I came across this article in Oprah Magazine yesterday by Kristin Armstrong and think it's a good read for anyone who is moving on........
Leave Strong
How did Kristin Armstrong survive a public divorce from Lance Armstrong? By learning lessons from potted plants, pacifiers, and balloons.
When I was in the midst of my divorce from Lance and in no mood for inspirational tales, someone told me one anyway about a woman who was hiking along a cliff (brilliant idea, always). She falls—but after tumbling and scraping down the hill, she manages to grab on to a branch. Dusk turns into night, and all the while she clings to this branch with everything she has. After hours of pressing her body into the rock face, cramping to keep meager toeholds, her strength begins to fail and her arms begin to shake. Fearing that she doesn't have much longer, she begins to pray. God's response is simple: "Let go." Feeling low on faith and high on frustration, she ignores the command and cries and aches until the first rays of dawn. And then, astonishing though it may seem, she looks down and sees the ground…about 12 inches below her feet.
Yes, she's an idiot. And truth be told, I have been the same idiot on countless occasions, holding on to pain and wearing myself out when relief is less than a foot away. Sometimes greater tenacity and steadiness of nerve is required to release than to retain. And never is this more true than when the thing you're clinging to is a relationship that's ended.
Whether the pain of lost relationships needs to flow loosely through our hands or be flung resolutely over our shoulders, there is no denying that there are times in life when we need to lighten our load in order to move forward. If we carry our emotional pain too long or too far, we risk being stunted. Like the roots of a plant in desperate need of repotting, we can become so tightly tangled that we remain bound in the shape of our former container, even after we transplant our lives.
When a relationship ends in death, divorce, or division of any kind, we may recognize the loss intellectually, but it takes longer to get the message to our heart. Maybe our inherently hopeful nature is a protective mechanism allowing us to endure grief in bite-size morsels—much as I suffered peas as a child, swallowing them whole, pea by pea, with a mouthful of milk.
But whether we expect a beloved soul to reappear and join us for breakfast or a former spouse to experience an epiphany that the grass isn't greener after all, it's all denial of some sort. We postpone the finality of heartbreak by clinging to hope. Though this might be acceptable during early or transitional stages of grief, ultimately it is no way to live. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past.
When my son, Luke, turned 3, I told him it was time to give up his precious pacifier. He asked me why. Frankly, I was more prepared for a meltdown than a direct, honest question from my toddler, so I fumbled and told him that the “Paci Fairy” comes to visit after your third birthday and takes your paci to give to another baby who's coming into the world. Somehow he bought this feeble story, and one afternoon as we drove north on the highway, I told him it was time. I unrolled his window, and the wind whipped into his face and lifted his wispy beige-blond hair. He bravely stuck one chubby arm out the window-his pacifier held tightly in his little sausage fingers-and we counted, “One, two, three!” and he actually did it. He let go.
If only it were as simple to give up grown-up things. If only the “one, two, three” approach could ease the pain of watching from a distance as your ex-husband walks with another woman, holding hands. Or the despair of facing a holiday with a hole inside so large that you feel yourself slipping through your own cracks. Perhaps love's greatest gift—that it is indeed unconditional—is also its greatest curse.
Like a bad case of acne, the grown-up pains of hurt, loss, resentment, regret, and failure need to fester, pop, and have time to heal. When I was an eye-rolling, unruly teen, my mom told me not to pick at my occasional eruption or I would scar, and I think the same rule applies to our hearts. We cannot expect things to heal if we are always picking at them.
Not far from my house is a beautiful view from Mt. Bonnell, which overlooks the part of the Colorado River we call Lake Austin. It's the place where I first fell in love with Texas, it overlooks the place where I got engaged, and it is a place I have returned to often in the years I have lived here. In the trenches of my divorce, when I had some emotional poison to release (the writer Malachy McCourt says, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die”), I decided that as a visual person I needed to make a visible statement. I walked up the steps to the lookout point carrying a fistful of helium balloons, one balloon for each ugly thing that I needed to purge. I must have looked ridiculous, like a woman who missed a birthday party, but I walked all the way to the farthest edge and sat down. I said a prayer and named each thing (blame, guilt, regret, fear…) as I let it go, watching each colored balloon swirl away until it became a speck and disappeared into the horizon.
Only by learning how to let go do we learn how to hold on to what matters. It's as though the shadows created by loss illuminate what remains; the contrast helps us see with great clarity and appreciation the things we were meant to do, the people who are still with us, and those we love deeply who also love us back.
Kristin Armstrong is a contributing editor at Runner's World and the author of Happily Ever After (FaithWords), a guide to coping with the pain of divorce, in bookstores now.
Thank you for sharing that story. I really needed to read that right now and it brought tears to my eyes. Letting go is definitely one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn and one that I am stil trying to master.
Shelly
Me: 34
H: 37
1 child
Married 10 yrs (together 13)
Bomb: Aug 25th "I'm not in love w/ you anymore"
H walked out: Aug 30th
Her story about the balloons reminds me of a similar story:
Tear Toss: There was a woman who adored her husband and her family more than anything in the world. She felt loved and lucky and strong. But when her beloved husband abandoned her and her four children, there were often times she felt she could go on no longer, her strength ebbed from her faster than she could renew it. The one and only thing she could think to do to ease her suffering was to follow her overwhelming desire to get to the ocean. And so, in the middle of a cold Indiana December, she and her four children ventured westward on a pilgrimage she knew could lighten their heavy hearts.
As soon as they landed she borrowed her brother's car and drove straight to the Pacific Ocean. Within a couple of hours they found a rocky cliff overlooking the frothing blue sea and so she pulled over to the side of the road and unloaded her brood. She and her children hiked through the dark cypress grove, down the pristine meadow of succulents and sea grass, straight to the cliffs. Each one of them carried a golden bag filled with clear stones--tears that she and her children had shed since the man they all loved had left them.
It was windy and sunny and perfect. When she reached the edge of the cliff, she and her four precious children opened their bags, said a prayer to the ocean, to the sky and to the universe. They asked for this great and powerful ocean to take away the sorrow that they carried within these glass stones. One by one the five brave souls tossed their tears into the roiling waters, kissing each one as they did.
As they watched the waters swallow their tiny stones, something in them stirred. And as they walked back through the meadow and grove to their car, the earth felt more solid under their feet and the air lighert to breath.
