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.”

My husband asked me for a divorce in January, we had been living apart since August, and by May of the next year, he still hadn’t filed the papers.

I didn’t want to divorce.

I had done everything in my power to work on our marriage:

I had gone to counseling.

I  had worked on my own issues.

I had maintained my health and my appearance and now…

I had to accept that no matter what I had done, we were still going to end up… divorced.

But, it was very hard for me to believe in the “truth,” that divorce was inevitable, when my husband continued to choose not to file the paperwork.

Every action on his part told me that we were going to soon be divorced, yet his hesitance to finalize the decision, would leave me with false hope.

I would believe that he must be having doubts.

That maybe… we would stay together after all.

The “not knowing” soon turned into torture for me.

It felt like our impending divorce, was always hanging over my head and that my  husband, had the power to make or break my life.

One day, we became entangled in a heated argument over the phone.

He was so terribly cruel and instead of hanging up… I listened and then I cried of course and fired back my own verbal punishment.

I was so angry at that moment that I suddenly knew exactly what I had to do:  I had to file the papers and proceed with the divorce on my own.

I hadn’t wanted a divorce.

I hadn’t wanted to file the paperwork.

But… by holding on to false hope I was living in limbo and driving myself insane.

If he really wanted a divorce, then I couldn’t stop him from getting one.

If he really wanted a divorce, then someone needed to file the paperwork.

The next day, I filed.

Emotionally, I felt better… and worse… simultaneously.

Better… because I had been hanging onto false hope and waiting for someone else to make an important decision in my life.

Worse… because I had not wanted a divorce, still did not want a divorce, and now… I was the one instigating the action.

I knew though, that living in limbo would only prolong my pain.

I could not make my husband come back.

I could not make my husband love me again.

I had to take care of myself.

Taking care of myself was choosing not to live in limbo for one more day.

“Dear God, help me to step forward when it is needed. If I am causing myself pain by living in uncertainty, grant me the strength to make a decision that may seem painful, but may ultimately bring me serenity.”

Sometimes I slip back into old and familiar patterns and catch myself acting out and behaving inappropriately with others.

It may be that I have allowed myself to become overwhelmed by my day-to-day activities, worn and tired, I stray away from my spiritual path and forget to take a fearless moral inventory of my direction.

Suddenly, my actions are not matching my moral compass… my true beliefs.

Maybe I am gossiping to feel better about myself?

Maybe I am being cruel to someone to feel in control when I am fearful?

Maybe I am flirting in need of attention, hoping to show that I am still desirable to others?

But this is my shadow self and it is a role that no longer suits me.

When I falter in my behavior, I can choose to change my inappropriate words or actions at any time.

I can choose to change them during any moment of the day.

I don’t have to wait for tomorrow.

I can stop myself now, apologize for my behavior, and then choose to begin to make a living amends to all those affected by my inappropriate words or actions.

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“Dear God, help me to be true in all of my relationships. Help me to forgive myself when I falter and others to forgive me for my slips.”

This morning I was speaking with a friend on the phone, when they brought up the topic of self-esteem.

They were struggling with an issue, related to their own low self-esteem, and wanted my advice on how to stay in a “good” place.

Right before I was about to answer they said, “I know you never have these moments and that’s why I called you. Your self-esteem seems so intact.”

I actually laughed.

I do have a tendency to come off self-assured, to smile and “act as if,” to seem to be moving forward without doubts, but that is years of spiritual footwork doing the talking!

Told time-and-time again by my best female mentors to:

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

Just like any human being: I struggle with self-esteem constantly.

Always the over-achiever, always the stoic one, always acting the authority figure, all good qualities to have, but often masks that I learned to wear, over the course of my life, to hide my own fears and flaws, and protect myself from being hurt or humiliated.

I shared this truth with my friend.

Her relief flooded through the phone.

There is a closeness in knowing that we are all in the same boat.

An intimacy that comes from sharing our most vulnerable truth with those we love and trust.

By being honest about my own self-esteem, my friend now knows that we are in this together, that we will share our struggles along our spiritual paths, and that doubts related to self-esteem affect us all.

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“Dear God, help me to have faith in the gifts you gave me. Let me be strong when the need arises… let me be vulnerable when it brings me strength.”