Ok, to start off of course I don’t know anyone else’s experience. And certainly some people are in extreme situations. But having just come through a pretty difficult divorce, two kids in tow, I really think we are doing divorce wrong. In our culture it’s all about anger and winning. But for our heart’s sake and most importantly, our children’s sake, it shouldn’t be. Anger serves nothing, other than to start us off, to motivate us to change. After that it never hurts the other person, the person you are divorcing. It ONLY hurts ourselves and, worst still, our children. In the early day so my divorce my Former (I like that more than ex. Still working on finding a really good word) was horrible to me. I would get text after text, several a minute, just tearing me to pieces, threatening different things, accusing me of horrible things, attacking who I was at the very core. They hurt. And eventually I had to tell him to stop texting me all together and go through our lawyers till he got himself under control. But I never, not once, emailed back angry. You can’t squeeze something out of someone that isn’t there. And I’m not angry. I’m not resentful. I had a LOT of things I was angry about in our marriage, that’s why it ended. But I was not willing to be that person who would respond nastily to nasty texts, or calls and emails, I got them all! I would not be that person for 2 reasons. One, if I am hateful then hate lives in ME and I don’t have a place for that in my life. That would make ME angry and a victim and nasty. And I am none of those things. But also it would hurt my children. There were more days than I can count when I would be solid for them, keep to our routines as much as I could in a move, be optimistic, be loving, but most of all be solid for them. And then after they were asleep I’d curl up in a ball and sob until I was almost sick from it. But I never was nasty about their father. And hear this…you may think they don’t hear your phone conversations, or pick up on your toxic anger, but they do. If it’s in you, they feel it. Kids are mostly psychic. They hear our words, but what they really pick up is our body language, our energy, our unspoken reality. So don’t kid yourself that you can be nasty and angry toward your spouse and they don’t know. Even though I was being portrayed badly to my own kids by my Former, I had to sometimes gently set the record straight, but I never blamed things on him. Even things that were totally his fault. Because my goal was not to be right. My goal was not to win. My goal was to return to being joyful. My goal was to stop suffering in an unhealthy marriage. My goal was to show my children what a happy self sufficient woman looked like. Don’t get me wrong, I made mistakes and have things I regret. Of course. And most of all I wish the divorce could have not happened at all. But since it did have to happen, I always kept my North star in sight and my north star was joy. Health, self love, joy and a good example for my kids, every decision I made in that time when I felt like I was being tossed around helplessly by waves in a storm, every decision, every word I spoke, was to try and get a hold onto health, joy, self love. Anything that took me farther away from that I let wash by me in the storm.
Divorce was a heart breaking concept to me. I know it hurt my children, at least in the short run. Terribly. And it broke my heart. My parents were married for 52 years until my mother recently died. My friends and siblings are married, most of them. I never wanted or expected it. And it broke my heart. But what I realized is, if we are going to divorce, let’s do it right. Don’t cheat first. Don’t blame everything on the other spouse. Don’t ever ever put your children in the middle. Your feelings are secondary. Theirs are primary. Be there for them even if it takes every ounce of self control. But above all this, try to divorce with love. There were times my Former hated me, he told me in no uncertain terms. There were times I was so angry at him I could barely breathe, but I always came from a place of love. Because that’s the most loving thing I could do for myself. It was selfish. Hatred feels awful. Hatred is sickness. No matter what, I come from love and I gave that to my kids too, the ability to love them and to love my Former no matter what. It doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, it did. It was hard. It felt like it might kill me some nights. But I wanted my kids to see two people who still loved their children, and two people who could change the shape of a family without destroying it. It doesn’t take 2 to do this tango. Only one. If you are sent anger, you don’t have to react with anger. You can react with compassion that the other person is suffering. And you can let it go and remain in a place of love. It’s really all about self love. When you are loving to yourself, you are loving to others without effort. Now this doesn’t mean I took any crap. There were times I would not communicate with him, and there were times he couldn’t come over at all for a while, we had to put up some boundaries and let things settle down. But they did. And the damage was so much less because if one person holds a space of love for someone in anger and blame and suffering, there is a much easier path to healing when the other person shifts.
Some people misunderstood me and my actions. Some still do. People thought I should be pissed. If I were a strong woman I’d be much more angry and accusatory. I was just sad. Because anger is just a cover up for hurt. And I wasn’t angry, I was hurt. I was hurt and sad and grieving the loss of my marriage, the loss of an intact family for my kids. But I wasn’t angry. I could have screamed and accused. But for what purpose? It’s easier and less painful than feeling the devastating grief. But it won’t heal you. You’ll have to feel the grief in the end anyway if you want to truly heal and move on. So I started there, at the grief. But not at anger. I grieved mostly on my own, with family and friends, and occasionally, in intentional ways, with my kids so they could see that I was also going through this process, I was sad too, which is appropriate! But that I was also ok. And they would be too. So I guess my point is, let’s try and divorce with love. We are just changing the shape of a relationship and it is so hard and so painful, but it can be done with love. Even if just one person does it with love it is worlds different, especially for children involved. Start with self love and go from there. In divorce and in anything in life. If you start with self love, the next step is always love toward others. And you can never go wrong from there.
When I was in my 20s and 30s I traveled a lot. I’d work for a while, save up money, and spend it on my true love – travel. I have been to England, Scotland, Ireland, France (lived there), Germany, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Greece, Turkey, Senegal, China, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. And often on these trips I would see a certain type of woman and feel such longing to be like her. In my early 20s I didn’t have much access to my own higher wisdom, I hadn’t learned how to tap into that yet, or even how to understand my own psychology. But it would happen over and over. She might be traveling alone, she might be with someone else, or a group. What was it about her that I craved? I remember thinking about this on a trip to Spain and suddenly realizing that I knew what it was she had that I didn’t….she was present. She was centered. She was ok with herself. I didn’t have that. And so, after a series of life blowouts, I ended up living alone in Santa Fe, knowing not a soul, starting school for Acupuncture and Chinese Herbology, and starting a different kind of travel. I traveled within. This is by far the most exciting, exhausting and terrifying kind of travel there is. Ok I have never actually summited Mt. Everest, but I’m pretty sure some of the dark nights of my soul that first year in Santa Fe were as terrifying and challenging as getting to that peak. Inner travel means going inside ourselves and is usually best done with a guide (psychologist, guru, healer, pastor – but make sure they have done THEIR internal journeys first. There is nothing more damaging than taking an unhealthy guide on your inner journey. That can really get you lost and hurt). Inner travel means going back in time to get in touch with the child you once were, the teen, the young adult, and very carefully and lovingly unwrapping the hurts and fears that you packed away decades ago, hoping they would one day disappear. Inner travel takes you back to your childhood home, your childhood relationships, your friends, your school, your unmet needs (every person has some) and your wrong beliefs (every person gets taught a few of these too). Inner travel is silent, it is unseen and ultimately it is a solo journey. And maybe the hardest part is that it isn’t interesting to anyone else. If I sit down with a group of people and tell them how my friend and I picked up a hitchhiker in Turkey and in return he hosted us in his tiny village for the weekend, introduced us to the mayor, fed us local food and let us sleep in a room covered wall to wall in gorgeous Persian rugs (that actually happened), that story gets a great response. But no one typically knows you are doing an inner journey. And not only are most people not interested, they will often even make fun of you or insult you for doing it. “Just get over it” or “Move on” are popular reactions. But when we journey inside, it’s a gorgeous, amazing journey because as adults we have the power to heal those old wounds, to have realizations about why we are angry at men or why we eat 4 pounds of chocolate before bed every night or why we do the things we do. And we can heal our own selves. What I realized doing my inner travels, venturing far and wide to places I had never been, was that I understood what those women had. The women I would see traveling. They had inner peace. They had confidence. They knew they had a right to be. So the one journey that was the most eye opening, the most exciting and certainly the most life changing took place almost entirely in my little adobe house in Santa Fe. And it’s a trip I’ve been on ever since. 20 years later I am still that intrepid explorer. Archaeologist. Treasure hunter. Now I am that woman I saw with longing. I am that woman who is happy in her skin. Who knows who she is. Who knows her place in the world. And it turns out she’s a wonderful travel companion. I never know where my next journey will take me. This past year it has taken me to explore the deep caverns of grief and loss. Other times I am soaring high visiting love and children and inspiration. But wherever this journey takes me, I have long ago learned that the inner travel might not always be a walk on the beach, but it will always be a trip you remember!
BlissLoveFun 