During and after our divorce, we all have a strong desire to protect our children and ensure they are safe and sound. There are well-known strategies for achieving that goal that most of us know but what it all comes down to is the question: Do you love your kids more than you hate your ex? If hate is too strong a word, then replace it with your primary emotion as it pertains to your ex…resentment, anger, bitterness, blame and so on.
If we cannot get along with our ex in some sort of civil fashion we suffer but so do the kids. If we harbor ill feelings towards our ex it will naturally affect how we deal with one another. Being angry causes us to want to make our former partner’s miserable in some way and there are all sorts of means to achieve that end. We can make custody arrangements difficult, we can rail against our ex in front of the kids, we can use the kids as messengers because we refuse to communicate directly with our ex, we can drag our ex into court for any little infraction, we can be emotionally reactive, we can throw blame around, we can share information about our ex and their life that has no place in our children’s world,we can remain bitter and angry…all of which has a direct impact on our children.
If you notice, all of the above behaviors stem from the fact that we have not let go of the pain of our divorce and remain stuck in negative emotions. All of these negative emotions serve as a role model for our children. Is that the message and behavior you want to impart to them? I doubt it.
Recently, I sent my two children, ages 20 and 16, an apology for anything that I might have done when I was going through a highly emotional stage right after my separation. I want to share with you the following as it is so powerful:
Dear Kids:
Sometimes when we learn from our experiences we need to go back and clean up any mess we may have made. There were many things that i did in the past 5 years that were not in the best interests of you kids as far as the relationship between me and your Dad goes. I shared too much information that was not for your ears and made too many decisions from a place of hurt and resentment. For that I am sorry. I was emotionally reactive all too often and let my emotions take over my brain.
I have learned a great deal and am striving to be a better person. I have expressed to Dad that we must always do what’s best for you guys no matter how we feel. I just wanted you to know that.
Love, Mom
Here are their responses:
From my 20 year old son:
We are all have our regrets, but I think what you and Dad have done together for me and Sylvie is pretty amazing. Most people would be pretty astonished at how you two have worked together to make our lives better, and I thank you and love you for that. One love mon
From my daughter:
I read your letter, do not worry about anything i love you and i know you love me and that’s all that matters.
Put aside your hurt, pain and resentment so you can be free of that heavy burden. Do what you can to accomplish this goal because it is how you choose to handle this divorce that will the greatest impact on your kids and their future.
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”
This is a quote from ‘Our Town’, a famous play by Thornton Wilder. I saw a revival recently and remembered how I last enjoyed the play when I was 12 years old because my big brother was in his high school adaptation.
The line above is spoken by the character Emily after her death. She has returned to the after-world after a visit to earth on a typical day when she was 12 years old. She relived that day, albeit invisible, and was completely overwhelmed by the simple beauty of everyday moments of life. She stands in the kitchen watching her Mother make breakfast and hurry her kids off to school and begs her Mother to, ” just take a moment and look at me Ma, really look at me.” She notices how we human beings do not seem to appreciate the sheer wonder and beauty of life. Now that she is dead, she sees how much she missed.
The funny thing is that what I thought I remembered wasn’t even in the play> I thought there was a scene where Emily felt the warmth of the sun and a cool breeze on her face and marveled at the pleasure of those sensations. Perhaps that was my interpretation of the scene in the kitchen. No matter. It all points to the same thing: we simply do not appreciate what we have. We have lost the wonder that we had as children.
Of course we aren’t kids anymore. Life has handed us all sorts of challenges and trauma that have had their effect upon us. We know that life isn’t all a bowl of cherries. But have we allowed our life experiences to rob of us all that life is and all that life has gifted us? Have we lost our capacity for gratitude?
I was walking the dogs yesterday on a glorious spring day with the the trees in full bloom and a crystal clear sky. I got it. I said a little thank you for the moment. Took the time to appreciate the day day’s offering and was grateful.
I was very impressed with President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night when he attempted to admonish both Democrats and Republicans on their abysmal record of getting anything accomplished for the American people due to bi-partisan pettiness. Our representatives in Congress are more concerned with being right than with working together for the American people. They are more concerned with re-election than they are with taking action. Their egos are all too often larger than their hearts.
I watched some very smug and arrogant expressions on the faces of the opposing party last night as the President spoke about putting aside personal vendettas and self-interests in favor of coming together for the benefit of the country. It reminds me of two people in a bad marriage who cannot get beyond their own egos and defensiveness to actually look at what might be at stake, what they might lose. Both parties are at fault. Neither is absolved of responsibility.
I suppose it is indigenous to politics. But as the President pointed out, and to which I wholly concur, now is not a time for politics as usual. There are incredible issues that must be addressed if we are to survive on this planet. It isn’t only limited to the economy or health care reform. It is about how globalization has leveled the playing field so that more and more people with new found middle class status demand more things that are depleting our natural resources as well as endangering our survival. It is time to set aside the small mindedness that has run politics.
Why did I marry my Father? Why do I over-react when my spouse does certain things? Why do I make the same mistakes over and over again? Try this explanation out…
What if we married the person, possibly on a sub-conscious level, who would lead us to clean up all the adverse emotional baggage we have been carrying around all of our lives? What if it takes this divorce to allow us to finally heal ourselves? What if this divorce is the means to letting go of the psycho-babble that has kept us from being the person we were meant to be?
Let’s say that you married someone who resembles your Father or Mother on an emotional and psychological basis. All the old stuff you went through in your childhood gets repeated and reactivated. Say your Dad was overly negative. Now you are extremely sensitive to anything that smacks of criticism and of course your ex was critical of you. Even when they weren’t being overtly critical, your buttons got pushed anyway. Here’s what might be happening: As kids, we make our parent’s behavior mean something negative about us. If your Dad was negative, it wasn’t about him simply being a negative person. It was about you not being good enough. There’s the emotional baggage: not being good enough. So we marry someone who will reinforce that belief of not being good enough. When we don’t feel good enough, we over react emotionally and we do it over and over again.
That emotional baggage should have been attended to long ago but most of us aren’t even aware of it. Our divorce can reveal the stuff we’ve been carrying around for far too long and we now can clean it up once and for all. Divorce can and should move us to heal all the old emotional baggage that has stopped us from being the person we were meant to be. Could it be that we chose our spouse in order to finally do that healing? Could it be that once we have taken the time and made the effort to heal we will finally live a happy life.
As a Divorce Recovery Coach, all too often I hear tales of infidelity. More often than not, the spouse who has been betrayed makes it mean all sorts of terrible things about themselves. Their partner cheats and it becomes all about what is wrong with the betrayed partner: I obviously was not good enough, I am not lovable, he/she doesn’t really love me, I’m unworthy, I’m not attractive enough, I’m stupid…on and on and on. The fact is someone cheated and the betrayed makes up all kinds of meanings about that fact.
No one knows what goes on inside someone else’s home. But what comes up for me in this instance of the Tiger woods episode is Elin Woods. On the surface here is a gorgeous, young woman who is the Mother of his children. He obviously wasn’t looking for a younger, prettier model as Elin is just that. Tiger’s words alone offer a glimpse into the crux of the matter: I have transgressed. It would appear that Tiger has some big-time issues on sexual activity and loyalty. He has to examine himself deeply and come to understand himself better.
As I said, we don’t know what goes on in their relationship. A relationship is two peopole and both have to claim responsibility for their part. But I hope that Elin is not beating herself up too much by creating all sorts of meanings about herself because her husband cheated. His cheating is his issue. Their relationship is their issue.
I have clients whose mates have cheated on them and they end up feeling like a failure, a reject, ugly, stupid…you name it. In so many of these cases, if you peal back the layers of the onions, the cheating is less about the betrayed than the betrayer and the relationship. Tiger’s cheating does not mean that Elin is a reject or a failure. It means that Tiger cheated. Sometimes a table is table and nothing more. Why he cheated is another issue and one that the two of them need to work out obviously.
I say this in the hopes that if you too have experienced a philandering spouse, watch that you don’t make it mean too much about yourself. Separate out the facts from the meanings you create about the facts. How you feel today, when the pain is fresh, is not how you will feel in the future.
Watching the memorial service for 9/11 this morning, I listened to a young choir sing Mariah Carey’s song, Hero. The line that resonated for me was, ” You will come to learn the truth that the hero lies in you.”
To have survived the loss of a loved one who was snatched from them so suddenly and violently is hard for me to wrap my mind around. Yet, the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands and children of the dead did just that. So many of them used the tragedy of 9/11 to advocate for justice for their loved ones as well as laws and initiatives to protect us in the future. They turned their individual stories of tragedy into ones of redemption. They replaced their status as victims to that of heroes.
Consider the number of widows and widowers who had to find a way to survive, let go of the past and move on with their lives. So many of these men and women had children to raise and they had to find a way to move forward no matter their pain. Somehow they had to access the inner strength and resolve to continue. They did.
I remember a powerful concept to which I was introduced to when I was doing additional training in divorce coaching. Turn your divorce story around. Initially, our divorce story is painful, not to mention depressing. It is filled with loss, pain, resentment, regret and blame. In the telling of it, we fall into sadness and all too often, anger. Many of us are victims. We go through a grieving period and if we put forth the effort, we can begin to see that our divorce story needs to be changed. We need to go from being the victim of our story to the hero/heroine of that story.
How? After time, we will begin to see the gifts, life lessons and deep wisdom that our divorce has handed us. We use these lessons and wisdom to transform ourselves, to let go of old emotional baggage, to grow and evolve as a human being and thereby to craft new lives that offer us happiness, meaning and fulfillment. We learn to use our divorce as a catalyst for something better for ourselves.
We take a look at that old divorce story and rewrite it. Instead of being a victim, we are the hero that survived, overcame challenges, let go of old demons, perhaps found a new career or job, managed to raise children in a safe and secure environment, learned to let go of bitterness, regained hope and optimism for life….on and on and on. We transform that divorce story from one of victim-hood to one of heroism.
So how can you begin to rewrite your own divorce story?
I know from personal experience that one doesn’t just let go of the past one day and everything is hunky-dory forever. Ah were it so! Divorce Recovery like any other discipline is an on-going process. Even the best of us have a blip on the screen of life every now and then. That nasty little gremlin, our mind chatter, rears its ugly head from time to time and needs taming.
The all-important thing is being aware of that mind chatter when it first starts so that we don’t allow it to take over. So as much as I know on a very deep level that the only person that I can control or change in this life is myself, every once in a while I fall back into being disappointed or resentful over something my ex says or does. We have kids so we are tied together for the rest of our lives.
The good thing is that I have become much more conscious of my backsliding and can more often than not catch myself…albeit not always. Always is a long, long time and a very high expectation that in my book is unrealistic and unenforceable. I take it a day at a time. Every backslide is yet another lesson for me in which to access the wisdom I have and then apply it towards my future.
So all of this has led me to create a free tele-seminar on Acceptance which is the cornerstone of divorce recovery, letting go and moving on after your divorce. I invite you to join me on Wednesday, September 16th at 9pm est for look at the most important step one can take in our quest to take back our lives after divorce…acceptance.
I saw a play last week in NYC entitled, Next to Normal.  The story is about a woman who is bi-polar.  Her disease was set off by  the death of her 8 month old son. She was unable to accept his passing to the point that he actually was alive for her.  She saw and communicated with an 18 year old son who was not there.  She created her own reality that was a fantasy.  Ultimately it drove her mad.
Her psychiatrist made a comment that resonated for me:  If we cannot accept a loss, then we will live in the fear of that loss with dire consequences.  In the play, those consequences are of course taken to the extreme of severe mental illness and attempted suicide, but the point was clear:  non-acceptance of a loss and  the new reality that comes about as a result of that loss will cripple you and leave you unable to live your life.
It resonated for me because I see it everyday with people  who can’t accept the cold, hard fact that their marriage has ended and their reality has shifted.  They my be in denial or they simply cannot bring themselves to admit that their life has  dramatically changed forever. In the initial grieving period that follows a loss in life, this is a perfectly normal reaction.  The grieving period us marked by denial, depression, confusion and anger.  The problem arises when the grieving period does not end.
People who continue to resist reality, who cannot accept their new reality and can’t surrender to what is (versus what they think should be) Â remove themselves from life n all that life has to offer. Not only that, they carry the heavy burden of all the negative emotions that accompany the grieving period which leaves them unable to experience happiness or fulfillment.
That is the crux of divorce recovery: the acceptance of a new reality. Â That is what letting go means. Â One door closes but another one can open if you allow it. Â There are new possibilities available but only if you can accept the ending of what your life was. Â For life to go on, to be able to experience all of the opportunities that a new life has to offer, you must be in full acceptance of your new life. Â You cannot have a beginning without an ending.
I attend a good deal of live theater in New York City. I believe in taking advantage of this incredible City that is at my fingertips and the theater in NYC is one of passions. As in life, some plays are phenomenal and some not so great. A few nights ago I saw a not so great play entitled Happiness BUT it did give me something to think about and a tool to utilize on those days that I am feeling not so great.
The Perfect Moment. The concept presented in the play was this: 10 or so people are trapped in a subway car, all of them suddenly made aware of the fact that they have died. The conductor informs them that they must come up with a Perfect Moment from their lives and if they do so, eternity can be spent in that perfect moment. Oh if that were actually true!
So slowly but surely, each of them arrives at their perfect moment. For an older woman, it is a moment from the 1940′s when she was dancing with a soldier at a USO dance and he asked her to be his girl. For a doorman, it was when his Dad took him to the 1954 playoff game where he saw Willie Mays make a ground-shaking catch. For a young Hispanic bicycle delivery man it was when he dressed up as the tooth fairy and gave his daughter her 50 cents. For a young woman who spent her life in Manhattan selling perfume at Bloomingdales and living in a make believe world of the rich, it was a night on the beach in Brooklyn with her sweetheart. And so on.
I give my clients undergoing divorce a ‘time-out’ exercise that allows them to bypass a negative emotional reaction. They sit quietly and spend a minute or so taking deep, cleansing breaths to slow down their heart rate and thus calm themselves. In the past, I have asked them to then visualize a time when they were joyful or at peace. Now I plan on using the Perfect Moment.
Here a few of my Perfect Moments:
- playing in the woods with my gang of neighborhood friends when I was a kid
- Sitting  at a dinner table with my dearest friends for my 50th birthday
- Lying in bed with my teenage daughter and just talking about her life
- Falling asleep with my children when they were young, cuddled up to me in my bed
- Awakening from a deep sleep and seeing my two year old son, standing with his blanky, staring intno my eyes.
- Hiking in the rain-forest
- Sitting on my Dad’s lap
- Immediately after my wedding ceremony when my ex and I sat alone together for a half an hour to ponder the wonder of being married..
- Lying with a sleeping infant on my chest.
- Talking on the phone late at night with my first boyfriend
There are so many of those perfect moments in our lives but we forget about them all too soon. Its the muck of life that seems to be on our minds most of the time. We have to remember to remember the perfect moments in our lives, especially when life is not treating us so good. These are gifts we can give ourselves to bring a smile to our face and realize that life is indeed good.
In divorce recovery as well as any other major loss in life, acceptance is the most important step we must take. By acceptance I mean the acceptance of your reality as it exists for you right now: what is and not what we think should or could be. Acceptance means being grounded in reality with the release of blame, resentment and regret. The ability to let go of those negative emotions is true acceptance and gives you the freedom to move forward.
A couple of recent occurences in my life have reinforced this concept. I recently received an e-mail from a cousin of mine who has been terribly sick with cancer this past year. Really sick, near death far too many times. She had a bone marrow transplant. This is a woman who also experienced divorce when her two kids were young and has aised her chlldren on her own.
For those of you having trouble accepting your reality, I want to share this with you:
“Hi Shelley-
How are you doing? How are the kids?
I am recovering – still. Unfortunately, I have Graft vs. Host disease. The disease basically means that the transplant is not working right now. The host (me) and the donor (graft) immune systems are battling and hopefully my donor’s immune system will win. I am also suffering from severe osteoporosis. I have been left with a deformed spine, 7 fractured vertebrae which has led to quite a bit of nausea. Because my torso is now deformed to accommodate my new structure, I have trouble processing and digesting food. Let’s see, I have lost a lot of my sense and smell, I have an inoperable hernia. It is inoperable because there is a high risk for infection, so no surgery is allowed. I wear a spine brace and I am in a lot of pain. My physical demeanor is that of an elderly person. (Note: she is only in her early 50′s)
BUT on the flip side I am above ground and I do appreciate life. I have a big support system. I have good medical care and my friends and family are the best. I just want to get on with my life and stop being a patient.
My girls have been awesome through my whole ordeal, their compassionate character makes me proud. My best friend and caregiver is without a doubt, an angel sent from heaven. We live together and he is my shadow. He has been caring for me physically and emotionally and I am very grateful. Of course, without my mother’s help, I wouldn’t be here. So, there are many things to be grateful for, it is just hard to be me right now.”
It is simply mind-boggling to me that she can be talking about gratitude given her life situation!! She could be stuck in anger, depression or victmhood but I heard nothing of that in her e-mail. Her life has taken a terrible turn and she has accepted her fate. Of course, she has depession…who wouldnt given the cicumstances. Yet I hear someone who has acknowledged her reality and who wants to live the rest of her days with love, compassion and gratitude for what she does have… or in her own words, ” I am above the ground.”
Next up, Melissa Stockwell. I saw an interview on television with this Iraqi vet who lost a leg in the war. She has gone on to compete in the para-olympics in Bejing where she set a recod in swimming. Despite the challenges of adjusting to life with one leg, she has taken on one physical challenge after another, proving again and again that she can still be a formidable athlete.
And she does not waste time with regrets or dwelling on the past.She was very clear in the interview I saw that there was no way she would waste a moment in blame or resetnment or a yearning for what was. She let it go.
“When I signed up, I knew I was taking a chance,” she said. “I’m proud of how I lost my leg. I was proud to wear the uniform. IÂ still am. I’ve done more with one leg than I ever did with two,” she said. “I have bigger dreams than I ever would have had with two legs. I don’t know if things are meant to happen, but I’m very happy.”
These two women humble me. They make me think about all that I have to be grateful for and how my attitude will dicate the quality of my life.
