Over the last few months, a few of you have reached out and asked me to do an episode about the pain we feel when a relationship ends. When a friend stops responding to your messages. When a family member decides you're too much for them right now. When you hear the words, it's not you, it's me. Really? It's not you, it's me? Is that even a reason? So I knew you wanted this episode, but I kept putting it off. I thought if I waited long enough, I'd figure out how to make it hurt less. That I would find just the right words. But that episode doesn't exist. Nobody has those words.So instead, all I can do is take you somewhere quiet and peaceful and beautiful and tell you that you are not alone. Give you permission to feel exactly what you feel and help you sleep. Before we begin, I just want to say clearly, I'm not a mental health professional. I'm your friend in the dark who helps you find sleep and tries to offer a little comfort along the way. But if this pain has been with you for a long time, if it's affecting your days as well as your nights, please talk to someone who is genuinely trained to help. You deserve that kind of support. And please make sure that you are somewhere safe and comfortable before we continue. This episode uses hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques designed to help you drift off. So this is not the moment to be behind the wheel or anywhere you need to stay alert. And one more thing, if this podcast has ever helped you on a hard night, please hit the follow button if you haven't already. I'm very much the little guy in a big podcasting universe. No team, just me trying to make something that helps. And if you're already a follower, then thank you, genuinely. And now let's get you settled Take a moment to find the position your body wants to be in tonight. Shift your pillow if it needs shifting.Pull your blanket up or kick a foot out if you're too warm. And take your time with this. There's no hurry.And when you're ready, take a slow, deep breath in. Just a long, easy breath that fills your belly first and then your chest. And then let it go.That's all. No counting. No effort.Just that simple rhythm. And keep breathing like this as we help your body relax. A nice long breath in and then out. Your belly rising slightly and then falling. Your chest lifting and then softening. Your heart needs to be beating at about 60 beats per minute for sleep to come. And if you've been tossing and turning, it's likely moving faster than that right now. And that's just what happens when the mind is busy and the body is following along. Feel your heart beginning to slow now.Just slightly. Just enough. It doesn't need to race anymore.Nothing here requires that kind of alertness. Let it settle. And now bring your attention to your face. Those little tiny muscles around your eyes. Let them go. And your mouth.Your jaw. Let the muscles there. Let go.Your shoulders are next. Let them fall. Your upper arms growing heavy.And then your elbows. Your forearms. And your wrists.Fingers soft and slightly apart. Notice your breath moving through you. Slow and deep.Notice your legs now. Your thighs softening and sinking. Your knees loose.All the way down to your ankles. And your feet. And then your toes.Letting go. Growing still. Your whole body is resting now.Heavy and warm. And quiet. Your breathing has slowed.And your heart is settling. Toward that easy unhurried pace. I want you to give me your full attention now.Not the kind that requires effort. The other kind. The kind you give to rain on a window.Or a fire. Or someone telling you a story you want to hear. Soft attention.Easy attention. Let my voice become the thing your mind rests on. And let it lead you.All you have to do now is follow the sound of my voice. Imagine with me that you're standing on the bank of a wide slow river. Willows line the bank.Old ones. Their long branches trailing down to touch the surface. Lifting and dipping in a breeze so slight.You can barely feel it on your skin. Between them, cypress trees rise tall and straight. Their reflections trembling on the water.Spanish moss hangs from higher branches. Swaying. Catching the last of the light.Magnolias stand heavy with white flowers. Their petals so thick and creamy. They seem to glow in the dusk.Their scent is sweet and lush and heavy in the warm air. At the water's edge, stands of swamp iris grow in clusters. Their purple flowers still open.And among the tall grasses, evening primrose has begun to bloom. Pale yellow. Underneath your feet, the ground is thick with moss.Cool. Pressing up between your toes. Giving softly with each step.The bank slopes gently to the water. And where the moss gives way to mud at the river's edge. You can see the shape of small stones beneath the surface. And the occasional silver flash of a fish moving through the shallows. The light is that gold you get in the last half hour of a warm day. Lying across the water in long ribbons.Turning the surface to copper where it catches the current. A great blue heron stands in the shallows 20 feet away. Motionless.One leg raised. Watching the water. It has been there so long.It has become part of the stillness. A dragonfly passes low over the surface. Its wings catching the light for just a moment.Iridescent and brief. Before it is gone. You have been standing here for a little while.And out on the water. Already moving away from you. There is a boat.Small and wooden. Taken by the river. You don't know exactly when it left.Maybe you were looking the other way. Maybe you watched it go. And you had no words.Maybe you believed for a long time that it would turn around and come back. There is a figure in the boat. The river is carrying them around the long slow bend ahead.And they are facing forward. And you are standing here on the bank. And the distance between you is widening with every second.And there is nothing to be done about that now. The ache that moves through your chest watching this. The tightness that climbs into your throat.It is as real as anything you have ever felt. And there is science behind it. The pain of losing someone.Of being left. Or shut out. It activates the same regions in the brain as physical pain.Your mind and your body make no distinction between the two. So if it felt these days like something has genuinely hurt you. Like you are recovering from a blow you didn't see coming.That is because in every way that matters you are. You are not being dramatic. You are not being too sensitive.You are a person who loved someone. And that someone is no longer in your life the way they were. And this kind of pain tends to be carried quietly through ordinary days that ask you to get dressed and show up and answer emails.While somewhere underneath all of that you are standing on a riverbank watching a boat disappear. The boat is further around the bend now. And then the river curves and the willows close over the water.And it is gone. You stand for just a moment. Just breathing.The heron startled by nothing you can see lifts suddenly from the shallows. Its great wings opening. Carrying it low across the water and out of sight.The river closes over the space where it stood. The frogs continue. The willows trail their branches in the current. And the river moves on the way it always does. And gradually as your eyes adjust to the wider view you begin to notice that the water is not empty. Out in the current catching the last copper light. There are other boats. Many of them. Moving at different speeds.In different directions. One drifts past slowly. Turning in the current as if it has nowhere particular to be.You recognize that kind of leaving. The kind that happens so gradually you almost miss it. One unreturned message.Another cancelled plan. And then another. A conversation that grows thinner over months. Until one day there is nothing left to say. Another cuts hard through the water. Someone who left in a hurry.In a rush of anger. Or need that didn't leave room for a proper goodbye. And there upstream.A small boat turning. Coming back toward the bank. The way some people do. Present. And then absent. And then present again.And further still. Just rounding the bend from upstream. Boats you haven't seen before.Still distant. Still strangers. Moving toward you.On the current. This river has always been full of boats. People arriving.And people moving on. Some staying close to your bank for years. And some passing through briefly.All of it part of the same wide unhurried movement. Every person who has ever loved someone. And found themselves watching them go.Has stood on a bank like this one. Feeling like you are feeling now. You are not alone in this.Even when it feels most like you are. And here by the river you also realize that everything that passed between you and that person. None of that is made any less real.By the distance now between you. The relationship was real. It shaped you. And missing them. Missing who they were to you. And who you were to them.That is not a sign that you were wrong to care. It's just love with nowhere left to go. And love that has nowhere to go doesn't disappear.It just stands on the bank for a while. Watching the water. The light is nearly gone now.And the water has turned a deep gray blue. The color of the sky above it. The first fireflies are appearing among the cypress roots.Small warm lights. Blinking on and off. In the shadows.And without quite deciding to. You move away from the water's edge. And you find a place where the grass is long.And the ground is level. And the moss is thickest. You lower yourself down, your hands pressing into the coolness of it first, feeling the give of it, the aliveness of it. Under your palms, and then you lie back. The smell of the earth comes up around you as you settle, warm, and dark, and alive. The sweetness of moss and river water, and night-blooming flowers opening in the dark.You can feel the ground beneath your shoulder blades, beneath the back of your head, beneath your palms, resting open at your sides. The moss conforms to the shape of you, cool against the back of your arms, your neck, the back of your head. The tall grass rises on either side, enclosing you in something green, and quiet, and private.The willow branches move somewhere above, slow and easy. A firefly drifts through the grass beside you, blinking once, twice, and gone. Above you, the sky, enormous, blue of it, so saturated now.The first stars have arrived, Venus, low on the horizon, holding its light without flickering, and then more, appearing as if they'd been there all along. The frogs are louder now, the whole riverbank singing in the dark, and underneath that, the river itself, moving past you, just a few feet away. The sound, like someone breathing. Your body is heavy, the good kind of heavy. The kind that comes after long effort, after carrying something a great distance, without rest. The ground beneath you is solid, and cool, and completely reliable. The grass smells of green things, of water, and earth. You don't have to be over it. You don't have to have made sense of it. You don't have to forgive anyone tonight. Not them, not yourself. Forgiveness can be a long road. You don't always arrive there by morning, and that is perfectly all right. Tonight, you are allowed to feel the shape of your sadness, the specific way it has been sitting in your chest. It is real, and it is yours. And it is allowed to be here, in this grass, under this sky. With the fireflies moving through the dark around you, and the river keeping its quiet company, and the whole warm southern night folding itself around you, like something that has been waiting all day to do exactly this. Your eyes are growing heavy. Stars are very bright. The frogs sing on. The river moves past in the dark, as it always has, and it always will.And as the riverbank slowly fades, and the sounds of the water grow softer and more distant, you become aware of where you actually are. Your bed, your pillow beneath your head, the weight of your blanket, the specific warmth that builds up underneath it. Feel the mattress beneath you, the way it has learned the shape of you over time. There is nowhere else you need to be tonight. This time, these hours, they are entirely yours. Notice your breathing, how it has slowed without you even asking it to. Feel your chest rising and falling and rising again. Feel how heavy your arms have become, your hands, your fingers lying still against the blanket. Feel your legs, heavy and warm, and done with the work of the day. Your face, your jaw, the small muscles around your eyes, all of it softening, letting go. Whatever is waiting for you on the other side of tonight can wait a little longer. Right now, there's only the slow and steady rhythm of your own breathing, which has been with you every moment of your life and will go on being with you, faithful and quiet through this night. And everyone that follows, the relationship was real. What you felt was real and your grief is allowed to exist without a name, without a structure, without anyone else's permission. And you don't have to forgive anyone tonight, not them, not yourself. Just rest, just this, and know that these feelings will feel different in the morning, not gone, not resolved, but different. Night as a way of making everything feel bigger than it is, of turning aches into wounds and worries into certainties. But morning light is a way of quietly restoring proportion. You will wake up and the feelings will still be there, but you will be rested and that changes things. You will be a little stronger than you are right now. And right now, that is enough. The river is still out there somewhere, the fireflies, the stars, the soft sound of the water moving through the dark. And you are here, warm, and held, and finally, finally, still.