Slingshots and Boomerangs... It's not a straight path.

Five Simple Steps? No.

Five beautiful steps are what people want. They want to go through each one of these in succession and never revisit the previous step. Cool. I'd like to have the same thing. Unfortunately, this isn't a reality for me. Maybe I'm wired differently. Maybe my life is more complicated. Maybe. But I don't think so.

Simple Split | Simple Circumstances | Simple Recovery | maybe…
I have to be honest. Several friends and family look at their simplistic split, or simplistic set of circumstances and superimpose their simplistic recovery unto me. And they look at me in wonderment. Yeah, maybe that works for some people. Maybe it's true for some people – I know that it is. But it sure wasn't true for me. Look at the website. I've done and continue to do my work. It's hard.

Educate Yourself
Educate yourself and do your own reading. What I found to be true for me is very similar to what is shown in this very messy depiction of the five stages of grief in the blue box. This is also very similar to what I was told by counselors and peers who had gone through this process. Five stages, seven stages, nine stages… Irrelevant to me.

Reality.

We experience different emotions at different periods of time. If you find yourself slingshotting through memories and emotions triggered by […insert something stupid here…] then congratulations. You're normal. As always, remember the difference between reaction and response. That's a different but related topic.

I can spend hours talking about reasons why you will go through periods where you feel and seriously believe that you are bulletproof and always will be. I can also spend hours going through reasons why I believe life can be complicated and messy.

Wait. Really? How can life be complicated?
How many kids do you have? Special needs? How long were you married? Why did the marriage end? How long were you trying to save the marriage? How long were you aware? Who else was involved? How much money did you lose? How does that affect your finances? How does it affect your professional career? How does it affect your shared friendships? How does it affect your family's opinion of you? How does it affect the time you get with your kids? Do you feel as if the state has been fair to you? Do you feel your ex-spouse was fair to you? What kind of support did you have? Did you have to go after support and build it, or did it come to you? What kind of support do you have now? What were you doing, and what are you doing now to build emotional well-being? Where do you base your identity? How much time do you get with the kids? Who decided this? Do you agree with this decision? How does this affect the kids? How does this affect you? Are you paying child support? Should you have to? How much are you paying? Have you seen a change in the lifestyle of your ex-spouse while you were paying child support and supporting his or her habits to spend (your) money? Is any of that money being applied to the kids?

If you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars through the divorce process and were ordered by the court to pay her thousands of dollars every month as you witnessed your kids over the course of a couple of years struggle to have more than one pair shoes and pants that fit... while your ex-spouse decided to live with someone else and take care of a dozen other kids while yours suffer… Does that change how quickly you get over things?

Bitter much? Two months ago - no. Today? Yes. It's one thing to get over your ex-spouse. In a couple weeks it will have been three years. It's entirely different when you realize and are constantly reminded that your kids suffer because of the other person's poor choices. There's nothing you can do about it. You have to learn to accept it and provide your kids with the very best loving care that you can.

You have to do the work.

This is not helpful for me. My life is slingshots and boomerangs.