Experience, Strength and Hope
Kathleen Kiley, Editor
As a professional journalist, the last thing I thought I’d blog about was troubled relationships … that is until I confronted my own.
Unlike other challenging moments in life, this was a life-altering event. There’s a saying … the possibility of the “crumbling of finance and romance can cause your head to explode.” I felt like Linda Blair in the Exorcist when her head swiveled around uncontrollably. I didn’t know the forces that took hold of me — rage, sadness, hopelessness — all of which occurred with the flick of a switch.
A divorce or even reconciliation is heart wrenching and soul searching.
No matter who initiates the discussion, it can be a hard road. I felt as if a bomb was dropped and I was the only pathetic person left in this isolated world.
But then I started to reach out.
As I reached out to others, my life started to turn around. I was suffocating under blanket of darkness. My friends who listened helped me through these most challenging times. They reminded me there are no quick fixes in life. However, they believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. I knew I could trust them and that gave me hope I could trust myself. I started to believe in myself. I too, could have a better life.
I began to take action. At first I was tentative, but then with more confidence.
I blog to reach out to others who are going down this path — one of indecision, uncertainty and strange humor. Please join me. Let’s share our strength, hope and experience with each other. Together, we will not only survive, but thrive.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
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Lovely beginning! Hope. I’m going to send this to a woman I know who has written a book about happiness after divorce By the way, I’m looking into blogging, too…about my upcoming roadtrip in my Roadtrek Aug 16th. I’m recreating Travels with Charley and calling it Travels with Steinbeck. At the moment I’m a little bit overwhelmed about the whole blogging business…Yours looks really good. Congratulations.
Hello Katherine, thanks. I love hope, too. God, where would we be without it?
It’s encouraging to hear these words. I find myself alone like I haven’t been in a long while because most of the friends in the relationship belonged to the other side! How did that happen I ask myself. It isn’t so much fun to not know how to figure this out either. Thanks for the strength and hope!
Kristina, that is a good point. Being alone for the first time is a tough one and you have to rewire your system entirely. So what has helped me is planning BIG for the future. I hired a career coach and she has me working on a vision chart, and one of the many things in my plan is mountain climbing. God lord, I can still feel alone even when I am with a so-called partner. So if I can feel good about myself, then that is a good thing as Martha would say. What do you think?
I am happy for your new assignment and wish you much luck and enjoyment in developing the blog. It’s an important topic… divorce, separation, and relationship estrangements…because this stage can alternate with the other side of marriage, union, and togetherness at periodic intervals in a life. It’s similar to elements happening in the natural world… the variations of weather, climate, clouds, and sun when at first the experiences are beautiful, sunny, breezy, and temperate, and then comes a patch of darkness, sleet, hail, hurricanes, and freezing cold with power outages and delays. I am not in the divorce or separation stage–in fact, I am happily in a resonant relationship–but have been there in the past
Dear Queen of Cups –
Thank you for bringing up that marriage or a union has periodic intervals in a life, similar to elements happening in the natural world … including patches of darkness, sleet, hail, hurricanes, etc. We get hooked on feeling great and when we don’t we look for other distractions rather than dealing with the darkness, which can indeed be overwhelming. It’s no wonder we run as fast as we can … at least I did. Pema Chödrön, a wonderful Tibetan Buddhist, talks about inviting the darkness or demons in for tea. Following a second divorce, Chödrön began to study buddhism and that is how she began to recover. So thank you for reminding us on the duality of marriage, union and life.
The painful thing about “divorce” is that friends sometimes feel helpless and torn apart by it too. When you come to feel attached to both parties it can be a wee bit sticky. Like, how does a friend respond when both divorcee’s are calling her to listen to bitter attacks on the other? How do you tell your divorcee friend that there is too much drama and you have to extricate yourself (to save yourself from feeling like you have just entered the verbal boxing ring) without risking loosing that freindship? Where do you draw the line on what is good for you and what your friend is demanding of you? If one of the divorcees is an obnoxious individual it is easy to take a side and move on with the divorcee you resonate with, but, when you love them both… wellll that’s hard.
Dear Martha,
Being in the middle is hard and I can only tell you what I have done in the midst of my break. I have stopped all communication so I don’t get in the ring with the ex– I like that. I also try very, very hard, not to spew on my friends. When it was all so new and painful, of course, I wanted people to listen to my side of the two-sided story. After a while I realized that if I was ever going to get better, I would have to let go of the anger and stop talking about this person and for the most part, I really have. As to your situation, you might have to say to both, you like or love them a lot and you don’t want to take sides or you can’t listen to attacks against each other. Let me know how it works out.
Kathy
Marriage is like a tapestry that you weave with your partner and your children. It contains experiences and memories, traditions and expectations. Divorce tears the tapestry in two and it is impossible to anticipate where the tapestry will rip and it is impossible to put it back together once it has been severed. I have been divorced for 12 years and I still ache when I think of the impact this had on my children. It is my greatest regret in life – not being able to make it work and the impact it had on my children at the time.
Dear Sue,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. When children are involved, it’s that much harder it seems to feel regret. And that is what I’ve been hearing from those who have had children — it magnifies the regret. I’m no expert, by any means, and I will be interviewing professionals who can provide insight into what you are talking about. But as you said, I don’t know if we entirely erase regret. It’s part of our experience. I want to thank you for a topic I will address and I will interview people who can talk about this. Please keep in touch and let me know of other topics you’d like to see addressed.
Kathy
Dear Sue,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. When children are involved, it’s that much harder it seems to feel regret. And that is what I’ve been hearing from those who have had children — it magnifies the regret. I’m no expert, by any means, and I
“Experience, Strength and Hope”: What a positive-sounding title for the first post of a debut blog dealing with the dark and painful subject of divorce. It simply confirms the fact that Kathy is a luminary force on any path that she sets foot on! Congrats, Kathy!
Hello S.L. — Thank you. I grabbed onto hope — and not to minimize the ordeal of a split or divorce, but I knew I needed to otherwise I’d circle the drain,
which I did for a while. I hope this wi