Excerpt from The Swipe Right Effect:
For every heart, the first steps will be different. Every person has to deal with their loss, betrayal and pain on their own time.
I truly remember the incredible feeling of being 21 years old, in love, newly married and believing nothing can go wrong. I can close my eyes and relax into what it felt like to be on my honeymoon. I think that makes me lucky.
I remember other beautiful moments too of course. The birth of our daughters, the Christmas traditions, the walks through the forest with our golden retriever are all embedded in my mind. The weekend college football game tailgates, the soccer games and the youth group mission trips all have indelible marks on my soul.
Moments like these are painful sometimes when you are new to a trauma or loss. It hurts to know, after a divorce, these family moments will never happen again. But I have a good friend who shared with me that he looks at his family as "the same family, just different."
In some ways, that's very true. At weddings, we have come together as a family. There has been laughter and happy tears. And yes, it was still very special.
And there will be more of that.
The heart of the matter is we made choices along the way that made us a family and we still are - just different. We still love. We still hurt. We still support each other. We will always be family.
The heart of the matter is we can still make choices that mend fences, offer forgiveness and cross invisible lines of societal shame. If we do, love and happiness are on the other side of those lines.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'll refer back to the first sentence of Chapter 1: For every heart, the first steps will be different. Every person has to deal with their loss, betrayal and pain on their own time.
Yes, in our own time. But we MUST deal with it and choose to find joy again.
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