After a midlife divorce, it is easy to just sort of “check out” of life.  That’s normal for a while.  You have to take the time you need to grieve and sometimes you need to hibernate a bit before you feel comfortable walking around on the planet again. But when you have spent the time necessary to get yourself grounded and at least doing the basics of every day life, you need to start rediscovering your “joie de vivre” (joy of life) as the French call it.

No matter what we face in our days on this earth, we have to be fully present in both the good and the bad.  Adair Lara in her book Normal is Just a Setting on the Dryer – and other lessons from the real, real world says it simply:  “You must be present to win.”  We need to experience and appreciate our actual walking around, breathing, living every day life no matter what is happening on a particular day.  To do that we must, as the Adair’s book encourages us, be fully in the here and now.

If we think life is over after our divorce, life will be over in a way.  If we think we will always have a second-rate life, we probably will.  If we think we will never be really happy again, we probably won’t ever find the joy we were made for. It’s easy for me to say these things now from where I am in my life … 14 years past my divorce.  But in the middle of those early days, I personally felt hopeless and unbelievably sad and depressed and worried that my life would never be very good again.  I want to shorten that distressing time for you.  Get out of that mind set as soon as you can.

Choose joy and laughter and appreciation of this crazy, turbulent, unruly experience of life itself.  I have dealt with literally thousands of women who have been where you are and have rediscovered that it truly is “wonderful to be alive!”  And they are living that out more boldly than ever.  You can, too.  And the sooner you get started again, the better; because it all goes by way too fast! Remember, this is a process.  Life is a journey every day.  And we will never win or be happy if we don’t fully participate.  So, as soon as you can, get back to life … full, wild, unpredictable life in all its ever-changing glory!

“It is a wonderful thing to be alive!”  Ecclesiastes 11:7  (The Living Bible)