Once you are left after a long marriage, an interesting new activity occurs for the first time in your adult life: Finding your own things to do every Saturday and Sunday. It’s jarring to be sure. Those first six months after I was walked out on, I found the panic start to rise around Thursday morning. The workweek was ending and I realized I had forty-eight couple-less hours to fill. My place felt strangely quiet all of the sudden. Even if I put music on. The energy had shifted to me and me alone. What would I do with it now that I did not have to plan any weekend activities for “us?”
Like most women in a couple, I was the “thing” planner.”📆
There was always a play, a street fair, or a cool up and coming band to check out with him. Now, I needed to decide what to check out with myself, for myself.
I didn’t want to travel down any of those old, well-trodden roads. I didn’t want to spend a weekend doing the things we used to do by myself. Taste some weird free sample at the farmer’s market by myself? Not fun. Yeah, I know, I coulda called a female friend, or couple friends, but it all just felt tainted now. Some weekend mornings I actually woke up with a sadness in my bones.
I had to come up with new weekend habits. Untainted activities I could enjoy. Little by little, I figured out how to do that.😃Once I shifted my focus, all types of fun things seemed to keep popping up. I discovered websites that listed events all over my area.
New-agey outdoor fairs, screenings of scary movies in cemeteries of all places. Chocolate tastings! The great thing was, these activities were not only new to me, they were new to my friends as well.
Then the areas I would go to expanded tremendously. Wide open spaces filled with lavender flowers and places to pick fruit and little alleys downtown where they sell all kinds of designer knockoff clothing!
This year began with attending my third Women’s March on Washington and filming it for my documentary! It continued with a group meditation at a Lunar New Year Celebration on a beach at midnight. And I just got back from a three-day-long women’s retreat.
I’m not here to badger you, or to brag about the amazing experiences I’m having. I’m just sharing the fact that I never would have pictured the life I am living now on the day I was left. Or for many months afterward. Hang in there. The world has been waiting for you. Take it’s hand.
Because every road you go down now leads back to new, single, fearless, fabulous YOU!👏
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
We all go through major life transitions when relationships end… Through this website, I will share my thoughts as I walk the path of “New-Self” discovery. It doesn’t matter which side of 50 you are on. The real question is, Are you ready to live life? To forge a Path of Your Own Making (For a change!)? Then stop dwelling over the What-Might-Have-Beens and join me. Share your thoughts here, comment on mine, and let’s do this together!