Seeing him threw me into a whirlpool of confusion. He wanted to reconcile.

This blogging journey starts from the very beginning of rejection, abandonment, agony and astonishment – her ‘second half’ was no longer her dream…it was now her worst nightmare. How does Kirby’s journey evolve? How will she express and feel the pain of her loss – and ultimately find her new SELF?
Seeing him threw me into a whirlpool of confusion. He wanted to reconcile.
Three months ago today – he left me. Almost three weeks from now, we would celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary.
My life in a timeline…swinging on my emotional pendulum. My uncertain, unpredictable life. This is where I live, and this is all I know:
On Day 10 of Oprah & Deepaks ‘Miraculous Relationship’ 21-day Mediation Challenge, I was stunned . Oprah’s words practically called me out by name.
“What you asked for from the world is exactly what you’re getting back.”
The law of attraction is an amazing thing. If you’re not a believer, watch The Secret. For me….I believe in it! It’s no coincidence this is happening NOW. I attracted this. I’m strong, steady and feeling more ALIVE – he comes knocking, heart in hand. The universe is amazing…
“If you want fulfilling relationships, first you must be full yourself”.
He may think I’m the same woman he left behind – in the rubble and slush of our broken relationship. I was crushed and agonizingly broken beyond belief. Reparation was a pipe dream, but a dream, nonetheless. Breathing was my first, daily goal. Survival was my mission.
And now, three months later – I’m so much MORE than what he left behind. I’m steady, strong and worthy of so much more. He can’t rock me. I am love. I deserve love. I am more than enough.
Taking steps backward would be a SIN of monumental proportion. Backward is not an option.
What an amazing turn of events….
Stay tuned.
Namaste.
Kirby
PS- as soon as I finished editing and posting this blog – my phone rang. It was him, the EXACT SECOND I pressed ‘post’. He hasn’t called me in two months. THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES…..
I’m in limbo. No immediate drama, no rehearsing disaster, no catastrophic thinking…I just AM. I’m not overjoyed, I’m not curled up in a ball of agony. I am alone and I just AM. I’m quiet and I’m learning that my story isn’t so special. So many people experience this pain. So many survive. People either leave or are left behind. They reject or are rejected. Surviving is “a process” – the most common advice I hear.
So right now…I just AM in emotional limbo. THE WATER IS CALM AND I AM ALONE…NOT SURE WHERE THIS JOURNEY WILL TAKE ME.
BUT I ASK MYSELF – Am I making progress and healing if I’m not working and FEELING every day? Am I being honest in this journey? Does it need my daily attention?
Perhaps a look back will help me appreciate where I am today…time to take stock.
Here’s my journal entry and text to my best friends and sister five weeks after my husband walked out. Here’s what they had to say. I know, I’ve come a long way…
It’s been 10 weeks since he left…walked out and rejected me. Rejected our 20 year life – our marriage, our future.
I hate him for doing this; I hate him for rejecting me – our life – our future. I hate him for his cowardice – for not doing everything possible to fix our marriage. I hate him for his high and unfulfilled expectations – I always fell short in his book (never good enough). I hate him for the LAME divorce decree he sent to me; inadequate, thoughtless and incomplete. I hate him for suggesting I should sign it and we would be officially divorced by September 2! SERIOUSLY?!?!? I hate him for not considering OUR children. I hate him for not working harder to reach out and be relevant in their lives. I hate him for betraying me – for CHEATING ON ME! I was completely faithful for 20 years! I hate him for all of our money issues – I hate him for blaming me FOR EVERYTHING.
I hate him for not missing me.
I just finished the Oprah/Deepak’s 21 Day Mediation Challenge all about GRACE & GRATITUDE. I’ve immersed myself in meditations like this:
Day 5 – Gratitude Awakens the True Self
“The road to happiness starts with a deep breath and an awareness of the many blessings tied to that single breath.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich
We might think that to live in grace requires us to pursue a devout lifestyle and retreat from the world. However, we have learned that grace abides in all things, all places, and all times. If we go beyond our changing personalities to connect with our essential self, we contact this ever-present grace and can live this state of grace even in the everyday world.
Our true self is peaceful, but not inert. It is intelligent, powerful, and intimately involved in our every wish and dream. The true self has the creative power and intelligence to direct and manifest your life’s journey. When you step into and participate with life from this level, you are always grateful and find grace everywhere.
My notes from this Day 5 mediation were so uplifting – so POSITIVE:
I’m reading Louise Hay and working to positively AFFIRM myself and my universe.
My friend Leslie Green’s Love Trust & Pixie Dust posts inspire me:
I’m working every day to look at the POSITIVES and learnings in every experience –
Of course I went to the internet to help….IT IS OKAY TO HATE? Am I just impatient with my journey?
The day after he texted ‘I want a separation’ I sat in a fast food restaurant parking lot sobbing. My kids were inside eating – I was outside in sitting my car crying and dying.
everything I knew to be true was false; up was down, safe was threatened, love was hate and betrayal, coupled was abandoned and alone. I needed help. I needed someone, someone to show me that I mattered. I didn’t feel it, I didn’t believe it – I was no one. I didn’t matter – I was trash. I screamed to God for help just to get through another breathe.
Then my cell rang….my sister answered my prayer in my darkest hour.
Over the following weeks, she was my rock…she held me up:
A few weeks later, my son and I (my daughter was at camp for the month) went up north to see my sister and family – really to get away from the bed I shared with my husband of 20 years. Waking up alone was agonizing. Going to sleep without him by my side was heart wrenching. I needed a break. I needed to feel loved. I needed to get away from what I thought was the safety of my HOME.
I was worried about the trip but knew I needed a break…she reassured me:
During my retreat from my now un-safe place called ‘home’, I focused on journaling, praying, reading and sleeping. In between all of that I’d well up with tears or sob at any given moment. I was so unsteady, so frail and so broken. And – I was open to all and any message around me. My soul was begging for signs and symbols of reassurance…a life line…a thread. I needed something to hold on to because I was an emotional blob of gunk.
Continue reading “Sister Love – Another Divine Moment (Part 2)”
Everything happens for a reason. I’ve chronicled these ‘divine moments’ in an effort to honor them – and me. My world showed up for me – and I’m fully available to it all. I hope these accounts inspire you to tune in, be still, open up and reach out.
After 20 years of marriage I can truly say, my mother-in-law hasn’t liked me for 19 of the years. She’s the ultimate ‘church lady’. Stout, white hair, piercing blue eyes, reads the bible daily and quotes scripture like a grocery list. She can talk about anything and is positioned as the ‘spiritual leader’ of the family.
I’ve seen her dark side. I know her to be judgmental, snarky, close-minded and cold. I’ve struggled for many years to live in the warm place in her heart – the place she shows nearly everyone else. I could never wiggle in. She shut me out – and I did the same. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction – we were a dysfunction law of physics – and neither had the will or love to change the dance.
I’m not into small talk and she rarely showed interest in me or my life. She liked to talk, and I didn’t want to listen. Her biblical platitudes wore me out…so I shut her out.
The night I received the text – I want to separate – from my husband, I was home alone. My kids, on a mission trip….my husband, somewhere over the Atlantic texting his intentions from 30K feet. I was in an emotional puddled; confused, scared and alone. OMG – after 20 years, my husband was leaving me!
Continue reading “There Are NO Coincidences – Incoming Divine Moments (Part 1)”
July 31, 2015
It’s been two months since he left me. Twenty of years of marriage and no real warning. I was completely ALONE and left to drown in a sea of agony and confusion. My face was swollen from continual sobbing. I didn’t recognize myself. My body ached as though I had the flu. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t swallow. I didn’t want to move. Even my hair hurt. I felt like I was dying…a part of me was dying.
The pain persists but I’m crying less and coping better. My moments are more sporadic versus choking and constant. But I still hurt and these two months felt like an eternity. During this time…and for many years prior, my TRUE Self (the home of true love, truth and intention) patiently waited for me – grieved FOR ME.
I replayed every situation and decision that he said, drove him away. I questioned and berated myself:
It seems, he can explicitly point to specific situations when I rejected him. For me – it’s more illusive, more implicit.
My disengagement happened over time….no specific THING turned me away or turned me off. It was a current – and undertow – not visible from the surface and dangerous to explore in depth. My love eroded gradually, like rocks on a hillside – slammed with salty water and waves of abuse day after day…year after year, I withdrew.
Continue reading “My True Self Waited For Me – Patiently & Painfully”
Thursday, July 29, 2015
I didn’t get out of bed on Monday (fitbit said I walked less than 400 steps – bathroom breaks). Not a great way to start the week. I needed a mental health day and I work for myself – so I could take it. Curtains drawn, covers over my head, jammies on – 18 hours of sleep.
I had NO motivation at all. Just exhausted. It’s amazing how your emotional state can impact your physical self.
Depression just sucks
According to Radar Online (perhaps not the most reliable source), Robin Williams was sleeping 18 hours a day before he committed suicide. I believe it. I don’t know how people get through such deep depression and agony from separation, but they do; all the time. I just want to go to sleep and wake up in six months feeling better.
I’m eight weeks into this ‘experience’. (I’ve decided not to call it a nightmare any more – the negative language must go and ‘experience’ is benign enough.) For 8 weeks I’ve walked around like a zombie; crying, reading, sleeping, meditating, going to therapy, praying and sending S.O.S signals to my wonderful support group of friends via texts, emails and phone calls.
I’ve learned valuable lessons about shock, grief and coping with the agony of separation, abandonment and rejection. This is an emotional earthquake of epic proportion. Maybe my journey can help you…
Continue reading “The Pain of Separation Seems Insurmountable – 10 Steps to Survive”
Sometimes when my topic is so fiercely agonizing, I write in third person. I think psychologically, it helps me to think of a person I’m helping – outside or inside myself….but not really me.
Her words were wrapped around her throat – forming coarse lumps that made her gag and panic.
She was in flight or flight mode…. Cortisol raced through her like a freight train. The inability to speak, be heard, be loved BY HIM – impacted every part of her biology.
Her heart burned and struggled to beat as the letters of her feelings took inventory of the vascular wreckage. Her heart was in spasms and shattered. LITERALLY BROKEN.
Her lungs gasped for air – every syllable felt like an embolism, like asthma, her breath was shallow and insufficient. CRACKLING. DROWNING.
Vowels and consonants scratched the lining of her stomach like ulcers, bleeding to be heard.
Her paragraphs cramped the muscles around her intestines – squeezing tighter and tighter…. Longing to be released.
There was no medicine to take, no remedy in sight. She had to live with the strangling, suffocating, dark feeling of panic knowing her screams and pleas would go unheard:
THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANT!
This is not ok with me!
WE DIDNT TRY EVERYTHING!!!!
I’m not done!
Don’t give up!!!!
Please stay.
Could I possibly cry any harder?
These are the notes I prepared for our conversation with our teenaged children – thinking we had a chance. Perhaps this can help others on the verge of divorce. Tend to each others SOULS! Be SOUL-TENDERS!
This blogging journey starts from the very beginning of rejection, abandonment, agony and astonishment – her ‘second half’ was no longer her dream…it was now her worst nightmare. How does Kirby’s journey evolve? How will she express and feel the pain of her loss – and ultimately find her new SELF?