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"Dawn"
Inspiring people. Transforming lives.
When
Your "Happily Ever After" Just Isn't
by Sunny Massad, Ph.D.
President and Founder of the Hawaii Wellness Institute
1. Care for Yourself First. Become aware of your
emotional, spiritual, and physical needs through journaling.
Begin with the words "I feel" or "I need"
or "I am". Create new ways to meet your needs.
If you don't know how, think of a role model. Identify
and practice daily habits that are self-nurturing and
healing. If you have difficulty taking good care of
yourself, take good care of your children's parent,
your pet's master, or your plant's feeder. 2. Reach out.
Be careful not to isolate yourself. Use the support
systems available to you: counseling, Codependents Anonymous
or other self-help groups, your church, your family,
or your circle of close friends. Your closest friends
are those whom you have shared painful times with. It
is a gift to others to let them know how they can best
support you. Articulate your needs. 3. Communicate
Honestly and Appropriately with Your Children &
Friends. This does not mean burdening them with
full emotional disclosure. It does mean letting them
know that you, too, are experiencing sadness and loss,
and that it is a perfectly natural part of the transition
you are going through. Let them know, to the best of
your ability, what to expect in the way of changes in
schedules, schools, childcare, and living arrangements,
and what they can count on to remain the same. 4. Allow Time
and Space for Grieving. Even desired changes involve
a grief process. Grief cannot be rushed, but it does
not have to be debilitating. You have not only lost
the relationship/person that you had, but, perhaps even
more importantly, you are grieving the loss of the dream
you had for your life and a whole identity. Build time
and space into your life to be alone, with close friends,
with your journal, taking long walks, watching movies,
or whatever else you like to do when you are depressed.
5. Ritualize the
Transitions. Rituals are intentional, repeated practices
such as lighting candles, affirmations, prayers, chants
and songs, visualizations, or any other activity that
is meaningful to you. Rituals can be adopted, adapted,
or totally original. These actions become invested with
meaning because they are deliberate, and because of
their association with a time, event, or emotional state.
Rituals are emotionally powerful. They make the abstract
concrete, and help give meaning to your experience.
Small rituals around acknowledging the changes and releasing
the dreams and the pain can take very little time, but
be extremely healing and sustaining. An excellent resource
is, "Good Grief Rituals: Tools for Healing,"
by Elaine Childs-Gowell. 6. Hold a Vision
of Your Future. Clarify the path you want to be
on, and acknowledge your steps in the direction of your
desired life. Reward yourself for even small successes. 7. Maintain and
Build Your Integrity. Clarify your values and needs.
Carefully identify the areas of your life where you
are out of integrity -- not honoring your own needs
and not living according to your values -- and make
changes daily to bring yourself into integrity. You
are not defined by your past. Each day presents an opportunity
to be the person you want to be. 8. Claim Your
Space. This doesn't mean purging your environment
of every trace of your lost love. Particularly if you
have children, be sensitive to their need for consistency
and stability in the face of all of the changes. But
do give some thought to what kind of environment truly
reflects your tastes, your priorities, and your interests,
and make changes that feel empowering and validating
to you. 9. Claim your
identity, both for yourself as an individual, and for
your family as a complete whole. It is common to
feel as though you are walking around with parts of
yourself missing, particularly if you have been partnered
for a long time. Holidays can be an especially difficult
time for this. Look at the assumptions you are making
and the cultural and family messages you have internalized,
and redefine your own paradigm of home or family. Make
the new paradigm concrete: take a family portrait of
yourself and the kids, send out your holiday letter
and sign it "The Johnson Family" (with your
own name, of course!), maintain/adapt old family traditions
and create new ones. 10. Stay present
with the process. Resist the temptation to self-medicate
with television, alcohol, or other escapes. This is
an opportunity for growth and self-development that,
although you would never have chosen it, you will come
to value immensely if you use it well.
©
2006-07 Hawaiiwellnessinstitute.org
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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