later, my mind spinning, then sent a text to the group of oldest friends: you will not fucking believe who I just bumped into. The following day in the swimming pool, the light made diamonds on the tiles and I felt an ache in my shoulder, my calves, my chest. Everything hurt. There was music being piped through the speakers and a song came on that I hadn’t heard for a long time. Just a small town girl the lyrics went, and I dipped my head under the water, into nothing but the blanket of blue noise. Living in a lonely world. We used to drive to it, singing along in his car, his hand at the top of my thigh on the motorway up to Dublin; after we broke up, I would leave dancefloors when it came on. The solo guitar riff now sounds cheaper than it used to, and I swam on, wishing for silence and open air.

Years later, when I woke up early on a weekend away with friends, I lay in the early light of a purple dawn, thinking about what I’d write for this piece. I can count previous relationships quickly and easily on a couple of fingers but, even now, a hot flush forms on the base of my neck and throat when I think of the times I was callous and careless with others. On the train home from that weekend away, I dredged through my gmail for old messages, amazed that this glass rectangle that I carry with me everywhere holds conversations from another lifetime ago, written by a distant memory of myself. I want to take that familiar girl under my arm and shake her gently: what the fuck are you doing, babe? I want to say. I still follow some of those people on Instagram, see their lives, their wives, their babies and bike rides. I’d like to sit in the pub with some of them, and apologise for the stupidity of things done over a decade ago. Like a heartbreak, there’s still an ache that time can ease but not extinguish. Even though it’s years ago, more than anything, I wish them happiness. I always did. 

1. Something to read

Something that will bring you comfort. When my head is buzzing and too full, I return to books that I’ve already read, finding it easier to not need to anticipate the unexpected. I find stories of travel reassuring: Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Tim Butcher’s Blood River will take you somewhere else from where you are now.

2. Something to listen to

Desert Island Discs - from the very opening bars of the theme tune, there’s a lot of comfort to be found in the extensive catalogue of the lives, losses and loves of others. If you need a sob, I recommend listening to interviews with Richard E Grant or Patrick Grant.

3. Something to watch

Glow Up. Now, I’ve done pretty much the same thing with my face for the past two decades so I’m far from a make-up aficionado but I’m fully invested in all six series of this programme. I can get lost in the various challenges: will the MUAs (that’s Make-Up Artists, if you aren’t familiar with the lingo) be able to create the looks for the stage show of The Lion King? Can they deliver runway models for the London Fashion Week catwalks? Who will crumble doing a sequinned lip in the Face Off head-to-head? It’s silly and fun but I love the genuinely transformative role that makeup has had in the lives and identities of the contestants.

4. Something to eat

Your greens.

5. Something to drink

A dirty martini. I’d love to say something virtuous and that’s going to bring you health, but sorry, no. There’s something medicinal in the painful bite of a drink like this - Sarah has written a guide here. 

6. Somewhere to go

To a place you feel most yourself. For me, that’s a loop in the village I’m from, so familiar to me I could do it in my sleep. I know where the track rises and where you first see the village across the other side of the river, and I’ve walked it alone and with friends, in the rain and in the middle of summer when the sand martins have looped overhead.

7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Running. I’ve had my own little love affair with the healing power of running for almost fifteen years, and it’s seen me through break-ups, losses, picked me up when I’ve felt low, and given me big highs. Even if it’s the last thing I feel like doing, I never regret it.

All photos provided by Clare Skelton-Morris.

I can’t remember exactly when I first came across Marisa Bate - maybe via The Pool, which, like any self-respecting millennial woman, I inhaled in my twenties whilst I tried to work out what kind of adult I wanted to be.

It seems like another life, now, that post-#MeToo world. Or perhaps it was just a younger life.

More recently, I’ve inhaled Writing About Women, Marisa’s newsletter on women’s lives. I don’t know a place on the internet to find a better melding of rage and hope, of breathtaking joy in new motherhood (believe me, something I’ve had to cling onto very hard over the past couple of years), and breathtaking bewilderment and frustration at the same (ditto). She’s so thoughtful on the oscillations and contradictions and conflicts inherent in trying to find space for writing and creativity and politics around caring and loving and presence.

Here are some quotes from her recent writing that have broken me and bewitched me:

• ‘It's often/mostly/always women paying the price for men's devastating need to feel important, to be orbited, never doing the orbiting. And this means desperately frantically aggressively draining women of their magic. Because they are scared. Scared of their dazzling power. And scared of the most frightening truth of all: that they are not needed by women anymore, for anything.’

• ‘All the more reason to ask, again and again, is this the right life? My son is the right-est, most true, most meaningful thing I’ve ever done. But even he can’t eclipse the feeling that has been inside me for a very long time. And that feeling is the belief this world is big, and I want my words to be keys to doors that open to places I could never have imagined. Childcare feels like forever losing the fucking keys.’

• ‘Motherhood is a daily tightrope on which your balance rests upon the belief you’ll get there still, that it’s not over yet. When I’m on my hands and knees, clearing up food and trying to pull back the tears, I need the iron-strong belief that I will get to the moon.’

So - buy Marisa’s book And Still We March: The Search For Women’s Freedom (previously published as Wild Hope), subscribe to her Substack, and check out her perfectly formed Heartbreak Seven below. I can’t think of a better day to share it than the one in which mine, and so many others’ wild hopes are gazing at the US, hoping it will be a better day for women.

1.     Something to read

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn, The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, and Claiming Ground by Laura Bell. 

2.     Something to listen to

Hold On by Wilson Phillips, Turn Back Time by Cher, and Yes by McAlmont and Butler.

3.     Something to watch

A film - impossible! So instead I'll say The West Wing and the chance to fall in love with Josh Lyman. Pure escapism that reminds you of all that life could be. 

4.     Something to eat

Coffee and bagels on a cold, sunny morning on the Lower East Side (a breakthrough moment for me). 

5.     Something to drink

Anything with a kick while sitting at a bar. A bottle of wine on your best friend's sofa.

6.    Somewhere to go

The coast. The sea means a lot to me, and different things. One thing it has always meant is possibility. It will remind you that better days are out there.

7.    A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Friends. Dancing till you sweat. Injecting as much culture as possible. Seeing as many new places as possible. Forcing time alone to remember the shape of you.

Photos by Marten Bjork on Unsplash, Christine Siracusa on Unsplash and frank mckenna on Unsplash.

I oscillated between so many different quotes to pull out for the title of this newsletter. To focus on the joy and happiness that Katie Anderson-Morrison finds - no, constructs - in her life - there’s a great deal to be said for finding joy where you are? Surely a mantra for any of us to live by - surely the crux of soothing a broken heart?

Or, to focus on the heartbreak itself - the agonies and intricacies of how Katie navigates - with courage and grace - life with a chronic illness? It’s in the daily acceptance that the rest of my family will go to the beach…and I won’t be able to join them.

Dwelling too long on the metaphors of the beach is going to make me feel like I’m back in my GCSE English exams - and yet. The sand (the time). The horizon - the light dancing on it, the dark. The waves, the waves. The never-the-same, the always-there. In the end, it felt I would be doing her an injustice to centre anything other than the heartbreak of a chronic disease which so often, so many times, has kept Katie from the sandcastles and the salt.

I found the scene Katie paints here extraordinarily moving, and I hope that before long we’ll be able to read more of her words in novel form. Until then, head over to her Substack, Shimmering Fractals.

Yesterday, I spent an hour on the beach. I know: this doesn't sound like a heartbreak. And it wasn't, it was a windswept, sandy sort of joy, watching with my husband as our children jumped in the icy waves and our puppy ran about on the sand. 

No, the visit to the beach was the easy contentment that comes on the crest of the wave. The heartbreak is in the before and the after (and, my goodness, in the logistics). 

It's in the five years since I last set foot on a beach. 

It's in the fact that the visit was only possible because we found a beach where you can drive cars – and thus mobility scooters – right down onto the sand.

It's in the daily acceptance that the rest of my family will go to the beach (or the park, or the castle, or the museum, or the party, or the school event) and I won't be able to join them.

It's in the bittersweet reminder that the big wide world is still there, still spinning on without me.

It's in the sense that I have to make myself smaller and stiller in order not to use any unnecessary energy.

It's in my knowledge of how lucky I am to be able to manage even such a brief outing when so many people with my disease could only dream of doing so.

And, perhaps most of all, the heartbreak is in the twenty-four hours since that one hour, when my body has shut down, trapping me like a prisoner in my own heavy limbs, punishing me for those snatched moments of almost-normality. 

So that, I suppose, is the real nub of it. The everyday heartache of having a disease with no cure, no treatment, no medical support and no real explanation. A disease where the harder you try, the iller you get, and – conversely – the more misinformed people will believe that clearly you just don't want to get better. 

(For the avoidance of doubt: funnily enough, there is no part of me that wishes to continue living a life dominated by disease. If I could cure myself with positive thinking, I assure you I would have done so long ago.) 

The heartbreak is always there. The grief for all the places I might've visited, all the things I might've done, all the people I might have been. The loss of the freedom to step outside my own front door and let the wind take me where it will. Yes, the heartbreak is always there, and on some days it crushes me. 

But we only get one life and this is the one I have to work with. And so, though there is an undeniable seam of grief running though it all, it's also true that I have built a life within my means that's full of happiness. After all, there's a great deal to be said for finding joy where you are. 

1.     Something to read

It would not be an exaggeration for me to tell you that books are one of the great loves of my life. I have always been a voracious reader, but books have become even more precious to me the more ill I've become. 

And so, for me, reading any sort of book is a balm, though of course there's something particularly comforting about an old favourite. If pressed, I'd say the two most comforting books of all are I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and Still Life by Sarah Winman. 

2.     Something to listen to

My first instinct here was Taylor Swift. And then I wondered if that was too obvious and I should think of something else. But, here's the thing: I love Taylor Swift. So, my pick is All Too Well (and yes, it does have to be the ten minute version).

3.     Something to watch

It may sound counter-productive, but I find that when you're staring down an unavoidable heartache it sometimes helps to have somewhere to direct it. In other words, watching the kind of TV that has you sobbing into your sofa cushions can be wonderfully cathartic. The weepiest programmes I've watched in the last few years are: This Is Us, Netflix's adaptation of One Day, From Scratch and Firefly Lane. 

4.     Something to eat

I think there's a great deal to be said for the kind of food that you can build an event or ritual around. There are a thousand small ways to make the every day special, and possibly about 50% of these involve food. If we're being specific, I'd suggest that 50% of that 50% is likely cake-related. Ultimately, I think what I'm saying is that cake is very often the answer, but that to truly get the most from the experience I like to lean into the ceremony of it. So, eat cake in the garden, or on your best crockery, or with a loved one, or whilst wrapped in your cosiest blanket. 

5.     Something to drink

Tea. Always tea. Surely, it has to be tea? It's hot, it's comforting and it incorporates the element of ceremony. Drink it from your favourite mug, or with a cup from a teapot to turn it into a special event. My favourite tea is green and lemon, but I'll also take an Earl Grey, or anything with fruit, rose petals or chai. 

6.     Somewhere to go

Ah, well, this is a loaded question for the chronically ill! If we were talking about somewhere to go in a fantasy world where my body was not against me, then I might answer the beach at Robin Hood's Bay, or the ruins of Fountains Abbey, or perhaps even the equally ruined Dunstanburgh Castle. 

But if we're talking this world – with this body – then realistically I'll be content with any kind of flash of green. On a very good day this might actually involve leaving my house. On an average day, it might be a trip into my garden. On a bad day, I might be able to make it to my writing room to sit by the window and look out into the treescape. 

7.     A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart

Laughter, always, preferably with someone who'll only love you more if/ when you snort.

Photos provided by Katie Anderson-Morrison and by Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash.