Saturday, December 31, 2011

How to Bring in The New Year After Divorce


Make this New Year 'Your Year'!

No doubt, divorce changes things and can bring about some major disappointments.

I will never forget how long it took me after my divorce to get over my crushed dreams.

Gone were my ideals of being married to my husband for 50-60 years, flushed was the image of adding an addition onto our home, and gone was my desire to live in one place for the rest of my life...

This was just a start...

Married couples, happy or not, make so many plans together. And aside from those ones which are said out loud, your heart and mind make a few silent ones as well...

(I suppose it could be called looking to the future as things are today and making an assumption it will continue tomorrow.)

My biggest assumption was the idea I would be raising my children in the one home we ever had, the one which we built. I just figured I'd watch them grow up there.

'Well, why wouldn't I?'

My 'X' and his best friend spent days wiring the recessed lighting (including the final afternoon when he was late getting to our daughter's first birthday party because they were trying so hard to complete the job).

Many evening hours were spent in our new home, with our little ones falling asleep in their playpen, as we painted our soon to be living room, bedroom, kitchen, baths and bedrooms).

There were weeks of going to the property and picking up trash and making dump runs...

Then, making that grueling move into our home in a blizzard, on Thanksgiving...

After all of that, I guess I did just assume that our grandchildren would eventually pick strawberries and vegies from our backyard garden, like my own children began doing.

'And Who Wouldn't?'

But, all of that changed for sure.

And it took me two years after my divorce, to  finally realized that it didn't matter where we lived, and I finally let go of the dream when I moved out of our home and relocated to an apartment 600 miles away.

'All that was important then was that we were healing and that my children and I had time together.'

But, that wasn't it.... there was a catch... I couldn't do it by just moving away, I had to actually let go of the ties that held me to the past, by building new dreams.

Dreams and goals ought to be a part of everyone's life; young, old, married, single or divorced.

Without them, our lives are lived in a perpetual groundhog day, so to speak. (If you've ever seen the movie, you know that the main character (Bill Murray) wakes up each day doing the same thing-literally.)
As we get into that dreary routine of life, with no hope for the future, life becomes boring and even depressing.

After divorce, nothing will really go back to the way it was, and most of us realize that, after a while, we wouldn't want it to anyhow.

Our home wasn't large... but it wasn't small either. It seemed just perfect for a small family of five. But honestly, I was never really in love with some of it's features, or at one point, it's location. Building a home was difficult...you had to assume you knew what the future would hold....and we all know that's impossible.

'Change is inevitable.'

It's been six years since my 'X' and I split, and I've spent a good majority of those years building one small dream after another, and I'm happy to say that I look forward to another New year so that I can build more.

Hanging on to the past will always be the anchor which holds us back from creating a new future.

So, this New Year's, allow yourself to let go of the 'Old Dreams' and 'Build New Ones'!

Make the first goal a personal one....

What will you do to 'rebuild you'?

You can’t drive forward on the road of life
if you’re looking in the rear view mirror.- author unknown




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