“But in spite of setbacks, recurrences and the sense that our sorrow keeps doubling back on itself, there is an end to mourning, to even the seemingly most inconsolable mourning …” Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses
The Depths Of Grief
If you’re living life fully and with love, mourning is always involved. In my book, Radical Recovery, I describe what the grieving process of divorce was like for me:
“Grieving was new to me. I have never lost a parent, a sibling, a child, even a close friend. So, the sick-in-my-heart, sick-to my-stomach, deep sighing kind of pain I was feeling was something I had never experienced.
The oppression covers everything you do and everything you experience with a muffling, gray all-enclosing sadness. Every breath and every move takes effort. You stare at the ceiling at night. As hard as you try to ‘pull yourself out of it,’ you fail.”
Rejection
The grief of divorce seems to me to be even harder than the grief of the death of someone you love because there is also the rejection aspect.
My wasband willing chose to continue in actions that destroyed our relationship as husband and wife, our life we spent 33 years building. He decided his other relationship could not be given up.
New Life After Grieving
I grieved my husband’s affair(s) long and hard. It was an exhausting, desperate journey. But that journey, like it or not, refined me. It finally taught me the lessons of true joy.
My life is as full and complete as ever. After longer than I expected, there eventually came an end to my grieving. And that end brought the bright, fresh light of unexplainable joy.
Even though it might not seem possible from where you are, you will dance again. You will laugh again. That’s a promise. Today, try to celebrate the struggle that will move you forward toward a strong and content, you!
“I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” ~ Jeremiah 31:13b (NIV)
