Ladies, if you take away one thing from my divorce experience, I hope it is this:
you are stronger than you will ever know.
You will overcome obstacles you did not even know were there. You will grow in areas that you had not considered were weak. You will lose family, friends, belongings, and maybe even your mind once or twice. You will need support. You will need help. You will need favors.
Yes, even you!
Whether it is your family, your sisters, your tribe, your gang, your friends, whatever you call your people. You will need them. Please, choose them wisely.
My mind flashes back to pacing around the pool, talking for hours about how I would get through this. How would I recover emotionally? Financially? How were my children going to be okay after all the drama? How do people get away with breaking rule after rule?
And they listened…they listened and they supported and they picked up the phone at 2:00 AM, at 11:00 PM, in the middle of their workday…
They called, they visited, they invited, they included…
my sisters were my saviors.
Having that person or that group of people that you can trust, who will be honest with you, the ones who will show up for you in the most difficult times is everything. Some of these amazing ladies went on to suffer major losses themselves. Some had already gone through it.
And here is what I have learned: no one is immune to trauma and grief and struggle. It may not look the same in my story as it does in yours, but we will all experience it. We need to surround ourselves with people who will build us up when we cannot find the strength. We need those who will tell us the hard facts when we will not face the truth. People who will remind us who we are at our core when we forget.
And we need to be able to do that for others.
We are strong and able. We can do great things and recover from unthinkable hurt. But we need support during these times and we need to support our people when they need us. If you know someone is suffering a loss, try to reach out and let them know you are there. An interesting thing happens when there is a loss. Some people do not know what to do or how to help or what to say. So they say nothing. They do nothing. They act as if everything is fine. I can tell you from experience, it is better to just say, “I am sorry you are going through this,” than say nothing.
Offering to bring the kids to practice or have one over for a play date or inviting your friend along on a girls’ night to get out of the house are ways that you can reach out and show you are there. These might seem small, but they are exactly what we need when we are going through a difficult time.