When I was a kid, my mom used to joke that she wished she could bottle my energy up and sell it.
When I was getting divorced, I wished my mom had managed to bottle up some up that childhood energy. Not to sell, but to use myself as sort of a vitality self-transfusion.
Because, goodness knows, divorce is an energy vampire. Here’s what you need to know about how to recognize and handle the fatigue that accompanies divorce. And if you figure out how to bottle youthful energy, please let me know!
When I walked into my yoga studio this past Monday evening, I saw a woman with the most amazing shirt. Under a simple image of a figure in a pose, were the words:
Let that sh*t go.
I laughed. I smiled. And I reflected back on my day, the first day back at school after spring break. A day filled with tired, yet nervous kids, as we all prepared for the upcoming standardized testing season.
I felt my shoulders kissing my ears as they still were still struggling to carry the load of the day. I recognized that my mind hadn’t left the school and was still busy tweaking the lesson for the following day. I sensed a current of anxiety coursing through my body, fearful that I would somehow mess up the testing in some critical and unforgivable way. I realized that I was already anticipating what I needed to accomplish after the yoga practice instead of making preparations for my yoga class.
And then I made a decision and with my next exhale, I followed the advice of her shirt and I let that sh*t go.
As we go through our days, we collect worries and troubles like a young child collects pebbles on a walk through the park. We stuff our pockets, line our shoes and fill our hands with as much as we can carry. We become overloaded, burdened, with the weight we carry. We curse it, we complain about it. Yet we rarely follow a form of the advice we would give to the child overloaded with collected treasures on a walk –
Let that sh*t go.
Mistakes
When I was in kindergarten, I got in trouble for talking in class. My consequence for the misdeed was a missed recess. The talking was a simple mistake, a lapse in judgment rather than a lapse in character, yet I internalized the mistake. Instead of merely sitting along the wall with the other kids who made a mistake that day, I had to be consoled by my teacher because I was so hard on myself.
Mistakes are inevitable. Mistakes are opportunities. Making a mistake doesn’t make you any less of a person.
Let that sh*t go.
A Bad Day
Have you ever noticed that once you label a day as “bad,” there seems to be no shortage of ever-compiling evidence to justify that moniker? Every slight, no matter how small, is a sign the world is against you. Every stressor becomes a mountain, every trigger detonates an explosion.
Days aren’t good or bad. They’re simply a measurement of time. And what happens in one fraction of a day doesn’t have to impact the remaining parts.
Let that shit go.
Expecting Things to Be Different
I receive questions and pleas for help on a daily basis where the writer inquires how to go about changing their spouse’s or ex’s behaviors. They enumerate the lies and the irresponsibility. They express their frustrations about the lack of accountability and the absence of emotional intelligence. Sometimes, they lament the circumstances rather than the person, begging for a way to alter their current reality.
But reality is as it is. There are circumstances we cannot change and people beyond our influence. To believe otherwise is maddening and self-limiting.
Let that sh*t go.
Continue to read the rest.
Some people end up friends with their exes.
Some people are able to successfully navigate their way into a companionate coparenting or business relationship with their spouse.
And others have an ex from you-know-where that continues to cause pain and wreak havoc long after the divorce.
Sometimes you can go no-contact and excise the malignancy.
But what can you do if you can’t remove your ex from your life but you still want to remove the emotions from the interactions? You may be stuck with them, but you don’t have to be stuck with how they make you feel. Here are 11 ways that you can find emotional distance from a difficult ex.
There’s a lot you know about how to divorce with kids. Yet there are some realities that still may surprise you. Are you aware of these five eye-opening truths?
When divorce happens, it can leave you feeling like a failure. Powerless and adrift in your life. It’s easy to internalize these feelings, to recite them to yourself as if they were gospel.
But what might happen if you change your story? Take back your power?
And rewrite your divorce?
Learn the steps you need to take to release your divorce find your voice again.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage 