Today I start a blog that speaks to life’s transitions. Divorce was my original intent, but as I got to thinking about the challenges and stages of divorce, I realized that divorce serves life lessons. It is gut wrenching and traumatic. How one negotiates its rage, lends to life skills. And life skills and negotiating pot-holes is universal. So this is not a divorce blog. This is a lessons learned, not yet learned, and ideas blog.
Is my life fodder enough for such a blog…well maybe. My plan though, is to share lessons learned across the great people I have met in my post-divorce journey. “Names have been changed to protect the innocent”, of course! Divorce is private – kinda ironic isn’t it. But when you are in the weeds of divorce, you are in survival mode. Survival mode can be ugly and ugly longs for privacy.
When I legally separated from my now ex-husband, I reached out. This divorce was different from my first. The stakes were higher this time around. This divorce affected my two children. This divorce financially ruined me. This divorce was my second, and thus amplified my self-doubt. How in the hell could I be divorcing AGAIN? I needed help and I sought many avenues for assistance.
One resource I checked out was a meetup.com group called “Transitions”. This is the meetup description –
“Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you find yourself suddenly single. The purpose of this group is to meet other local people coping with a divorce, separation, breakup, or death of a spouse for friendship, discussion, and support. We will have social outings to give us things to do other than sit at home and mope! Actually we laugh a lot! Our main focus is for adult social interaction, support, fun and friendships. This is not a dating forum.”
Yep, that sounded like the meetup for me, so I signed up. The next day I received an email notifying me that “Transitions” would be dissolved if a new leader did not volunteer in the next seven days. Crap! I checked the site daily…anyone volunteer? Nope. So you guessed it, on June 27, 2009, I volunteered. It wasn’t a thought-out decision and there have been times I’ve regretted it. Mostly, I am thankful for the wonderful people and experiences I’ve enjoyed.
This is not a divorce blog. This is a lessons learned, not yet learned, and ideas blog.
Onward my friends,
Anne