She Lost Everything After a Breakup Ended ‘Badly.’ Then Her Entire Life Changed When She Shared It Online

After a five-year relationship ended, Raegan Lynch found herself in a world turned upside down. Suddenly, she was without her partner, her friends, her apartment, and the city she called home—a fallout she describes as “badly.”

“My body kind of knew, but my brain didn’t want to accept that it was ending,” Lynch tells PEOPLE about the painful breakup. “I remember looking around at all of the people, the friends that we made, the life that we had together and just being like, ‘Wow, I’m going to miss this so much.’”

In the first year after the breakup, Lynch retreated inward, relying on a lifelong coping mechanism: journaling.

“It’s just kind of been a thing that I’ve done throughout my whole life,” she explains exclusively to PEOPLE.

As her journaling continued, Lynch noticed her entries shifting in form. One day, while heading to the grocery store with her older sister, she felt compelled to journal in her Notes app—but this time, it didn’t resemble a typical journal entry.

“It was weird because it wasn’t really a journal entry,” Lynch recalls. “It sounded like a script. I had no idea why it came out that way. I have never written a script before.”

She let the entry sit for months, but in her mind, Lynch started visualizing camera angles and plotlines. Her interest in filmmaking, cultivated during the pandemic by watching videos on YouTube, helped her imagine how her story might play out on screen.

“I could see it in my head the way that I wanted, in theory, that script to play out,” she says. “But I was like, ‘I don’t do this. This isn’t a thing that I know how to do.’”

With the new year approaching, Lynch found herself with a week off between Christmas and New Year’s. Revisiting the Notes app, she decided to give the script a shot, despite knowing she should have been updating her resume and portfolio. Using office chairs and boxes as a makeshift tripod, she transformed the journal entry into a video.

On New Year’s Day, she posted the video on TikTok and put her phone away, determined not to check the reactions—until the notifications started rolling in.

“I woke up one day with like 50,000 [notifications],” Lynch reveals. She immediately called her sister, Avery, who had prior experience going viral on TikTok.

“Nobody knew that I filmed or edited this video,” Lynch explains. “I edited it five feet away from her while we were watching the ball drop.”

Avery encouraged her to post the video on Instagram as well, especially with a potential U.S. TikTok ban looming. Although Lynch had initially preferred TikTok, her sister convinced her to create a new Instagram account, where the video quickly went viral. In just one month, the account grew from zero to 250,000 followers. Lynch even blocked her ex and some family members to maintain privacy over her vulnerable content.

The first video, now with 789.4K likes and 5.4 million views on TikTok, was captioned, “Day 1 of starting over my whole entire life.”

“Hi, I’m Raegan and a year ago my happy, healthy, five-year-long relationship ended badly. Like really badly,” she begins. “And when I lost him I also lost my city, my apartment, all my friends, and any belief I still had that my relationship actually was happy or healthy.”

She continues: “I’ve honestly spent way too much time crying in my shower or rotting in my bed trying to remember who I was before and trying to figure out how I’m gonna rebuild my life now that I’m in the after.”

Lynch’s video stood out for its authenticity, combining natural dialogue with moments of wry, fourth-wall-breaking humor.

“Somehow I ended up here,” she says. “27 and back at home, absolutely terrified and completely unsure of everything except this. It’s time to move on now, time to let go, time to build a life that’s even bigger and better than the one I have to leave behind. So here’s to new beginnings. Let’s start over. Shall we?”

Since that first video on January 1, 2025, Lynch has grown her TikTok to nearly 500,000 followers and her Instagram to 700,000, turning her personal journey into a mini-series documenting her healing process. Her content spans everything from discarding items from her old relationship, exploring London, making new friends, and even navigating dating for the first time in a decade.

“The moving to London videos were massive,” Lynch says. “They were terrifying to film because they were terrifying to live through.”

Over time, an online community of supportive women rallied behind her, offering advice and encouragement. “It’s like an incredibly supportive environment and I just feel lucky all the time,” she notes.

While her journey has been mostly positive, Lynch acknowledges the occasional criticism, with some questioning why she hadn’t “moved on” yet.

“At one point, I was like, do I pretend like I moved on faster because of these negative comments?” she says. “And the answer to that was no. There are so many women in these comments who are going through equally hard breakups, and I don’t want to show them that they have to be moved on before they’re ready.”

For Lynch, the most meaningful aspect of sharing her story online is the impact on other women. She recalls observing the women in her life—her mother and older sister—rebuild after setbacks.

“Even when the breakup was really, really hard, there were moments where I could still see the light at the end of the tunnel, only because I’ve watched so many of the women in my life go through these devastating things and come out better on the other side,” she reflects.

“I just hope that if nothing else, people could look at me and say she came out better on the other side. Or look at my comment sections at all the women who have gone through this and come out better. If one person finds something from that, then that’s good enough for me.”