Dating after Divorce

No, you won't be able to troll this post for any salacious gossip (I don't really have friends that do that anyway). You won't find any crazy stories or any big announcements about me in a relationship (try not too act surprised)...but what you will find in reading this post is me trying to grapple with the fact that here I am as a 34 year old with 2 beautiful kids sitting on this side of singledom. A place I didn't imagine sitting after the first time I said yes to marriage.

Yet here I am...and I suppose there you are too. Maybe not in singledom (or maybe you are) but perhaps you find yourself navigating a different type of unfamiliar terrain...one that is just as scary, just as unknown, and one that seems just as fraught with peril as the one I am in. Like me you are asking how you got here....and like me you wonder how in the heck you will find your feet in this wild journey when every step you seem to take forward feels "wrong". This wasn't how things were supposed to be. This journey this foray into dating after divorce never should have been my path to take. I didn't want this. But here we are. And here you are. And what ever sojourn through unknown wilds you are encountering right now whether it is illness, death, trial, or consequences from choices not your own, just know that I see you.

I see you hesitantly step forward onto this new path. I see the heartache in your eyes as you will it not to be so that you are starting this journey. You know as I do that there will be bush-wacking and really hard days...and that you may feel like you are the only one that seems like they are tasked with such an arduous journey. But then I also see a resolve. A determination to do it. Even when it feels unnatural or foreign. Because life's paths are never straight, the journey is always your own, and sometimes bush-whacking is the only way to get through it.

So what is the miracle as you stubbornly hack through brush and weeds along a path you didn't want to be on in the first place? The knowledge that you aren't the first to make hard journeys, you won't be the last, and there are people around you that will bouy you up. So take the step forward...machete in hand and start whacking...that tactic might even help me on dates! 😉

Love,
Madeline

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