Special shoutout from June 22, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Just discovered your website and it’s lovely. Congrats on great design and good common-sense advice. I also wanted to share a breakup story with others. I was involved for years (off-and-on) with someone who I came to believe was my soulmate. Unfortunately, he had a teensy little problem–he didn’t want to be with me, although he said he loved me. Not being the most pathetic person on the face of the planet (only the second-most pathetic), I finally broke it off. A year later, I was still in pain. Then, I met a man through an internet personal service. The day I met him, I stopped thinking about my lost love. My internet man and I are now living together and I’m as sure as one can be that this is for life.

Now, I believe that we have to heal ourselves and can’t look to another person to do it. I was starting to heal when I met my current man, but falling in love again sure helped. And I also realized that, problematic as my earlier relationship had been, it also got me in touch with my need for love and passion so that I was ready when a real love came along. It’s been said many times, but it’s true. First you gotta love yourself. Then love will always follow. Good luck to you and your website.

— Redsonja

Breakup Girl responds: Did everyone get that part about not holding out for a healer — and doing it ourselves? Yep. It’s like what I told MixMasterMama/Scab Picker last week: make the breakup tape; don’t send it. Don’t make your Moving On contingent on some hoped-for re/action by the other person. Just wanted to highlight that.

Read; weep. Nothing to add.

World of Warcraft is definitely not for someone facing the end of three decades of marriage. Yet I am all of these things as well as a Darkspear Troll mage, with my home in the Barren Lands, a savanna populated with livid pink T-Rexes who wear blue necklaces and matching earrings. I am Level 21 (out of 70), just high enough to get out of the newbie playpen and die suddenly as I stray past cave bears or mega-spiders. /snip/

In many ways, “WoW” was weirdly evocative of what I faced in life. I was newly alone and, like my avatar, dependent on the skills I had, not the ones I wished for. At each turn, I seemed to be facing new dangers. Often, I died. But I rose again and again, finding within myself a bedrock strength that even this calamity did not erase.

My son and I learned “WoW” together. While he commandeered the keyboard, I sat beside him, to help him choose a path…My son has a generous, intuitive spirit. Though I’ve done my best to seem normal, like a weather vane he reads my moods. For weeks, I walked like the Undead through the routines of family life. I felt as gaping as the creatures in Undercity, a “WoW” metropolis, with their chests ripped open to expose neon-colored hearts….Then my son would invite me to play, his voice shiny with intentional cheer. I would find myself with his arm curled around my neck like the tenderest, toughest vine. His fear of what was happening to us moored me to earth. The end of love is a voyage to an unknown land, with mysteries and dangers that I had to learn to navigate…

So here are my “WoW” lessons, thanks to my son:…

Nope, sorry! Click here to behold Robin Kirk’s amazing essay in its full, gory, glory.

A smart, funny, brave, and devoted pop culture acolyte, writer/comedienne/member of US Weekly Fashion Police (!!!) Wendy Shanker first won us over with her wise and witty 2004 book The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, which explores the complex reality of being a healthy, plus-sized woman in a world that doesn’t always encourage self-acceptance.

Out today: Shanker’s new memoir Are You My Guru?: How Medicine, Meditation & Madonna Saved My Life, chronicles an intense eight-year period during which the author was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating autoimmune disease, Wegener’s granulomatosis. While holding down a demanding job, Shanker seeks relief and guidance from medical experts and healers representing a variety of traditions, from the hardcore pharmacological to the ancient Ayurvedic.

As Shanker begins to trust her own instincts about which therapies will work for her, she learns how to cope with the stresses of the disease and a hectic New York lifestyle — and discovers a thing or two about what it really means to heal. The narrative is laced with references to her ultimate guru, Madonna, as Shanker covers the topic of serious illness with the same forthrightness, attention to detail, and laugh-out-loud humor that made her first book such a refreshing read.

The delightful Shanker spoke with BreakupGirl.net about her memoir:

Who do you hope to reach with this book?

Um, Madonna. (laughs) I assume she’ll never even know it exists, but if it does cross her path, I hope she’ll get a kick out of it.

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