Yesterday, I introduced you to T and her belief that Divorce isn’t a failure. Today, T shares how her divorce lead her on a journey of discovery to find her spirituality. Here’s how she describes it:
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When my marriage was ending, I discovered that I had invested so much in this false security of marriage and a relationship, thinking that was defining me and that was who I was: I was this person’s wife, I was these two children’s mom and this was my house and this was what I did. This was how I was defining myself and then I got laid off and I was a stay-at-home mom. Then I’m asking my husband to leave.
It was very much a sense of everything being stripped away. I think whenever you get to a point when you feel like you have nothing, you really start to notice the one thing you do have and for me that was my faith.
I had a vision of myself floating in nothingness and standing on my big toe on a rock. I had to look at the rock and I recognized that it was my faith. That led me to study more about my spirituality and my attitudes towards other people and myself.
I grew up Catholic, very much hard core Christian values but I was questioning at an early age. I’m one of those people that have to know the reason behind things. I decided to explore other faiths and other churches and trying them, basically to see, ‘Does this fit me?’ Then I was reading a book and someone told me “Take from the book what feels like truth and leave the rest behind.’ And I thought, ‘Wow. That feels more like me.’ So I can take the tenets from Christianity and Judaism and many different faiths and say I like this, or that doesn’t fit me.
I’m not a organized religion person. I’m more of a spiritual person in that I believe that all of us are divine and I don’t think there is one particular path that leads to God. I think there’s many and so I don’t chide anyone for what they believe and I’d prefer them not try to push it on me.
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I think that possibly divorce brings such a dramatic change in life, that it opens our minds and makes us more receptive to other possibilities. Carol Grever also experienced a Spiritual Awakening during her divorce. I was raised Christian – Church of England – but haven’t belong to a church for many years. I’ve become very disillusioned with organized religions but I haven’t found the answer that works for me yet. Currently, I’m audited a philosophy class on Buddhism – I’m glad I’m auditing it because the readings are hard to understand and I don’t think I would do very well with the assignments. There’s much about Buddhism that I like but I am struggling to understand the concept of ‘not-self.’ I think that ties into what T was saying that we do tend to define ourselves by the roles we assume and when we don’t have those roles, or are asked to describe ourselves in other ways, it’s hard. How would you describe yourself?