When I asked Mardell to share some background information, she talked of going from one abusive marriage to another. She was married for the first time at forty. That marriage lasted just two years and two years after her divorce, Mardell married again, thinking she was turning her life around. That marriage rapidly declined into domestic violence, leaving Mardell with a spinal injury and the clear knowledge she had to get out. At that point, she had no where to go, no support network and no vision for the future. Then, life threw two curve balls at her but not in a bad way. They were positives, they helped her turned her life around. Here’s Mardell:
I walked into the bank one day and in came this woman who I hadn’t seen since the dog park a year earlier. She stopped me and said,
“How are things going?”
I said,
“Well, not really good. I think I’m going to be living in a shack on a creek somewhere in the mountains.”
She said,
“I don’t think so. I’m going to do some research and find a good lawyer for you because he can’t just take everything from you and leave you on the streets.”
That was a big turning point because she did find me a lawyer. He was a twenty-five year veteran who charged me hardly anything and went to bat for me. I ended up keeping the house, I got a vehicle and I got some money. She was a pivotal point because she stood up for me in that very minute in that bank and said,
“This isn’t going to happen to you.”
She could have walked away and chosen not to deal with this, like most people do when there’s domestic violence but she didn’t. That was unbelievable for me because I come from a family where nobody helps you out. That handful of caring was more than I had ever experienced, which was why I had picked the men I did.
After that, I started to think about what I could do about my leg. I couldn’t use my right leg because of the spinal injury my husband had caused. The doctors had told me there was nothing they could do. The nerve was damaged and they couldn’t fix it. But I kept thinking about it. Then one morning, I woke up and the words,
“Colonics, colonics, colonics,” came to my head.
I went to the phone and called three places. One answered and I said,
“I need to see you right away,”
She saw me within two hours, I had a colonic and things started to turnaround. By the third colonic, the feeling was returning to my leg. The pressure was coming off my nerve and I was starting to feel better. I felt like life was coming back to me. By about the seventeenth colonic, my ear had drained, my body was open.
I had greatly diminished pain in my body and the same voice came to me and said,
“You need to do this for others. Now you need to pass it on.”
It was a very clear message that I was being guided. If I hadn’t of had that injury, I wouldn’t have sought out colonics. This was a dynamic shift in my life.
That was about six years ago and today, Mardell has a successful colon hydrotherapy business – more on that in the next post. The voice Mardell heard was her inner voice, a voice she’d heard before but had mostly dismissed. This time it was too loud and clear to be ignored. It was there turning her life around. She’ll be talking more about that too.
The part of this story that keeps repeating itself in my head, is the act of kindness by a relative stranger. As Mardell says, this lady didn’t have to do anything and yet in reaching out, she showed Mardell more support than she’d ever had and she was instrumental in changing Mardell’s life, That in turn changed the life of a child.
When you’re the giver of an act such as this, you may never know it’s impact – could be small, could be huge but that’s not the reason to do it. The reason is simply to help a fellow person because you can. Don’t you always feel good when you’ve helped someone, especially if it was not expected?
It’s not always easy being the recipient of an act of kindness – sometimes we feel embarrassed, sometimes we feel vulnerable because we think needing help is a sign of weakness. Other times we don’t ask for help for fear that it will obligate us to return the favor.
However, as one of my other interviewees, Melanie said, asking for help is an important skill to learn after divorce and practicing will make your life richer.
Did someone help you at a pivotal moment during your divorce?
Photo Credit: heathbrandon at Flickr