I read Joan Didion’s book, A Year of Magical Thinking, while lying in bed next to my boyfriend. It was a book he recommended, one on grief after the loss of her husband. Cuddled next to him I read her words, “Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” And it’s true.

One moment I believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that my boyfriend loved me unconditionally and the next I discovered he didn’t. I mourned the death of my partner not because his physical form died, but because the person he had shown himself to be suddenly vanished. And it all happened in an instant.

There are two common types of breakups. The first is the kind where you’re having problems, you’re trying to fix the problems, and it’s just not working. This is the most common kind of breakup, the kind I had experience with. The second type is the kind you hear about but never think will actually happen to you. It’s the kind of thing we think happens to people who don’t pay attention, the kind where someone suddenly leaves the other person out of the blue. The second kind is traumatic, and now I have experience with that kind, too.

Grief is the appropriate response to betrayal.

I think that’s what happens in the second kind of breakup. I think that’s what causes so much of the grief. When you trust someone with your heart, and they leave you with no warning, it feels like nothing is safe, ever was safe, and ever could be safe. And when you look back at all the details and can’t see any warning signs you feel like you’re insane.

This second kind of breakup shoved me right into the face of my deepest fears. I sunk into the kind of depression I’d never experienced before, the kind where I wanted nothing more than to dissolve into the wool blanket I couldn’t gather the care to move from. I spent quite some time internally fighting without really being aware of it. There didn’t seem to be a cell in my body that wasn’t grieving. Every ounce of my being was utterly desperate to remove myself from the intense pain vibrating within me, yet I had no ability to do anything about it.

In the beginning my pain was so overwhelming that I didn’t really have a say when it would surface. I found tears dripping onto my yoga mat while I was in Downward Facing Dog. I pulled over when I was driving to the supermarket because the tears were clouding my vision. Sometimes it felt like the grief would just swallow me whole. The emptiness was so vast I didn’t think I’d ever be able to escape it.

And the truth is that I couldn’t. I had to go into it.

I had walked through pain before, but this was not just pain. This was my darkness, my deepest fears that I had only just scraped the surface of in the past. Imagine an infinite pool of pain, loneliness, and emptiness, and you have to dive in there in order to heal. It was a place I had never been, and I didn’t know what would happen to me if I went in there. But I knew I had to go.

I had to go because I want to live an incredible life. I want to keep my heart open. I want to love even more deeply one day. I want to be proud of the person I am. That means I have to face everything because I know it doesn’t go away, even if it appears to over time. The pain actually hides away, burying itself deep in our bodies. It creates a thick layer over our hearts so we can’t give or receive love as fully. And that’s not what I want, so I had to face it.

I imagined myself trepidatiously venturing into this deep cave with protective gear, but what actually happened was a simple surrendering. I got tired of fumbling for anything to numb the pain, to avoid the unavoidable. So I just let myself be with it.

I decided I was going to be there for myself no matter what I would end up facing.

I call this Mothering Myself, and I have no idea where it came from. It’s probably been coined a million different things by other people, but it came to me intuitively just when I needed it. The technique is essentially what it sounds like: I treated my grieving self like I would my own child. There is a deep longing, when we have lost someone we love, for that person to be the one to come save us from our pain.

No one is coming to save you.

I’m sorry about this, but it’s true. Even if someone was coming, they wouldn’t be able to save you.

Only you can walk through the pain of your own being. @michelledavella (Click to Tweet!)

Only you can be there for yourself on this part of the journey. The beautiful truth in this is that the love for yourself is the only love you need to heal. The forgiveness for yourself is the only forgiveness you need to heal. You refusing to abandon yourself is the only commitment you need in your life.

So I journeyed into the deep darkness where I had never been before, and I felt the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness. Sometimes this meant I cried so deeply I didn’t know it was even possible to feel such hurt. Sometimes I would just lay there staring at the ceiling with silent tears streaming down the sides of my face. Inside that dark hole was more than just pain — it was the wounds of my lifetime. It was full of fear and despair. I was facing all of what ifs and how coulds of my life. What if I’m unworthy of love? How can I ever trust again? What if I will always be abandoned? How could he do this to me? What if I never meet anyone else? How could this happen to me?

Through all of this, I would tell myself, “It’s ok. I am here for you. I am always here for you.” I would squeeze myself and give myself the love I deserved. I would tell myself, “I am so sorry you feel this pain, but it’s ok. Everything is ok.”

I surrendered to grace. I let the pain come and go as it needed to. When I felt relief I felt so grateful for whatever time I had to feel some semblance of normalcy. And for a while, when the pain re-arrived, I would feel defeated again, longing for it to just stay away. But then I began to allow it to ebb and flow. I began to be with it and let it all be ok. This was how I began to heal. I became for myself what I was so desperate for someone else to be for me. I found the strength to face the darkness of my lifetime.

When we dive deep into our darkness and don’t expect someone else to save us we learn how to rely on ourselves. We can’t always choose what happens to us.

We can’t ever love and know for sure the other person will treat our hearts with care. But we can always choose love.

We can always choose to give love to ourselves, to stand by our own side, and to always keep our hearts open, even through the darkness.

If you’ve had a moment of deep grief where you’ve chosen to keep your heart open and feel all the feelings instead of shutting down, share it with us in the comments below.

Michelle D’Avella is a Self-Care Coach, guiding people through the challenging moments of life. She teaches Breathwork and uses this powerful tool to help people heal, accept themselves, and ultimately live happier lives. Learn more about Michelle and her work at pushingbeauty.com and follow her on Instagram for daily doses of inspiration. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Image courtesy of Benjamin Combs.