Take time to appreciate all the lessons you’re learning through your divorce. Those lessons aren’t fun …. they are hard … they involve tears and sobbing, but they teach the most powerful life truths if you let them.
“As a survivor, you are probably much more conscious of your anguish than you are of your morality, insight or initiative.” Steven Wolin, M.D. and Sybil Wolin, Ph.D. in The Resilient Self
As a survivor of midlife divorce, I see now how much I learned in the process. That learning can happen with divorce or with any other life-altering, seemingly catastrophic event. I have embraced the word resilience as a way of describing the result of those challenging educational experiences. But it’s also true that for a while on these journeys to higher learning, we are much more cognizant of our anguish than we are of the positive truths we are gaining. Pain has the potential to teach us our most valuable lessons. I would like to think that pain always teaches, but I don’t think that is the case. In some instances pain destroys. However, the good thing is that we alone have the choice about whether pain destroys or makes us better. Part of my passion for this mission about Midlife Divorce Recovery is to tell each one of you that you can use the pain you experience through this to bring you to new heights of appreciation, achievement, thankfulness, joy and every other positive characteristic you can think of including those mentioned by the Wolins: morality, insight and initiative. Being hurt can make you more determined not to hurt others. Being blindsided by divorce can teach you insight and wisdom. Being put down and stifled by the actions of someone else teaches you to take the initiative to create your own best self regardless of what anyone else is doing. So today, take a piece of paper or use your journal and write down the positive lessons you are learning through this experience of divorce. Notice that you are becoming more of the woman you were created to be, and that means (tears and all), your very best days are yet to come.
“You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Psalm 16:11 (NIV)
