My therapist told me it would take between 2-5 years to work through the end of a 23 year marriage. And I found out that she was right.  For me, it was about 2 ½ years before I started to feel at one with a different life, a different, changing me.  When I was growing up, I was one of those believers in the “knight in shining armor” stories.  I was taught that it was important to work hard in school, be a kind person, and I would find a loving partner, get married, have children and live happily ever after.  Good plan, but reality set in along the line and the plan went off the tracks. 

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My first marriage fulfilled part of the plan.  I got married out of college and had 3 beautiful daughters, lived in a beautiful home in the suburbs, worked in sales and had a supportive group of friends, but it was the “happy” part that began to erode. So, after 23 years, the marriage fell apart for me and now reality was staring me in the face.  I was truly in uncharted waters, where I really didn’t know how to navigate.  I missed the girls…I was lonely, everything felt foreign, disorientating..not right.  And, I didn’t know how to reorientate…bottom line, I was really sad. 

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Besides sadness, guilt set in when a good friend came to me and said she didn’t understand how I could walk away from 23 years, the kids, financial security. There was so much comfort in the family unit and for so many years, when things weren’t right, I believed I had the power to make everything ok even when I felt trapped and felt my love had no real value to my husband.  Some how, some way, I was going to make it work. But there was no opportunity for expression…my feelings just seemed to keep hitting walls, and it began to eat away at my self worth.  The signs were more frustration and anger, and my patience with the kids dwindled. 

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One night as my daughters were at the kitchen table, and I was putting dinner on the table, I got angry at one of them…don’t even remember what it was, and just lost it…crying and bringing up all the things from the past (you know how we do this….I believe I read one time its called muckraking ) .. just ranting and raving.  They all had that gaping look on their face and my oldest daughter came over to me, looked right at me and said “what’s going on mom…this is more than what just happened”  There it was..the final eruption and notice to me that I was breaking down, no longer able to keep my ship on course and “fix” things.  I couldn’t do this anymore.

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 Leaving was scary..  I tried to stay in the present moment and take my days one hour at a time, but anyone knows who has tried this that it is very hard to do.  But I also knew that anxiety and panic was not far away.  Fear can take everything away…clarity, confidence, and ability to move forward, even though I had no idea where “forward” was taking me.  

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These were stormy seas! But as I reflect back, this life experience was not an end, but means to an understanding beyond… as Aldous Huxley refers to these opportunities as  “complacent vagueness”, opportunities to the discovery of “who are we?”  The opportunities continually provide us with knowledge, and if we are not “complacent” this change in us can lead us away from the situations where our soul is crying out and move us toward Reality, this truth that I’ve talked about.