A few years ago I attended the funeral of a friend that had been diagnosed with cancer and fought for a long time.

She wasn’t much older than me and our children situation mimicked eachother. One of my greatest fears since being a teenager has been to get and die of cancer because of my mom.

At my friends funeral I was overcome with my own emotional journey as I felt so many varying strong feelings of hurting for her children because of my own personal experience. I hurt in my own envy hearing the unconditional love her husband had for her as he fought with her and cared so tenderly to her always. I wondered what my own funeral would look like and what people would say.

I knew the traditional truths of being married once to someone that would love and care for me forever had been taken from me and would never be read at my funeral. I felt sad that because of my own trials early on I wasn’t able to be the loving and supportive friend I had wanted to be in the last days of her life.

I felt that about many people around me that I love, including my own children, that in my trauma I was surviving and had less to give. I was experiencing my own funeral in a symbolic way. I feel a part of me had died including a lot of my own identity that I now questioned. I was mourning the loss of what I thought I knew and had.

I feel after my discovery there was a death in him as I would see what felt like the ghost of someone I was married to for 21 years and knew what he would order at a restaurant or what team he cheered for yet I had no idea who he really was. It was as if he died and came back to life looking very similar yet a complete and total stranger. I felt in my experience divorce was very similar to death of a loved one but in ways worse.

In divorce I have lost friendships, relationships, the ideal and traditions. I have felt loss of loved ones before especially when I lost my mom but this is different. I have cried at my new losses and embraced the change and new beginnings. I now know I don’t want to go back. I love how now I am creating myself a new ending.

Where do you feel hope in divorce? #betrayaltrauma#divorce#hope#healing#selflove#remarriage