“Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”― Henry Cloud

Divorce is one of the strangest circumstances a person can find themselves in. One day you’re spending your life with this person and the next, you’re strangers. You have to navigate an entirely different reality than what you were living in just months earlier, and have no clue how long it will take to get adjusted. Unfortunately, there’s no manual for such things, but the one thing that’s guaranteed is there will be waves of grief and sign posts of healing.

This past September, my crazy, powerful subconscious reminded me that it would have been my wedding anniversary at the end of the month – a date I hadn’t thought about in the four years since my separation. My subconscious holds on to those markers of pain like warning sirens ready to protect me from the next potential threat. I really do appreciate it, but she also catches me off guard at times!

Though there is no part of me that desires to be back in that marriage, I had to once again acknowledge that there was a loss. Of relationship. Of expectation. Of the future I thought I wanted.

There was continued grieving for the person I was – a girl willing to live with only partial joy. Someone who didn’t think there could be better because maybe she didn’t believe she deserved better. She was caged by a lack of emotional awareness and slave to the suffering of not feeling truly known and loved.

On the other hand, I felt encouraged to keep going. To know that life has led me to right here and right now. To see how much freedom, joy, and love I experience in the present. To recognize the progress of fibers reattaching and holes being filled in. Even bricks being taken down from the wall built around my heart.

The wounded parts feel smaller, more insignificant. The whole, beating part more available to risk and love and be the version of me I admire most – open, expansive in my capacity for others, fully alive.

I see a little girl and the Christ, and the intersection of the two within my soul. She is happy. Confident. And ready for new beginnings.

[Photo: In San Miguel de Allende for a friend’s birthday and Dia de los Muertos – remembering the past and celebrating the future.]