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Loss Of A Marriage Is Painful! Here’s How To Ease The Pain

Change for the most part is dark and scary.  We cling to the familiar like a life raft as we experience unexpected challenges or disappointment.  We find comfort by saying, “Well, I still have this or that.”  Or, “These parts of my life remain the same.”  What if you experience a major loss?  What if your marriage ends and the foundation of your life is swept away in one big wave?

When your life will never be the same,  when familiar is a distant horizon and you’re treading water, try this one emotional shift.  Surrender your old life to the past and base your happiness on what ever island you’re stranded on.  In other words, stop comparing how you are or feel based on life before.  Ask what will give you joy today if today is your only unit of measure?

It sounds like this:  Instead of saying, “What will I do now?” – say, “What will I discover about myself today?”  There will be many moments of sadness and grieving that you need to process and feel.  Shifting focus to joy in the present moment helps alleviate the pain and fear during the toughest times in our lives.

This strategy can inspire positive momentum to help flow through major loss.  Your strengths emerge and new opportunities open up to you like flowers blooming.

Namaste!

 

 

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Three Reasons Your Toxic Break Up Is A Great Thing

Break ups are excruciating.  That’s why there are so many sad country songs about them.   Break ups create insecurities, amplify our critical inner voice and parade our flaws for everyone to see.  Our instinct, or our desperate hope, is to not feel even a drop of pain.  Not feeling any pain is impossible, but we try with distractions, denial or a nice bottle of wine.

Breaking up with a toxic human adds a whole new level of agony because there is no closure, your self-esteem is buried somewhere in the backyard like a body and hope hangs around like second-hand smoke.  I was in the middle of berating myself for feeling sad over someone that hurt me on a daily basis, when I looked at this journey in a different way.  Instead of looking at what I lost – I opened up to how full my life is with or without my ex.  I realized that with my ex out of the house and out of my life, everything felt lighter.  I discovered three reasons my break up is a good thing.  See if these truths help you too.

  1. This is the catalyst to discovering who I really am and being my true self – I have nothing to lose now – my toxic ex already walked out of the door.  The relationship wasn’t based on the real me.

 

  1. My mind is free to focus on accomplishing my dream of publishing a book. (The break-up helped me rediscover why I had that dream) I spent way too much time defending myself in my mind.

 

  1. I am starting fresh – healing what led me to attract a toxic man, asking what I value and learning how to set boundaries.  I put up with and overlooked sooo much abuse and b.s.!

There is no ‘correct’ way to move on from a toxic relationship – the most important thing to remember is giving yourself grace.

 

Namaste!

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One Reason Crying in Public is A Good Thing – Even “Ugly” Crying

Sadness hijacked me, so crying in public was inevitable.  I cried in Starbucks, at the gym and at Barnes & Noble among the books in the relationship section.  How fitting.  My crying jag ended with a great book on toxic relationships and the start of a new friendship.   Society is afraid to show sadness – but that closes us off to the support of other humans.  I say – if you’re going to cry in public then “ugly cry”, honey.

I need to rewind. My soon-to-be ex narcissist walked out after blaming me for his emotional affair with a twenty-four year old girl.  (I mean come on!!)  To say I was hurt, angry and bewildered is an understatement, so I called my friends to sort through my toxic relationship, admittedly ad nauseam.

Talking to friends can be dangerous if they don’t understand what emotional abuse does to a person’s psyche.  This friend told me, “Shame on you for letting him beat you down every day.”  That hurt, but when she added how she was too strong to ever experience that, I lost it.  Of course, this twisted pep talk happened as I walked into Starbucks.  Having reached an emotional saturation point, I wrote for an hour before succumbing to a crying spell.  Embarrassed, I went to the gym to sweat it out.

Now, all of this is important, promise!  As a spiritual person, I believe in signs.  Cosmic signs, angels showing up – what ever you want to call it.  At the gym, I hopped on the elliptical, so I could read the book, The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein.  Gabrielle referenced another book, A Course in Miracles, and I felt an uncontrollable urge to find it.

Tearing up at the gym was my cue to leave.  Barnes & Noble was the logical next stop.  I headed straight for the customer service desk and asked the lady behind the counter where the books on narcissistic abuse and grieving would be.  She escorted me to the section and as she grabbed a book from the shelf, I started to sob.  Exposed in the midst of an ugly cry, I explained how my husband just moved out in an extremely narcissistic fashion and how our toxic relationship had gotten in the way of grieving my mother’s passing two years ago.

The customer service lady nodded her understanding, and mentioned how she knew all too well what I was going through.  She started crying.  There were two other customers in that book section.  Our crying triggered some innate empathy response, and they started crying.  The customer service lady left in the wake of a sniffle, but was immediately followed by another Barnes & Noble employee.  She said, “I hear people are crying over here.  Do you ladies need some tissue?”  Of course, we needed tissue, so she got a box of Kleenex, offered to hug us all and left.

One of the other customers had a small sample of essential oils and, out of kindness, gave it to me.  This started a conversation and the surprise that we knew a mutual friend.  She offered to sit and commiserate with me over coffee, so we made plans to go to lunch that week.

We went to lunch and, what I hope is a long friendship, began.  This heart crushing life change, torturous soul-finding expedition and erosion of my emotional composure has shown me many truths about myself and my life, forcing me to become vulnerable in public.  If you’re crying in public, your life has reached a certain point – listen to it.  If my husband hadn’t left, if I never had that hurtful conversation with my friend and hadn’t  gone to Barnes & Noble  – I would still be ignoring the truth about my life – I’m in a toxic marriage and need to grieve my mother.

 

Namaste!

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