During my divorce, people were often close by me.

Worried that I shouldn’t be alone, they wanted to fill my everyday with:

“check up” phone conversations…

or talk at the local coffee shop…

or dinner where we would discuss all the details of how the divorce was proceeding.

I appreciated all of the love and attention that my friends and family gave me.

I appreciated their show of support.

I knew I needed this wonderful group of people to get me through to the other side of my pain but… sometimes I just needed solitude… solitude to wrap my mind around the reality of the situation and “settle in” to the job at hand: getting over the loss of my husband.

Solitude allowed my mind to slow down… to mull over my trying situation… and to quietly look at it.

It wasn’t always easy to look directly at my pain… to face my darkest fears… but it was necessary so that I could move on with my past issues resolved.

“Dear God, help me find peace in solitude. Help me to allow my mind to calmly search for answers in the quiet.”

There is a scene in one of my favorite movies where the characters are talking about falling in love.

The man in the scene says, “I didn’t love her because it was right. I just loved her.”

And the woman replies, “Oh, I wish it was that easy. To just know that it wasn’t right that it wasn’t meant to be and move on.”

He turns and looks at her and says, “Knowing is the easy part… saying it out loud is the hard part.”

We often know somewhere inside of ourselves that things “Just aren’t right.”

That no matter how much you love someone… it just won’t work.

Saying it out loud… is the hard part.

I loved my husband but the more I embraced my “knowing…” the more I realized how truly incompatible we were for a life together.

He wanted to live downtown in the city… I wanted to live in the suburbs.

He wanted to retire some place that was warm and tropical…. I dreamed of a home in the Northwest or Northeast.

He wanted to work a job that would keep him up late most nights, and in bed sleeping most days.

I wanted a job that would have me up early and in bed by ten.

I wanted to argue and discuss each and every problem until we “got it right.”

He wanted to “let things lie” and wait for them to pass.

In the beginning, I just thought, Well, we love each other. We will find a way to compromise. We will find a way to make it work.

But there were too many things to compromise… too many problems that left us both feeling resentful… upset that we had to compromise so much.

There came a time during my divorce when I just “knew” that our separation was right for both of us.

No matter how much I loved my husband, I knew that I would never be able to compromise enough to make him happy.

I knew that the life partner I had chosen, the man that I wanted before I even knew my own path in life, was not a good fit for me.

It didn’t mean I didn’t love him: I loved him fiercely.

It just meant that I “knew” that it wasn’t meant to be and that it was time to say the “hard part” out loud.

“Dear God, help me to find strength in my day-to-day life. To walk the path before me with quiet resolution and let my heart be sure in your guidance.”

Often I would refuse to look at the reality of a situation because I was caught up in the fantasy: the projection, the image of what I wanted something to be.

It could be very addictive living in my fantasy.

It was a tantalizing distraction.

Attaching myself to the fantasy allowed me to focus my attention, my time, my passion on the object of my projection and away from myself.

Life was moving on… but I was not.

There came a time during my divorce; when I had a brief moment of clarity.

In that moment… I saw the relationship for what it was… and what it would never be.

The clarity came as a gift: a moment of calm understanding at a trying time.

As my divorce progressed, moments of clarity appeared frequently.

I began to step back from the fantasy of the situation, embrace the reality of my life, and move forward with a mind that was not clouded by distraction.

“Dear God, help me to let go of illusion and fantasy. Help me to see the reality of my day-to-day life and move forward on the path that you have chosen for me.”

I heard once at an Al-Anon meeting that you should get up each day and immediately make your bed.

I didn’t like this idea.

My bed was my solace; the place I would fall back to throughout the day.

If it was too much for me to do a task, I would find myself retreating to the comfort of my bed, the softness of my blankets and pillows.

I didn’t want to make this a daily ritual.

But what I found out about this idea is that for me, it really had nothing to do with the bed or making it.

It had everything to do with structure and routine.

Often, during times of great stress or pain, we are so overwrought in our lives that we stop doing just about everything:

Making the bed.

Washing and folding the clothes.

Paying the bills or organizing our paperwork.

We find ourselves unable to think, overwhelmed by the surrounding mess, struggling with our daily despair.

So I made a habit of following a “To-do” list during my divorce.

Each time I accomplished the smallest goal; making the bed, sweeping the porch, watering the plants, I would cross the task off from my list and feel a small sense of accomplishment.

It was enough to get me through the day.

When we are struggling in our day-to-day moments…

When we are working to make it through one minute of time, one hour of time, one day of time…

Structure helps us to calm our minds, follow a simple routine, accomplish a task, as we work towards recovering from our grief and loss.

Structure and routine provide stability during a trying time.

“Dear God, help me through the day. Help my mind to stay focused in the moment.”