Where to Start?

How do I feel? That's where I started. I felt trapped in my marriage and was unsure how to "fix" the problems. I thought marriage lasted forever and that each person would be equally willing to work on the issues to create the best marriage ever! That was not my experience, and so I started by asking myself "How do you feel?"

I was not sure. How is one supposed to know what they are feeling? It felt so hard to name emotions in the beginning. So I started an emotions journal. Asking myself at the top of the page "What has happened today? How do you feel?" I had to underline the word because I wasn't sure if my brain would be able to understand the question.

That day, over a year ago now, I wrote down that I felt embarrassed, anxious, burdened, annoyed, worried, confused, lonely, and disheartened. And I thought my marriage wasn't too bad! Over the next few months I periodically kept asking myself those questions. This is where my story of growth starts. I didn't know how to name my emotions, I didn't know how to tell what I was feeling, and I didn't know why I was acting the way I was. I felt that most of the emotions I was naming at the beginning was really just by best guess! I felt like everything around me was melting away and the harder I tried to hold on, the further away everything got.

It is hard to remember those months before the reality of the separation, but I am so thankful that I am able to look back and see what I wrote and how I was feeling at the time. I think that without journaling, I would have forgotten how bad it was, and would have been more likely to repeat the cycle in another relationship without taking a hard look at who I was and how I was contributing to the issues.

In the months following the separation from my ex-husband, I remember reading and journaling. I remember having a stack of books, going home after work, and reading on the balcony until the sun set and I went to bed. I woke up the next day and repeated the process. It was all I could do to stay sane and not spiral out of control. I had so many questions, I didn't understand how this could be happening, and I could NOT be someone who was "divorced". That was NOT happening. I remember my first mental shift, if you will, was when I realized and truly understood that you cannot change anyone. We are each our own human being and we each get to make our own choices. I wrote on one particular day that "I need to give this go God, while focusing on my own faith and my own life." As much as I would have loved to make the choices for my husband at the time, or parents may want desperately to make choices for their children, we cannot. Accepting that, allowed me to start to let go.