±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
What to Do When You Get DumpedÌýadvises: “You’ve been given a one-way ticket on the pain train, destination unknown. .... Keep in mind that although you feel like its only passenger, the pain train is actually packed. People the world over get dumped, multitudes every day.†Illustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
CDeWitt
±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
CDeWitt
±õ²ÔÌýWhat to Do When You Get Dumped, the co-authors add a touch of delicate humor to each page, not only through Hopkins’ words but also through Bateman’s artwork.ÌýIllustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
For all our failed attempts at defining love over the millennia, there is one undeniable truth about the human heart, and it’s this: Boy, oh boy, does it hurt when it breaks.
And there’s this other truth that Charles Dickens spelled out for the rest of us in Great Expectations (1861), when forever-singleton Miss Havisham says, “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.â€
Writer and journalist Suzy Hopkins was reminded of these two truths a few years ago when her husband of 30 years announced he was leaving her. To make matters worse, her now ex-husband did this as Hopkins, then 58, was two days short of retiring.
What did Hopkins do? Well, she cried. A lot. And then as she slowly — very slowly — built her life back and tried to heal her heart, she had an idea: Write a new book. She was retired, after all, and now had time. She had also written another book with her daughter, illustrator Hallie Bateman, about what to do when a parent dies, in a step-by-step (or day by day) format, with text and illustrations.
Her idea transformed into a real book, and five years after her divorce, Hopkins released What to Do When You Get Dumped (2025) from Bloomsbury Publishing — once again in collaboration with Bateman.
The book is as its title makes it sound: a how-to guide to unbreaking your heart. It spells out (and illustrates) the feelings and emotions you go through if someone you love dumps you. It’s charming, empathetic, and funny at times, but in a “We’ve all been there†way that makes you feel less alone.
“I was three years in [dealing with a broken heart], and I went, ‘What is wrong with me?,’†says Hopkins of the book’s origins. “I had counseling, I had antidepressants, I did everything that you would do to try to get better, and I was still not doing well in my mind. I was still not in good shape.
“And so, as I was weighing that new book project, Hallie gave me a Tarot reading, and the Tarot reader said — without knowing that I had gone through heartbreak, and I’m not even sure she knew I was a writer — she said, ‘You should write a memoir as a pathway to healing for you.’â€
Bateman convinced Hopkins to give it a go. “I’m incredibly pushy,†Bateman says. “And I was like, ‘I really think that you should pick a book and go for it.’ And the dumped idea, I feel like it was kind of inevitable.â€
Hopkins decided to write a book about people’s experiences of getting dumped, which Hopkins and Bateman agree comes with a lot of shame and taboo. Hopkins decided to approach it the way she always had any topic as a journalist.
“My initial thought was that maybe I’d just interview people who’ve been really badly dumped and ask those people how they got through it,†Hopkins says. “And then they’ll give me three tips, and those tips will get me through this, as in, they’ll say three things, and, boom, I can be done with this.
Suzy Hopkins is a former newspaper reporter and a magazine publisher.Ìý
Hallie Bateman
Hallie Bateman, Suzy Hopkins’ daughter, is the guide’s illustrator.
Daniel Iroh
“So, I just asked people to tell me something [about what] they had gone through,†she adds. “They were all strangers to me, and they told me these stories that were actually way more heartbreaking than mine. And I’d say, ‘How long did it take you to get over?’ And they’d say, ‘Like, five years, seven years, 10 years.’ A few of them cried on the phone, because I did long interviews, maybe an hour and a half, and I’d say, ‘Do you mind if I ask you everything about that?’ And they were willing, because nobody h
ad asked them, because people don’t want you to talk. People want you to get over it.â€
In the end, Hopkins decided to take a different approach that would maybe provide a pathway to healing, which she also needed. It took a few more years for Hopkins and Bateman to decide to work on the book together.
“So, she wrote her draft,†Bateman says. “And I think because we had already done our first book, she knew more about what it was going to mean to turn it into graphics.â€
Hopkins was still in the midst of her own breakup when she and Bateman decided to go on a retreat to work on the book, and she says many parts were triggering for her to work on and write. Bateman, who is a good editor of her mother’s words, would ask her to rewrite and rewrite, until the sentence was distilled to a thought’s essence, to that single truth Bateman knew her mother wanted to communicate.
Writing the book was cathartic for Hopkins, but also for her daughter. Hopkins was learning to make peace with what happened to her and her marriage, and Bateman dealt not only with her parents’ divorce but also watching her mother go through all the pain while working on healing her relationship with her dad.
What to Do When You Get DumpedÌýadvises: “You’ve been given a one-way ticket on the pain train, destination unknown. .... Keep in mind that although you feel like its only passenger, the pain train is actually packed. People the world over get dumped, multitudes every day.†Illustration by Hallie Bateman / Courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing
CDeWitt
The book, however, is relatable and can be helpful to someone going through a breakup to read about steps most of us have to go through to get better and to overcome the stigma and shame.
The book also is not vengeful. “Some of my personal story is there but is muted, because I didn’t want to focus the book on the person who dumped you,†Hopkins says. “There’s anecdotal stuff about my husband in there, because of the shock of what happened. As we went through it, it became clear that he has the right to his own happiness, and although it felt unkind and disrespectful what he did, he’s a good person who deserves to go forward on his own path.â€
What Hopkins and Bateman hoped to achieve with the book — and have — is to turn something personal and painful into a universal work that speaks to everyone.Ìý
