Chidera Eggerue - How To Get Over A Boy

This book is dedicated to my unborn daughter. May you stand tall in your self worth, may you soar far in your freedom and may you never forget that the world is yours, little black girl.

If youre reading this book, theres probably something or someone youre getting over. There isnt a single person on this planet who hasnt had to get over a thing.

If youve just gone through a divorce, if youve just removed yourself from an abusive partnership, if youve woken up and decided youre done, if you still have some lingering residual feelings even though you should have gotten over it by now, if youve walked away because you deserve better, if youve been dumped out of the blue this book is for you.

Thankfully, it has landed in your hands at the right time a time when youve probably been feeling it all: guilt, loss, fear, rejection, regret, and confusion. Its here to gently nudge you closer to the person your inner child has always wanted to be: strong, brave and loved. As the popular saying goes, The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Allow this to remain at the front of your mind as you journey to finding your strength. It will not happen overnight, and thats okay. Rewiring yourself after years of toxic messaging and negative self-talk is a very sticky process, but youve got this. Now, more than ever, its important to be patient with yourself and to prioritise celebrating personal improvements. And there will be so many mini-milestones along the way, from finally not feeling the need to compulsively check his social media, to no longer feeling triggered by smelling a particular aftershave that reminds you of him, to moving into your own space as a person. Youd be surprised how powerful your heart and mind can be when you allow them to collaborate and realise their highest potential.

Get ready to surprise yourself with your newfound sense of self, but also be prepared to disappoint a lot of people as a result of this. At the moment, there are people in your life who benefit from you operating at a lower level than your full potential. As you rise taller in who you are, they will feel threatened because they can no longer relate to you and that is absolutely fine, because if everybody likes you, you arent being yourself. Those people will naturally disappear and be replaced with those who want to see you win (they are out there, I promise). Some people only gel with us when we dont like ourselves, and the only way for them to keep us small is to make sure we dont feel like changing. But this is a necessary weeding process that you will be so glad you started.

So trust in yourself, trust in your journey, and know that you will always meet what is meant for you. You will always find your way back to yourself, no matter how lost you become in the doubts others have fed you. Sometimes the past will reappear as a sugar-coated temptation urging you to go back to where you came from, because its the good times that keep us chained to dysfunction. But good old nostalgia is a trap.

You are smarter than anything that attempts to discourage you from wanting more in your life.

Nobodys expectations of you deserve to rule your life. Before you go any further, you need to learn how to love exactly who you are, right now: this starts with how to tune out differing beauty and body standards and find exactly what works for you. Because you deserve to want more for your life despite living in a world that praises self-sacrifice and the downplaying of your wonder. You deserve to be specific about what you want your life to look like.

Everywhere we look online, offline, among our friends, our family and in the wider world people are telling women how to look. But why subscribe to value systems that are designed to make you feel bad about yourself?

Working towards your own positive vision of your beauty away from societys gaze and your body, which is only ever yours, is the first step towards owning yourself, your future and gaining control of your own life. Whilst it may not be easy, it is vital to investigate where the ideas we have about ourselves and the way we look have come from. Often, it feels more comfortable to gently ask questions about why we feel the way we feel about our bodies, rather than deeply directing those questions inward and really observing and examining the role each of us plays in our own turbulent self-image. Accountability is ugly, painful and triggering especially when you realise how long youve been this hard on yourself.

If you really think about it, the way we view ourselves is always through the lens of something or someone else. And so it follows that if we are lucky enough or we work hard enough to find our true self-gaze, we also find our power. Some people are so far gone into the abyss of socialisation that they never get to truly meet themselves while theres still air in their lungs. But if youre reading this, its not too late. In fact, youve arrived at the perfect time.

Because there is so much hate in the world, we will always have to run into other peoples conclusions about who we are, but we do have the ability to deflect their definitions and find our own. Whether you create your own meaning of beauty or you subscribe to societys definition, the world will judge you anyway. These judgements start with beauty, but they are bigger than that; they are about the way straight women have been socialised in such a way that putting ourselves first feels like we are betraying other people.

We need to understand the difference between body and beauty acceptance before we begin our journey of working towards them and a stronger sense of self. They share many similarities but are quite different. This initial step is super important when getting over a boy, because what keeps us psychologically chained to them the majority of the time is the validation we receive from men, no matter how inconsistent or scarce it is. When you dont like your body, hearing something as simple as Your ass is better than hers or I love how small your waist is sounds like such a big deal: something to stick with. When you have severe body or beauty image issues, the only thing that keeps you going is your partners praise.

If you operate from a place of lack and desperation, it puts you in a territory where you are most likely going to attract people, particularly men, who specifically seek out women who have a fragile relationship with their bodies, because these guys know how to strategically harness cheap validation. Its what they drip-feed you to keep you wrapped around their finger, as they drag you further and further away from yourself and into their bleak world of manipulation, fear and abandonment.

But sometimes losing yourself in someone else isnt always as direct and obvious as this. Often, before it reaches the stage of overt manipulation, it starts out quite passively slightly uncomfortable, but not obvious enough for you to confidently flag it to your partner, especially if youre already quite an anxious person. Its the little things, like feeling a weird sense of guilt after sharing good news because his response feels a little deflated (when really hes jealous, and his masculinity feels threatened), or when he changes the subject and reminds you of the aspects where you might have fallen short or underachieved (because projecting his own losses and failures onto you is the closest he allows himself to get to addressing his own personal difficulties). But all of this has to stop, because neither of these behaviours are components of a healthy relationship where your partner wants you to grow, evolve and enjoy life!