When a long-term relationship is ending, life is a maze. It feels like we are surrounded by walls we can’t see over. Stressed about what’s around every future life corner, we stay put.
In the pain, the tears, the grief. Living in The End, is not Living. Soon, we realize that no matter the trepidation, we must move on. We cannot live alone in the maze, frozen.
With a very deep breath, we take that first step. Then the second and the third.
Before we know it, we’ve turned a corner. In doing so, we are motivated to keep moving. Once around the bend, we feel like exploring more. We become confident, leaving our fear in the past.
If you are stuck, don’t criticize yourself. We all go through these phases, even when our hearts haven’t been betrayed. When you find yourself stuck, don’t be your worst critic. These are normal phases. It is Life being Life.
I am speaking to you from my own journey. I used to wake up with a cloudy feeling in my head. Having no idea what to do, I’d watch TV for a while, then do some dishes. The Inner Forward Momentum I’d always taken for granted felt gone.
“What the heck should I be doing today,” I’d ask myself with a stomach filled with panic?
Does this sound like you? If so, don’t get too comfortable with it. Because for some of us, there’s a weird comfort in the panic. This is due to the terror we’d been living in all the years we knew the marriage was over. Ending an unhealthy relationship for mental health is hard. Emotional intimacy stopped. So, when those complicated emotions stopped having a reason to be felt, we suddenly didn’t know what to do or feel. On some deep level, I see now that I created a new menu of feelings that were positive. Rooted in the future and not the chaos of the past.
Slowly, I realized the everyday joys I could gift to myself. The gift of simplicity. Finding the happiness in the little things. Afternoon naps, watching silly comedy films, heck, I even found myself in a Butterfly House of all places! Flying monarchs of every color! Butterflies that were huge and those that were tiny. It was so peaceful and lovely. It took me out of my troubled head in the most beautiful way. I left there thinking, “These are the days worth living.”
Stop thinking the lack of constant conflict isn’t the life you truly deserve.
That’s a silly mind trip to keep us stuck. It’s not real. The butterflies are your new reality, nourishing you. If you choose them to be. Of course, maybe you like bunnies, ponies, or lizards. I’m sure there are places packed with them that you can experience. Release the burden and accept the Gift of Simplicity!
You need to start plowing your life for those Great Experiences you’ve had buried away. Pull them out into the sunlight of your new life, dust them off, and get going! I mean it. Even if you are down on yourself because this new life still doesn’t feel like your “Real” life. It is.
There’s another thing I have a hunch about. For some reason, deep inside, you are still down on yourself.
Even with the new hairdo, new digs, or great solo vacation you just took or are planning. You think you need to hide the “freshman 10, 15, or 30” pounds you may have gained during the Big Transition. Guess what? No one cares. You are beautiful and must stop hiding. You were whole before them.
I know this because I am exactly like you. Even though I am a much happier gal, and I do lots of fun things, I also have been sloughing. I have! I don’t know why, exactly, I just can’t get “on the stick”. So, I’m offering all of us a challenge. As of today, we are all going to take our great “expectations” and turn them into our experiences. I don’t care what method you use, and I will keep you informed of mine.
As you know, Leftat50 is a no-judgment zone.
But it’s also a “no BS-ing ourselves” zone. Got it? Good. Now get going as you respect your own timeline. Let’s all “expect” more from ourselves today, so we stand a bit taller tomorrow. Osteoporosis be damned!
The space between things is referred to as negative space. I don’t believe in negative space. I was very artistic as a young child, and people were amazed at my incredible drawing skills. If I drew a tree with the branches and leaves, they were astounded at the detail and how it looked exactly like the tree. But what none of them knew was that I wasn’t drawing the tree. I was drawing the sky behind the tree. To me, the tree was the negative space. Each of the branches that were blocking out the sky was the negative space. I wasn’t drawing the tree; I was drawing the space between each leaf that was blocking my sky. I was tracing the sky in between each branch.
And so that was how I was able to use “negative space” in a positive way.
Because I saw things that way. And to this day, when I look at something, that is how I see it. I see the space between things and figured my life out from there. Which way should I walk on a trail? I don’t look at the trail. I look ahead on the trail at what is on either side of that trail. What is the space on either side of that trail up ahead? Are there bushes or trees? Could some little creature jump out at me? Or is it a clear path? That is how I decide.
This has served me well. It’s embarrassing to share, maybe it seems quirky, odd, crazy, but I had to let you know. Because I don’t want you to think of your lives as negative space.
I want you to see the positive outline of what this negative space is.
I want you to step through it. I want you to see it as a creative opportunity to do something in a new way by seeing things in a new way. The missing piece of a puzzle is not the missing piece of a puzzle. It’s the 499 other pieces of the puzzle that you’ve already put together. These things are your life. This is how, when you wake up each day, you know somewhere inside you exactly what you should be doing.
We all go through major life transitions when relationships end… Through the Leftat50.com 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! And check out my book, “Restarting Your Life When You Are. No Longer A Wife,” I wrote it just for you!