Divorce Part 2 - Denial, denial, denial
I approached being a single parent very matter of factly. I’m a doer, someone who relishes a challenge, the harder something is the more determined I am to succeed.
What I didn’t realise for a long time is that I was burying my feelings with ‘doing’ so I didn’t have to face how I was feeling.
Really, I’m okay
One of my biggest regrets is pretending to the kids that I was okay about daddy leaving and that we would be fine on our own. I was most definitely not okay about him leaving but I didn’t want to show them this because I wrongly believed I had to be strong for them and that if things were tough you had to be even tougher. Unfortunately, this led them to assume that I wanted him to leave and that maybe I was responsible for him leaving.
Being an ostrich
Life was busy as a full-time working single mum. We had swimming lessons, dance classes, birthday parties, after school clubs, play dates – you name it, we did it. To add to my busyness, I had also recently started studying to be a Higher-Level Teaching Assistant. There really was no time for me to stop and take a closer look at how I was feeling. To the outside world I was doing amazingly well, I had people, including my mum, tell me how well I had handled being unexpectedly told you’re not loveable anymore. I saw this as a badge of honour, I was winning this challenge!
Busier still
I completed my course, got a promotion at work and carried on looking like a graceful swan above water but was paddling frantically below it. By this point I had acknowledged that my husband leaving was a good thing and that we had drifted apart but I still wasn’t dealing with the feeling of rejection. So, what did I do next? I applied to study for a degree whilst working full time, going to dance classes, swimming lessons etc etc. I went on living this frantic life pretending everything was okay for another two years until a chance reading of an article in a magazine.
Implosion
Brene Brown is an American researcher-storyteller who has studied courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy for the past two decades. The article grabbed my attention and directed me to a Ted Talk she had done in 2010. That 20-minute Ted Talk was like scales falling from my eyes. I sobbed as I listened to her talk about my life. The spotlight had now been shone brightly and directly onto my issue so what was I going to do about it?