| Copyright Cathy Walker Meyer 2007 |
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Life is just as it should be. Make the best out of any situation in which you find yourself.
I’m a firm believer that what is happening in the hear and now is what is supposed to be happening. It is
not the thing that happens to me, be it divorce, illness or financial hardship that controls whether I’m
content but how I react to what is happening to me. What determines my level of contentment is how I
respond to what is happening and how accepting I am of it.
In other words struggling against what is real is the thing that keeps us stuck with painful emotions and
unable to move forward after a divorce. We have to perceive our realities accurately, acknowledge what is
happening and not live in the past. Letting go of the dreams and hopes that come along with marriage is
the hardest part of divorce for some people. Living with the reality of being single and starting over is the
only way to heal those painful emotions and to move forward in a productive way with our lives.
If you are having a hard time emotionally, can’t seem to get over the loss of your marriage then there is a
good chance that you are failing to accept reality as it is. Surviving a divorce means working with what you’
ve got, not continually pondering what you had. If you don’t acknowledge the reality of where you
are…single again, it is highly unlikely that you will improve your life circumstances.
For example, lets say you have gone through a divorce you didn’t want. Instead of taking what has
happened to you and building a new life you spend most of your time thinking about your ex, wondering
what he is doing or who he is keeping time with. Maybe you even drive by his house in the middle of the
night. I knew one woman who hacked into her ex husband’s email account and read all emails between him
and his girlfriend. Her ex husband’s new relationship become more important to her than it was to him!
She was living his reality, not her own. She was in his business while her business was falling apart. She
had no life and was not attempting to have a life because she was so obsessed with him and his life. She
could not accept that he was gone and her lack of acceptance kept her stuck in a place of pain and
frustration.
The key to getting past the place of thinking about your ex or grieving the loss of your marriage is self-
discipline. It is hard to fight the urge to spy on an ex or sit and wallow in what you have lost. Staying put,
doing the same old thing is much easier than getting back in the saddle and making a life for yourself. It
takes discipline! It takes the ability to stop yourself from spying and the ability to get up and do something
productive instead of sitting around and wallowing.
When I first divorced, 8 years ago I thought I would be able to wait out the pain. I thought that in time the
pain would go away if I could just wait it out. I froze up emotionally. I took no constructive steps to better
myself nor my life. For nearly 2 years I let life happen to me. I lived in denial of the fact that I was divorced
and would now have to take control and start over. I would have to make decisions, set goals and do the
work needed to make sure I met those goals. The pain was not going to go away on it’s own, I was going to
have to help it go away by distracting myself with life.
The only way to do that is to accept where you are in life, steadfastly refuse to let it define how you live
your life and what you will get out of life in the future and get busy living. It will mean tackling a lot of difficult
challenges but you will overcome the loss and grow stronger in a shorter period of time.
You will Grow Through Adversity!
| Acceptance |
Learning how to grow through adversity