The Evolution of Healing Time After Divorce

If you have experienced a divorce, you know that it hurts.  Whether you’re the leaver or the one left, it’s hard.  Frankly, I think it’s harder to be the one left in any relationship, but the leaver has difficulty too.  There’s courage in being the one who cuts the cord of a marriage and a relationship, unless of course, there’s cheating involved and then for me, there’s no sympathy.  Cheating is a different aspect entirely as that’s chock full of disrespect.  There’s no reason for cheating in my book.  There, I said it and I mean it.

Sure, they say, time heals all wounds, but even though I believed it and said it all the time, time wasn’t healing me.  Swirling pain nestled in my mind, body, soul and heart after my Ex left and I couldn’t regain my center.  I wallowed in painful reminders.  I second-guessed myself over and over.  I was bereft.  I painfully recanted the entire scenario in my mind.  I was angry.  I was hurt.  My heart was bleeding and my mind churned between anger and self-pity.  I was depressed and stagnant.  Hollowed out by my own pain, I went through the days like a zombie, getting done what needed to be accomplished for the family and that took all of my strength.  I cried thousands of tears.  There was nothing left in me.  I was empty.

I talked with friends and a therapist, but nothing really helped.  I was afraid to drink because I didn’t want to tell the kids too much or start crying and not be able to stop.  I concentrated on the kids because I felt like they were the only thing that mattered in my life.  I didn’t matter, but my kids did and I would continually find inner strength to be a good mom.  But that left nothing for me to pull from in order to heal myself.

Time healed me, but it took a long time.  If you are in this position as many people are, I want you to know that there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.  It may be hidden, but the spark is there when you decide to start living again.  It’s we who choose to live again and to find ourselves again.  It s a conscious choice to turn that corner out of the muck of pain.  Perhaps that only comes once the grieving is finished.  I just wish that the grieving hadn’t taken so long to heal me.

I won’t live looking back at the devaluation of my life nor my messy past with regret.  I have grown by leaps and bounds through those heart-wrenching experiences to be the authentic me that you read about here.  My life is surely different in every aspect.  I won’t go back to that woman who was left.  I embrace her and all her doe-eyed naivete and I keep her safe now.  That hopeful romantic remains within me as authentically as I live and breathe.  But I am stronger now.  I feel like I have climbed Mount Everest lately.  Things have changed for me recently in ways I could have never imagined.  Was it the full moon?  The eclipse?  The move from our family home?  The finality of the divorce?  The illumination of me again by some sort of magic?  I can’t tell you.  All I know is that by the help I’ve received (and through this blogging experience, you all have helped me incredibly and I’m ever grateful!), I am beginning to feel like me again!  But an improved 2.0 version of me.

So authentically at 50 years old, divorced and a single mom, I embrace life’s changes and I am enjoying being happy, being centered and being love.

Thanks for taking this journey with me.  We all heal in our own time.  Just keep the faith.  You will heal as well.  It takes patience and love.  Be kinder to yourself than necessary because, it is, so very necessary.

♥