Whether you were ghosted during a promising short-term connection or facing the painful, devastating ending of a long-term relationship, one thing is certain: endings sting. For queer women, these heartbreaks often carry an extra layer of complexity, intertwining with identity and community issues.

Why Rejection Hurts So Much

Rejection is not just an emotional event; it triggers a physical pain response in the brain, much like a physical injury. For the LGBTQ+ community, where forming connections and finding affirming spaces can already be a challenge, the dissolution of a romantic bond can feel like losing a piece of your identity and your safe harbor.

The mental health toll can be significant. You might experience heightened anxiety, persistent sadness, or even symptoms resembling depression. A major side effect is a deep reluctance to trust anyone new, or even people you already know, making future vulnerability feel impossible.

The Unique Pain of Later-in-Life Coming Out

For lesbians who came out later in life, the sting of rejection can be particularly harsh. You may be experiencing these kinds of intense, romantic heartbreaks for the first time.

You’ve spent years navigating straight relationships or perhaps masking your true self, and finally stepping into your identity felt like liberation. Then, a queer relationship ends, and you’re faced with a painful emotional landscape you’ve never had to cross before. This situation is valid and difficult; be especially gentle with yourself as you navigate these novel emotional highs and lows.

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11 Steps to Finding Healing and Redirection After a Breakup

Recovery isn’t linear, but these 11 steps offer a framework for processing the pain, learning from the experience, and eventually opening your heart to new possibilities.

Step 1: Feel Your Feelings—Don’t Skip the Pain 🧘‍♀️

This is the hardest and most crucial step. Do not skip this step – that’s just avoidance – and the rest of the steps won’t be healing you, they’ll just distract you for a while. Avoidance is the act of consciously or unconsciously steering clear of situations, people, or thoughts that might trigger uncomfortable emotions. While it offers temporary relief, it ultimately delays and prolongs healing.

Do not rush the healing process; it happens in its own time. Pushing yourself to “get over it” quickly is counterproductive.

How to Feel Your Feelings Gently:

• Listen to Your Inner Child: Acknowledge the part of you that is hurting, scared, or angry. Treat your “Inner Child” with the same compassion and kindness you’d offer a young child who lost something precious. Tell yourself: “This hurts, and that’s okay. You are safe now.”
• Use Titration: This therapeutic technique means feeling your feelings gently and in small doses to reduce overwhelm. Instead of drowning in the emotion, allow yourself to feel it fully for five to ten minutes, then consciously pull back and ground yourself (e.g., focus on your breathing or a physical object). Repeat this as needed, allowing the intensity to gradually dissipate.
• Talk to Someone: A trusted friend, a qualified therapist, or even an empathetic AI companion can provide a vital outlet. Externalizing your pain reduces its power.

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Step 2: Reflect and Learn—The Unfair Step 🧐

This step can feel unfair, as the tendency is to blame yourself for the loss. While you may justly reach the conclusion that there was nothing more you could have done (which is absolutely valid), turning it into a learning opportunity is how you grow.

Ask yourself these difficult, reflective questions:

• Self-Awareness: Did you miss any red flags or ignore your intuition?
• Communication: Did you express your feelings and needs, or did you people please to keep the other person happy? Were you truly vulnerable, and did they feel able to confide in you?
• Attachment: Can you learn anything about your typical attachment style (or the attachment style you tend to attract)? For instance, you might notice patterns of anxious attachment seeking out avoidant attachment.

By honestly answering these questions, you gain insights that will make your future relationships stand a better chance.

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Step 3: Use the Power of Perspective ⏳

Think of a time in the past when a relationship or opportunity didn’t work out. Ideally something that happened a while ago, so that the feelings have diminished significantly now from what they were. Think about the following questions:

• How does it feel now that time has passed? Does it hurt much less than it did back then?
• Do you even think about it at all now?
• Are you actually glad it didn’t work out now, because it cleared the way for something better?

This feeling will return. The acute hurt you feel right now will subside, and the importance of this person will diminish. One day, you will look back on this experience with detachment and even gladness that you found something much better instead.

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Step 4: Write It Out—Therapeutic and Brain Benefits 📝

Writing is a powerful tool with significant therapeutic and mental health benefits. It allows you to externalise chaotic thoughts, process emotions, and create narratives of understanding. At Sapphic Charm, we practice what we preach – this blog came about because of the healing power of writing.

• How to Write: Don’t worry about grammar or structure; this is for you. Try stream-of-consciousness writing, focusing on the feelings that arise.
• What to Write: Write about your anger, your sadness, or even the happy memories you’re grieving. If you truly don’t know where to start, try copying out a book onto paper. The repetitive physical act engages your brain and calms your nervous system, allowing thoughts to surface naturally.

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Step 5: Wish Them Well (From a Distance) 🕊️

This isn’t about toxic positivity; it’s about self-preservation. Wishing your ex well is a conscious choice to stop the hurt from building up inside and causing bitterness, which only harms you.

The philosophical idea is: What you give to others, you get to keep. If you hold onto resentment and negative energy, you hold those things inside your own body and mind. If you release them and wish the other person peace (even if you never speak to them again), you keep the peace.

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Step 6: Diminish It By Making Other Things Bigger 📈

The loss feels huge because it currently occupies the majority of your emotional space. Diminish the pain by making other things in your life bigger.

• Social Life: Prioritise socialising with friends who affirm you and make you feel good. We’ve got loads of ideas of ways for lesbians to make new friends too, check them out here.
• Physical Health: Exercise to get those mood-boosting endorphins flowing.
• Career/Personal Growth: Dive into your work, start that side hustle, enroll in a course, or dedicate time to volunteering. By expanding your world, you shrink the significance of the relationship’s ending.

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Step 7: Neutralize Obsessive Thinking 🧠

Obsessive, ruminative thoughts are a hallmark of heartbreak. You need an “Interrupt Skill”—something ready in your back pocket to neutralise the fixation.

When the intrusive thoughts arise, consciously change the subject in your mind. You can’t obsess on more than one thing at a time.

• New Subjects: Learn and play back the meanings of tarot cards, start a new language, or dive into a complex and intriguing subject like quantum physics via simplified YouTube explainer videos. The sheer focus required for these subjects puts emotional drama into a necessary, intellectual perspective.

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Step 8: Be Creative and Find Your Flow 🎨

Being creative is deeply therapeutic because it engages the prefrontal cortex and shifts your focus from rumination to creation. It’s a powerful form of active meditation.

• Learn a New Skill: Choose something that requires full, focused attention, not something you can do on autopilot. Try a jigsaw puzzle, adult colouring books, or learning a simple rhythm on an electronic keyboard. For a completely free option, try designing some online art with a free Canva account. Fun fact: that’s exactly how Sapphic Charm began!
• The Flow State: The goal is to get into the flow state, where you are fully immersed and energised by the activity, and everything else (including your heartbreak) temporarily disappears.

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Step 9: Travel Somewhere New ✈️

If you can, take a trip—even a short one. Getting away to a completely different place, especially one with an element of adventure or meeting new people, expands your horizons and literally lets you see things in a different light.

• Go on a Journey: I once spent 3 weeks on a road trip across the beautiful and vast expanses of California, Nevada and Arizona. I sat in the same motel eating the same breakfast before we set off and again when we returned. But I wasn’t the same person that I had been. That trip had added new experiences, memories and feelings. My mind had expanded and in just three weeks, I was changed forever. 
• Perspective Shift: If a big trip isn’t possible, explore a nearby place you haven’t been to before, go somewhere on foot instead of driving, use a website such as trustedhousesitters.com to get a free change of scene for a few days, or even just rearrange the furniture in your living room. It will help you draw a line and move on from the old, and into a new way of being.

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Step 10: Enjoy Being Single

In order to bring your best self to your next relationship, you need to be comfortable with being on your own. When we prioritise being in a relationship above everything else, we can become anxious, people pleasers or codependent (spoiler: none of these are a recipe for a happy, healthy relationship in the long-term). In a strange paradox, by trusting yourself to be able to overcome the end of a relationship, you bring your best self into it, and that’s what makes a great relationship. Some of the benefits of being single for a while include:

• Financial Control: You have complete control over your money. You can focus on your savings goals, spend money on your hobbies, or make large purchases (like travel) without compromise.
• A Home That’s Yours: You can decorate, organize, and maintain your living space exactly as you like it. Your home truly becomes a peaceful sanctuary designed exclusively for your comfort.
• A Broader Community: Instead of relying on one person for all your emotional needs, you build a diverse and strong support system, which leads to greater overall social connectedness, which can decrease the risk of depression and anxiety.
• Focus on Goals and Passions: Singlehood frees up significant time and emotional energy to pour into your career goals, hobbies, education, or passion projects. This is the perfect time to throw yourself into that side hustle or finally master a new skill.
• Flexibility for Life Changes: You have the freedom to take risks, travel spontaneously, move cities for a new job, or completely change your routine without navigating a partner’s comfort or schedule.

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Step 11: Trust the Universe

• Rejection is Redirection: Embrace the powerful concept that rejection is redirection and everything happens for a reason. That person wasn’t your forever person, and in time, you will see why.
• Choose to believe that the Universe has your back and everything is always working out for you, even — and especially — when it feels like it isn’t. I wish you happiness and strength 🙏

PS. From travel bags to colouring books, journals to jigsaws, we’ve got plenty of ways to help you heal, break out of rumination, get back to the present moment and manifest your happy future. Check them out here.