Nobody hands you a soundtrack and a new haircut in month one after a separation. It’s mostly admin, bad sleep and eating cereal over the sink.

What nobody tells you is how disorienting it is to suddenly be the only person in charge of your own life. Every decision, from the lawyer to what’s for dinner, is yours now, and you have to make most of them while you’re at your most exhausted. It’s the worst possible time to be in charge of anything. You’re in charge anyway.

So here’s what I wish someone had told me.

You don’t have to decide everything this month

The house, the furniture, who gets the good saucepan. Some decisions are urgent. Most aren’t. Make a list of what genuinely needs sorting in the next 30 days and park the rest. Future you will thank you for not making permanent decisions on four hours’ sleep.

Sleep is the whole strategy

Everything feels like a catastrophe at 2am. Protect your sleep like it’s a contract negotiation: same bedtime, phone in another room, the good sheets. (I have opinions on sheets. They’re in New Place, New Plot.)

Pick two people

Not everyone needs the full story. Pick two people who get the uncut version and give everyone else the trailer. It saves a surprising amount of energy.

Find a north star

I still use this one when I feel off-piste. Find someone who’s divorced or single and absolutely rocking it. Pin them up in your mind. Make them your totem. On the days you can’t picture your own next chapter, picture theirs. They’ll get you through, and they won’t even know the help they’re giving.

Do one small thing that’s only yours

A walk. A coffee somewhere new. A candle you didn’t have to justify. Small, yes. But it’s proof you still have a life outside the plot twist.

Write it down

Not for anyone else. Just so you can look back in six months and see how far you’ve come. That’s literally why I made The Plotline.

Prepare to go mildly insane in the first year

I wish it wasn’t this way, but from what I gather, this is a canon event. You will start a situationship. You will think you’re in love. You aren’t. It will probably end. And, weirdly, your three-month situationship breakup will hurt more than the end of your marriage.

My theory: you’ve likely already pre-mourned your marriage. By the time it officially ends, you’ve done a lot of the grieving in advance (psychologists call this anticipatory grief). The situationship gets no such head start. Its ending lands all at once, on top of everything else.

Reinvention coach Sarah Elizabeth, host of The Divorce Chapter, puts it perfectly: when that first relationship after divorce ends, “the loss ends up feeling like a double blow, one to our heart and another to our sense of self worth.” She also points out that it’s often a kind of disenfranchised grief: the people around you don’t take a short relationship seriously, so you end up grieving it quietly.

Either way, it’s canon. You aren’t alone, and you aren’t going backwards.

What could wait

  • Dating apps (see above. You won’t listen. Nobody does.)
  • A dramatic fringe
  • Explaining yourself to people who weren’t there

If you’re struggling to cope, please talk to your GP or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

xox Meghan