"My boyfriend took his own life and left me a list to learn to live again"

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A man who took his own life left his girlfriend, Elena Ricci, a "yes list" of 101 things to help her live again — from climbing Kilimanjaro to dyeing her hair blonde and falling in love.  Elena, 29, received the letter days after Chirag’s death in 2022. Initially angry, she “sleep walked” through grief but has now embraced the list.  Since January 2025, she’s started ticking off tasks, like enjoying her birthday and plans to visit Stourhead and dye her hair.  Elena hopes sharing her story helps others break the taboo around grief and find healing.

Transcript

00:00I'm Eleanor and almost three years ago my boyfriend took his own life which came as a

00:05massive shock. A few days after my boyfriend died I received a letter through the post and it was a

00:13bucket list of 50 things that we had decided to do together and then he added 51 more things that he

00:20thought I should do together and that's how the yes list on social media was born so I've been

00:26making videos about it for almost a month I think and so far I've ticked off four things hopefully

00:34many more to come there are some that will take years and years to achieve and some that have

00:40left me thinking what the hell was he thinking is he having a laugh so some of the things I've done

00:46so far was doing something I hate which was running in order to deal with my grief I started running

00:52and then I ran a marathon because it was the only way that I felt like I could cope with it

00:58and the physical pain that I felt whilst training for the run and actually running the marathon

01:04really helped me to cope with the mental pain that I was feeling and then I started making

01:10videos on TikTok and Instagram to share my story and hopefully help so many amazing people who have

01:17gone through the same thing and people who message me or leave comments saying thank you so much for

01:21talking about these things because I felt so alone just dealing with it by myself and I feel like

01:28nobody else really understands so it's always nice to have someone who understands and yeah I'm really

01:33looking forward to crossing things off the list so these are some of the things that I've done on the

01:39list and here are some of the things that I haven't done yet one of them is have an Italian summer romance

01:47before you turn 30 why I don't know how I'm gonna do that one but again I can't say no so it's gonna

01:57have to be done and I don't have that long left I have to do it this year because I'm turning 30 next

02:00year one thing that I'm really looking forward to doing is dye my hair blonde I've been seeing it for

02:06years and he remembered that is something that I wanted to do so I actually do have an appointment

02:12booked for two weeks time and I'm going to get my hair dyed then and one thing that I am terrified of

02:19doing that I really did not want to do but I can't say no is bungee jumping we'll see if I survive that

02:26one I don't know

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