One of my favorite authors, Cheryl Strayed, said in Tiny, Beautiful Things
"Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
Recently, I have emerged from a very painful break up from a marriage that shouldn't have been so difficult to leave. My husband never loved me, and the heartbreak happened years ago when I first realized this. Because he never loved me, leaving should have been easy, but it wasn't, and I waited 14 long years before I was able to break free for good.
This experience has me thinking a lot lately about grief, the process of healing and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages in the acceptance of death. Divorce is, after all, what the French call le petite mal -- the small death. Here are some things that have helped me on this journey.
1. Strengthen your heart - with activity. My first real heartbreak happened in college. At the time, I was running 5-6 miles a day and heavy on gym time. With that breakup, I hit the gym harder with this mantra in my head: I was strengthening my heart (emotionally) by strengthening my heart (physically) with activity. I added visualization to it and pictured my heart actually building muscle, getting stronger along with my emotional heart. And it worked.
This time, I am running over seven miles at a time and chanting the same mantra in my head. There might be a tendency toward inactivity with the depression that comes with heartache, but do your best to not fall into the slump. Physical activity boosts endorphins - the natural chemicals in our brains that combat depression and increase our sense of well being and happiness.
2. Don't go it alone. Find support - through a trusted friend or family member, support group, a counselor, or your church or religious organization. When we try to stoically push through pain in solitude, we often don't realize that isolation can only increase our depression. Seek out the support of others.
3. Detach. Buddha said attachment leads to suffering. For me, this was difficult because my husband was such a part of my life for most of my adulthood. I began detaching from him by detaching from his friends, places and activities we would do together. I blocked him on social media. I disconnected any thing I could that tied me to him, with the exception of our daughter.
4. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here: rid yourself of all of the reminders, mementos, trinkets, or otherwise emotionally-charged paraphernalia that remind you in any way of your ex or your relationship. My soon-to-be ex husband and I have a beautiful daughter together, so I have kept my wedding dress, rings, photos and anything that she might want when she is an adult. As for the cards, memories and other items of love, I've gotten rid of everything he ever gave to me. Use this time to clean and redecorate your space. There is no need to look back, only forward onto better things.
5. The only way to get through is through - not around. My relationship with my husband ended years before I finally ripped off the band-aid and filed for a full-on divorce. I put off filing because of fear of his reaction and I was overwhelmed when I tried to decide where to start the arduous task of unraveling our lives together. So I attempted to go around the pain and upheaval by dragging things out over years in an attempt to negotiate "graceful ways" of ending things. What I ended up doing was dancing around the truth and avoiding the turmoil of an abrupt and harsh end that had to happen and keeping my children in a dysfunctional environment where they could not thrive in the process.
Sometimes the only way get something done is to just do it. Like the Cheryl Strayed quote above, sometimes I know I have a tendency to want to ruminate over all the past mistakes and wallow in suffering. This is not productive. Likewise, once I finally ripped the band-aid off, I wanted to escape feeling the gush of blood and pain of that freshly opened wound. I wanted to run from the discomfort, and it's probably second nature for anyone to want to avoid feeling grief, pain, and heartache. But what I've found is, it's best to feel the pain and sit with it. It can teach us a lot of what we need to learn: about ourselves, the world around us, and the paths that lead us to making the same mistakes. Write about your feelings. Talk about them with a trusted friend. Purge the difficult emotions, but don't try avoiding them.
6. Forgive yourself. Going through a break up is one of the most emotionally trying things a person can go through. We all have break up stories and have likely done things we aren't proud of while going through the grief process. Don't add to your stress by "shoulding" on yourself and saying "I should have done this better" or "I shouldn't have done that, then maybe it would have worked out." Chances are, if you're like me, you look back over your relationship and realize there were red flags waving right in front of your face all along, you just chose to ignore them. Let it go.
7. Take care of yourself. Trust me: this has been the hardest thing for me to do. I've found it difficult to sleep, eat, or concentrate during this tumultuous time. Sometimes, we just have to force ourselves to do these things. Eat. Shower. Sleep, even if it means taking occasional supplements. Melatonin is a gentle holistic method for gaining zzz's found in most drug stores. Take a multi-vitamin. B vitamins can help combat depression and help strengthen our immunity which might be worn down from stress. Don't drink alcohol to excess. While it might sound appealing to want to let loose, alcohol is a depressant and can only wear down the immune system and ultimately make a depressed person feel worse. It also can lead to lowering our inhibitions that can allow emotions to get out of control.
The old adage is that time heals all wounds. Amazingly, the bitterness of even the worst of break ups eventually gives way to forgiveness.
6. Forgive yourself. Going through a break up is one of the most emotionally trying things a person can go through. We all have break up stories and have likely done things we aren't proud of while going through the grief process. Don't add to your stress by "shoulding" on yourself and saying "I should have done this better" or "I shouldn't have done that, then maybe it would have worked out." Chances are, if you're like me, you look back over your relationship and realize there were red flags waving right in front of your face all along, you just chose to ignore them. Let it go.
7. Take care of yourself. Trust me: this has been the hardest thing for me to do. I've found it difficult to sleep, eat, or concentrate during this tumultuous time. Sometimes, we just have to force ourselves to do these things. Eat. Shower. Sleep, even if it means taking occasional supplements. Melatonin is a gentle holistic method for gaining zzz's found in most drug stores. Take a multi-vitamin. B vitamins can help combat depression and help strengthen our immunity which might be worn down from stress. Don't drink alcohol to excess. While it might sound appealing to want to let loose, alcohol is a depressant and can only wear down the immune system and ultimately make a depressed person feel worse. It also can lead to lowering our inhibitions that can allow emotions to get out of control.
The old adage is that time heals all wounds. Amazingly, the bitterness of even the worst of break ups eventually gives way to forgiveness.
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