The Truly Elusive SPEEDY Recovery from Divorce

I remember clearly a conversation that took place between my counselor and me at about the 4-month mark from the time of my devastating separation…

 

Me:  “It’s been four months since all of this started and I don’t think I can survive much longer without some type of resolution!  I am in such pain; when will I finally start to feel like things are going to get better?”  < tears of frustration >

Counselor:  < deep sigh >  “It sounds like you’re really hurting… I want you to know that I’m here for you while you go through all of this.  < pause>  Unfortunately, THIS is going to take a long time  - there is no easy or quick way out.  Four months is just the beginning of a very lengthy process, whether or not you reconcile or divorce.  We need to work on getting you prepared for the long haul - years, not months, Brooks.”

Me:  < near apoplectic > “Really?  I just don’t think I have it in me to deal with this.  I just want to go to sleep and wake up and have all this behind me, whatever happens…  I can’t take years of this uncertainty and pain!”  < sobs of despair >

 

It is worthwhile knowing that somehow I did survive “the long haul,” and that the long haul was in fact, far lengthier than either my counselor or I suspected - exactly 3 years to the month from the date of my initial separation transpired before I was officially divorced via mediation.

During those 3 years, many things changed for me, both negatively and positively.  The perceived negatives were obvious:

 

• Becoming a single parent
• Becoming a single person
• Financial constriction
• Concerns about future career shift
• Overwhelming sadness and disorientation
• Concerns about how to mindfully process feelings of abandonment and betrayal
• Fears about my long-term financial stability
• Losing ties with my married couple friends
• Having to make major decisions completely on my own
• Loss of the companionship of my children about 35% of the time
• Enormous responsibility for taking care of and maintaining our historic family home, outbuilding, and expansive yard
• Fears about the divorce process and whether it’d turn ugly and grossly expensive

 

The positives however, surprised me due to the sheer volume of them:

 

• I had much more free time
• I could freely pursue my interests and activities
• I had the time and interest to read an endless number of books, including countless self-help books, books related to my passions, best-selling novels, even the Bible
• I reached out through volunteerism and discovered I had much to offer
• My children and I began attending church regularly
• I cried until I could cry no more and learned how to smile and laugh again
• I discovered the profoundly healing power of grace, and so developed the courage to forgive myself and others, which allowed me to move on
• I made oodles of wonderful new friends, most of them single and similarly situated
• I became amazingly self-reliant and independent
• I learned to surrender to God, and gained a deep and abiding faith that a higher power prevailed over my solitary efforts, pain and toils
• I became a much much better mother to my children by my determined efforts to role-model dignity and grace to them
• My heart softened and filled with compassion for others enduring their own personal struggles
• I became outrageously courageous and strong (both physically and emotionally)
• I learned how to seek and find redemption of my miserable experience through reaching out and helping others in need

 

Perhaps one of the greatest things I learned over those three years was that to make profound changes, one needs plenty of time as well as a boatload of determination.  My counselor was correct in saying there was no easy way out, no shortcut, no quick fix.  And despite my initial horror at the prospect of a lengthy and treacherous process, had it not been for that solitary time, I’m confident that I’d have been short-changed of so much of my positive self-development and evolution.

Sometime close on the heels of my divorce, I happened upon a quote from T. S. Eliot that has resonated with me ever since, confirming in me what I already discovered

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not

And with the passage of time, I’ve come to learn that some of the greatest gifts arise out of the long-suffering ashes of despair and grief.