Breaking Up with a Pattern, Not a Person
There are two competing narratives in my head. One is, “I’m really good at relationships,” and the other is, “I’m really bad at relationships.”
At 47, I’m loved, supported, and incontrovertibly not alone in the world. Yet, I am going through heartbreak—a brutal ending of another relationship I deeply valued. The question remains, am I good or bad at relationships?
I am the kind of person who goes through cycles of growth. I tell myself the path I’ve chosen requires endings. That said, I’d much rather stay and transform than leave and end. So why am I leaving?
Falling in love with my ex-partner felt like finding a home—something so familiar and, in some ways, better than anything before it.
But a relationship can start as a corrective experience and then become a repetitive one. Most of it still worked, years later—70, even 80 percent. But the remaining percentage—the places where growth will never occur, where repair is absent—is where I find I can no longer participate.
This Stops Here: World-Building and World-Ending
I came into this world hauling a large block of ice—the mark of poverty and violence in my early home. On the whole, that block of ice has shrunk over time. When—life being a non-linear experience—conditions change and it begins to grow again, I have to ask myself: why are you still hauling that block of ice? Why not just step away?
Love is a commitment to understanding a unique and complex person. But when coping mechanisms, defenses, and protections prevent connection and the ability to love each other well, self-responsibility becomes about choosing differently.
SOMATIC PRACTICE: SHAKING UP THE STORY
Think about your great-grandmother’s prayers for you.
What emotional and behavioral pattern(s) do you need to break up with?
Do you wonder how many generations in your ancestral line have been trying to break up with these relational patterns?
What did they have to suffer through and stay stuck in so that you don’t?
What ends here?
Now, take out a piece of paper and write down a well-worn story you have about yourself and relationships. “I always date the wrong people. My picker is broken…” Really indulge your inner critic.
Read what you’ve written out loud, but do it while “talking funny.” For example, use a duck or a squeaky voice, or talk while pressing your tongue on he back of your front teeth.
Interested in exploring somatic coaching with me? Sign up for a free, 30-minute Chemistry Call HERE.
How is This Ending Any Different?
When something ends, there are dreams that end with it, and dreams need to be grieved. The only time in my life that I’ve cried every day for months is during breakups like this one. It touches something so deep in us—this taste of communion—that can’t be fixed or filled, it can only be felt.
My old relational patterns? Over-efforting, over-challenging, safety as control. Mastering life.
My new ones? Initiating change, and then staying with the grief and relief that come with that choice. Saying no to a pattern, not a person. Letting go of blame and coming undone.
And perhaps doing it in a duck voice.
Your Next Evolution Is Coming Now
I’m neither good nor bad at relationships, at life, or at anything else. I’m a leaf on a tree of relationality—a pebble knocking up against other pebbles while being pushed and shaped by a much larger stream.
Perhaps breaking up is more like breaking dance. Breaking rank. Breaking fast. Breaking out. Breaking glass (considered good luck in some cultures).
An invitation into a more spacious belonging. A place beyond binaries, pathologies and rigid frames. I didn’t master this last relationship, but I did come a little undone, in the loving and the losing of it.
I’m leaving this love a little closer to home. And I think that’s something the grandmothers can dance about.
Interested in exploring working with me? Sign up for a free, 30-min Chemistry Call HERE.
WHO AM I?
I’m Sarah Shourd, a somatic coach and narrative change leader. I am here to fulfill the unfulfilled potential of my ancestors—to right wrongs, make fewer strangers, repair the field, love bravely, and align with the universe—so that our future ancestors can be even more free.
Through somatic coaching sessions (online or in person at my new office in Oakland, CA), we’ll work with the wisdom of your body and the cycles of your nervous system—cultivating a positive, dynamic tension that is both challenging and nonjudgmental, understanding yet firm.
I combine trauma-informed storytelling, somatic practice, and social justice movement strategy to support individuals and organizations in transforming trauma into action, resilience, and systemic change.
I’m also an award-winning journalist, playwright, author, and film producer. In 2009, I was captured near the Iran–Iraq border and held in solitary confinement for 410 days—an experience that became the catalyst for my life’s work in trauma transformation, collective healing, and justice.
Over the past 15+ years, I have:
Authored three books, including my memoir A Sliver of Light
Written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, and more
Won multiple journalism awards and a Stanford John S. Knight Fellowship
Produced and co-directed The End of Isolation film and subsequent national theater tour.
Helped pass legislation to end solitary confinement for children in California
Raised over $1 million for art and storytelling projects that reimagine justice
Served as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and embodiment coach, guiding leaders and activists through trauma healing and embodied leadership
This is one powerful piece of writing and I love the smirk