I didn’t set out to create a journal. I wasn’t trying to build a product or start a brand. I was trying to figure out how to function after leaving a twelve-year relationship that had slowly drained me. People like to praise the moment you “finally choose yourself,” but they don’t talk about what comes right after, the silence, the nausea, the way your mind fights you even when you know you made the right decision.

Leaving wasn’t empowering at first. It felt like stepping out of a life I knew too well and into a blank space where nothing felt stable. My ex and I shared years of routines, habits, and hopes I didn’t want to admit were mostly mine. When it finally ended, I wasn’t devastated in a poetic way. I was disoriented. I felt small. And no contact, the thing everyone says is “healing,” felt like pretending he had disappeared into thin air while knowing he was still out there, living normally. There’s a kind of grief that comes from losing someone who is still alive, and it doesn’t get talked about because it sounds irrational until you’ve lived it.

During this time, my therapist kept telling me to journal. I couldn’t do it. My mind was loud and blank at the same time. Staring at an empty page felt like a test I kept failing. I didn’t know how to put words to what I was feeling, because half the time I didn’t even know what I was feeling. Heartbreak has a way of scrambling your entire system, and the idea of “writing through it” felt impossible.

So I stopped trying to journal and started asking myself questions instead. Simple ones. Direct ones. Questions that cut through the fog and forced me to stop pretending I was okay. What exactly did I lose here. Where did I stop telling the truth. Why was I willing to stay so small. What part of this pain is about him, and what part is about me avoiding myself. These weren’t beautiful insights. They were uncomfortable realizations. But they were movement, and movement is rare in the early stages of leaving someone you once imagined a life with.

Those questions eventually sorted my experience into stages I did not recognize at the time. Later, when I looked back, the pattern was impossible to ignore. Shock and Pain came first, which mirrors the acute stress response most people feel during sudden emotional loss. Processing and Acceptance followed, similar to what psychologists describe as cognitive integration, when the mind begins absorbing reality rather than resisting it.

Rebuilding and Empowerment formed the next stage. This is the point where the nervous system stabilizes enough for forward movement, even if it is slow. Growth and Moving Forward happened after that, which aligns with what research calls adaptive reconstruction. Renewal and Confidence emerged once the emotional baseline returned to something steady. Empowerment and Flourishing came last, which is the psychological point where a person begins to operate from self trust rather than survival.

None of these stages were planned. They were simply the natural sequence a mind moves through after detaching from something it was deeply attached to. The only requirement was honesty. The real kind. The kind you cannot fake or speak for validation. The kind that forces you to see the situation without negotiation.

At some point, I realized I was no longer trying to make sense of my ex. I was trying to make sense of myself. That shift—subtle, quiet, almost private, was what changed everything. I stopped looking backward and started figuring out who I was without him. Not in a “new chapter” inspirational way. In a “I refuse to abandon myself again” way.

This journal came from that place. Not from healing, but from necessity. Not from empowerment, but from the moment I understood that the only way out was through the truth. I needed something that didn’t require perfectly formed feelings. I needed structure when my mind couldn’t make any. I needed a tool that made me face myself, even when I didn’t feel ready.

If this journal empowers anyone, I hope it does it in the same way it empowered me, not by making you stronger overnight, but by giving you a way to stop shrinking for people who couldn’t meet you. A way to be honest with yourself. A way to return to yourself instead of waiting for someone else to choose you.

That’s what 90 Days to Healing is. The first step back to yourself after you’ve been away for too long.