Everyone goes on a journey of some sort after divorce. Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes unintentional. Sometimes it’s a physical journey, often it’s an emotional or spiritual journey. Regardless, you’ll never know where the journey is going to lead until you get ‘there’ and the ‘there’ is what allows us to grow from divorce.
While not having children doesn’t make divorce easier, it can make traveling after divorce much easier. Here’s what my current guest, Lucy had to say:
I really had the time of my life. I was divorced. If I look back when I’m 90 years old, at my life, that was the best time of my life when I was free, cut-free, like ball and chain free.
I just followed my heart and did what I wanted to do and it was great.
Since getting divorced I think what I’ve learned most is just how to think for myself and really take charge of my life, to communicate better. I was taught as I was growing up—not so much taught not to fight with your husband or have conflict, but my family’s not very confrontational and I didn’t really speak up for myself. But now I do and now I just watch out for myself more than I did before.
I spent so many years married and not really realizing that there’s a whole world out there that I could explore it on my own and I could do things on my own. Then when I was divorced, I just forced myself to do things past my comfort zone.
For example, I love Spain and I had traveled there before in college and then with my ex-husband. I just decided to take a program, a summer program, and to go there for the summer for a couple of weeks. It was the summer after I got divorced.
I starting taking trips by myself and I joined this marathon group. I made the greatest friends of my life and was committed to something. Every week I’d meet my friends. I established my own identity that was completely separate from my ex-husband.
I look back and think I was just was so blind. I went from high school to college to marriage.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The Divorce Coach Says
I had a comment from a reader who wanted to know why women talked about ‘discovering themselves’ after divorce. He felt he’d been a loving husband and given his wife everything she wanted.
I don’t know if this is something only women do – I don’t think so because I think many men go through a period of introspection. I think it’s more likely that women talk about it more openly and quite possibly use different activities for their self-discovery.
I do think my reader was trying to understand it from the wrong angle – he was making it his responsibility and taking the blame for his spouse being lost. Based on my own experience, feeling lost has little to do with what your spouse may or may not have done. It has everything to do with the choices you’ve made over time.
The journey is about understanding those choices, accepting the choices and making new choices about how you want to live your life going forward.
What does your journey look like? What’s helping you understand the choices you made in your past? Have you made any choices about your future?
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