Barb's Blog

The emotional rollercoster for women and divorce can take your breath away.  You can fly from grief to hope to rage to confidence to depression to determination with such force that it makes your stomach flip.  When I was divorcing there were days I could swing through this cycle three or four times before breakfast!

Please know you are not alone, you have not lost your mind, and sometimes like a roller coaster, all you can do is hang on.

And when you do, interesting things start to happen.

1. As you are forced to feel all these emotions, you become very honest with yourself.  And honesty is vital.  It may be the most important asset you have.

2. The purpose of our emotions (as Harold Kushner writes) is to help us feel and participate fully in our lives.  Our culture tends to make us feel there is something wrong with pain, and it must be drugged or denied and avoided at any cost.  But many times the best medicine is a good cry.

3. You can't heal from emotions you don't acknowledge.  Suppressing your emotions can cause you to yell at the checkout person in the grocery store. And if you keep your pain buried deep inside, they can make you very sick.

4. Emotions are powerful teachers.  They force us to look back at our history and look down into our hearts, and they demand we pay attention.  When you do this, you can discover lost pieces of yourself.  Some will be broken, and some will be hiding.  Don't discount them.  Embrace them.  They are treasures and have been waiting patiently for you to reclaim them.

These pieces of yourself may have been silent for years, but they have much to teach you.  They will whisper, "You are a survivor.  You are strong.  You have value. You will no longer be diminished."