Change: To become different

I am not sure how comfortable I am with different. When you become comfortable with how your life is, you never know when things will all of a sudden go a different way than you had planned. That’s the thing…I have absolutely no control over what will change in my job, in my relationships, in my health or in anything really.

Change that is painful is something I am struggling with right now.

In my quest to avoid anything painful (not possible) the changes that have occurred in the last year have brought me to my knees many times because I wasn’t sure I could handle the kind of suffering and heartbreak I was enduring.

Going from a married woman to a divorced woman is an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The huge black hole I fell into seemed like a challenge that I would never ever survive. The loss, the grief, the shame, the heartbreak were all common daily emotions that I am not sure will ever truly go away. Questioning and  trying to see future outcomes of decisions that were made became so heavy, I was not showing up for my life. I hid under my covers, I tried to wish it away. I tried to sleep it away and my career suffered in a big way and so did my relationships with the people in my life. I was not reachable, I was not able to help anyone because I was in survival mode and I had two little boys going through this extreme transition and all the energy I had went to making sure they were ok and felt loved and didn’t feel the change of their family unit in any way. Their love was the only thing in my life that kept me hanging on.

Becoming a single Mom has opened my eyes to so many things and the one huge thing is the fear I carry of being on my own 100%. I have started to repeat an affirmation every morning when I wake up that lessens the fear, “Everything I need is provided for me today and everyday”. A weight is lifted because I have to trust that I can do this.

In the relationships that have been very meaningful to me I have seen that change can cause a huge sense of loss. The loss that feels like a part of your heart will never, ever be the same no matter how much time passes. I keep reading that there are people that come into our lives for a reason and those are the people who are only there temporarily to teach you a lesson you need to learn to be equipped with the answers you need in the next phase of your life. This hurts the most because these seem to be the people who hold you up, support you, love you when you can’t love yourself and make you see that you are stronger than you know. When these people leave my life I go through a grieving process and convince myself that they are supposed to leave and I need to be grateful for the short time I did get to spend with them. I don’t like to let go, I never have and I doubt I ever will…

The holidays this year are challenging because people are missing who I used to spend every special event with, I don’t have my boys all day and night for Christmas and what used to be something so familiar and comfortable is now completely different, it’s the new normal; it’s a huge change that I need to accept because it’s never going to be the same way again.

I am not sure if everyone has a difficult time with change or if they go through the type of grieving process I go through but I need to remind myself that sometimes change is the Universe doing for me what I cannot do for myself.