I grew up as part of a strong united family, 2 loving parents who have now been married for 40+ years, and who raised 4 children in a stable family unit. Naturally, in adulthood, I aspired to marry a loving man and raise an equally strong and stable family. I believe this is the ultimate dream for most women and I agree that a healthy marriage should be the Gold standard. Marriages are hard and require a lot of work. If you marry the right person and are motivated you can make it work. But sometimes you just marry someone who is not the right fit for you - it's not a reflection on them but rather a reflection on your compatibility with each other: that was my story.
I did marry a man whom I will always love and respect as the father of my daughter. In many ways he is a wonderful man. However throughout the course of our marriage it became evident that our values & goals were fundamendally mis-aligned, mostly due to different cultural upbringings. God used strong imagery and eventually made it blindingly clear to me that my marriage was over. While I am today in a positive and uplifted state, the road to get there was long & dark.
"Change: that is the one constant in Life". Yet accepting what is, and surrendering to both the struggles & possibilities the unknown can bring, is very difficult. In periods of transitions it's much easier to focus on the loss of what once was. Yet if you can move past the sense of loss and failure and courageously walk your long dark tunnel and not only learn but be grateful for the journey, there is a bright mountain of hope and possibilities on the other side.
My story is not one that I wanted nor sought. But I have chosen to embrace, and accept it. My hope is that it can also inspire others. In the early days of sharing my story more broadly, I discovered the healing powers that telling others about my journey can bring and that was energizing. But I also realized that I had to be careful about how I shared it. If one only catches one glimpse of my story (the present uplifted stage that I am in), they may miss the long &dark tunnel that was such an important & transformative part of my journey. As a result, they may get the wrong kind of inspiration and underestimate the difficulty of my journey, and that of any woman who decides to travel the road of divorce. That's why throughout this blog I will seek to share my story more fully. However I will intentionally omit any private & intimate details about our marriage out of respect for both my daughter and her father. The focus will be on my own emotional journey & lessons.
I also have to share my story in a way that it does not inspire the wrong person into action. Many marriages are workable. Mine was not only an extreme case of fundamentally mis-aligned values but also a marriage that to me, felt painfully one-sided. Many of my friends are married to men whose values are aligned to theirs but they are caught in the day-to-day rut that many long-term marriages fall into. I believe that these situations are workable as long as values & goals remain aligned and as long as both parties are committed to doing the hard work to keep their marriages.
I am hopeful that others will share through this blog as well so that it can fill with many different perspectives and become balanced over time: I want those for whom the ultimate Gold Standard I described earlier of a long & healthy marriage is a possibility, to draw positive inspiration. But I also want those to whom God has spoken and who have strong clarity that their marriage is over, to draw inspiration from journeys like mine, and to know that Happiness is within reach and that they are not alone!
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