When you were a married woman, you may have felt safe and secure and things in your life were predictable. The loss of your husband is so much more than just the end of a relationship. It may feel like it strips you of meaning, and many women feel lost. Who am I now?<\/p>\n
Sabrina, a woman in one of my groups, remarked: \u201cI keep saying \u2018we.\u2019 We saw that movie. We love that restaurant. We had a great vacation in Punta Cana.\u201d She said she\u2019s struggling with the language and language matters. It would sound weird to say: \u201cI had a great vacation in Punta Cana.\u201d It sounds like she went by herself. <\/p>\n
Her operating system is still running on \u201cwife.\u201d She went on to say, \u201cWhile I don\u2019t consider myself a wife anymore, much of my identity and behavior is woven into being that person.\u201d After 27 years of marriage<\/a>, she doesn\u2019t know who she is without it.<\/p>\n She said she chokes on saying, \u201cmy ex.\u201d Ex-husband conveys what society assumes it means. That you grew apart and worked on it but couldn\u2019t solve the problems. Not at all the reality of a woman who has been abandoned. Plus, she used to be the one people came to for support, the one others could rely on. Now she hates appearing like a hero because she\u2019s surviving as a struggling single mom who needs other people\u2019s help. She has an identity, but it\u2019s not the identity she wants.<\/p>\n The Challenge of Moving Forward After Divorce<\/p>\n You\u2019re at a crossroads. You can\u2019t go back; that\u2019s not an option. But it may feel like if you move on, you are accepting all the hurt that was thrown your way. After all, isn\u2019t moving on exactly what your former husband wants you to do? It may feel that moving on would be not honoring the pain. Maybe part of you doesn\u2019t want to give it up. As long as you are suffering, the world can see what he did to you and shake their proverbial heads saying, \u201cDo you believe what a low-life he is?!?\u201d<\/p>\n You are transitioning from an identity that you cherished, being a wife, to one that you may feel is cloaked in shame<\/a>, being an ex-wife. But thinking that being an ex-wife is shameful or \u201cless than\u201d is a belief, not a fact. What about if you started to shift your thinking so that you could erase that self-limiting belief and start to neutralize it? If roughly 40% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce<\/a>, that means that you are part of a large number of women who define themselves as ex-wife. Can you start re-wiring your thinking so that you can begin to get comfortable in this club you never wanted to join? <\/p>\n It seems to me that two factors are taking place simultaneously. First, there are all the losses that you legitimately need to grieve. The loss of the partner, perhaps the home, financial losses, worries about your children, and the loss of the dream of the future. Those are significant enough.<\/p>\n Preserving Self-Worth and Embracing Self-Compassion After Divorce <\/p>\n