Everything about your life can change with divorce and for some people it’s an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
My current guest Lois Tarter was over fifty when she divorced and her life now is completely different from her married life. Here’s Lois
I have built a new life for myself. I have remarried. I wrote the book, which was something I’d wanted to do for a long, long time. I moved to New York. I don’t know if you’ve been here, but after living in San Diego and Los Angeles, it’s a whole different world here and I’ve survived.
I’ve negotiated the waters of a new life, and I think relatively successfully.
I didn’t have a grand plan. I jumped into the water and held my breath and hoped that I would swim to the other side. I wasn’t as planful as I think people should be.
I know someone who was thinking about getting divorced. I’m sure she talked to her friends. She was somebody I knew, but not that well. She literally went to law school, got her degree, started practicing and then got a divorce. And I thought, “Wow, talk about planful,” but that’s her M.O. Mine is more— laissez-faire. I just trusted to blind luck and I got lucky.
My son said to me the other day, “You have changed a lot. You’re much more positive than you used to be.” And that seems to be since I got divorced. When you’re going through those periods leading up to the decision to get divorced and the divorce, I think it can be a real downer. It can be a really unpleasant period and since it’s done, I think I’m just a more positive happy person.
The Divorce Coach Says
I think I have a lot in common with Lois. I was almost fifty when my divorce was final. A couple of years before I’d taken severance from my corporate job and I had gone back to school for journalism. I had no idea where that was going to lead. When I started this blog I had no idea where it was headed and it’s still evolving. Years ago that sort of uncertainty would have panicked me. I think that was part of the “happy family facade” – everything was orderly, planned.
Dropping the facade has given me a more relaxed life and I think going through divorce has taught me to accept uncertainty and the opportunities that come with it. The severance did give me a financial cushion and I think I would struggle with the uncertainty without that. Without that I would have been more ‘planful’ as Lois puts it.
At the time of my divorce I was feeling very lost, I didn’t know what I liked, what I wanted or even what would make me happy. I’ve come a long way since then and what I’ve been thinking about lately is accepting that I really do have all the skills I need to do whatever it is I want to do. That makes uncertainty a whole less scary.
How is your life changing? Do you have a master plan? What’s the hardest part about the transition for you?