linda - Page 6

The Dress

The colours in this portrait are in sharp contrast, bumping up against each other, cold and bold

The kitchen window frames my single silhouette in this scene, the pose rigid and frigid

How am I feeling?  Relief – a decision was made. Mixing it up are the odd skips of my heart.

Outside on the street a large, black garbage bag slumps on the sidewalk

In the snow.

It looks a bit like Jabba the Hut in his curbside garbage day kingdom or maybe it’s Absolem, that hookah-smoking caterpillar pointing the way ahead.

I can see their puffed lips and sinister smile appearing in the folds of the bag as it settles into place, the twist tie wrenching it all up into a curved head.

Inside the black bag is a white dress,

All satin, lace and crusted pearls.

Briefly my mind wanders – What is a crusted pearl?

The dithering about what to do with the dress is finally over,

For years, ironically in retrospect, it was bagged up in a dark corner of the closet.

It is tainted, the lustre is long gone from the silky, smooth satin.

The waxy scent of a candlelit night many years ago snuffed out by reality.

I hear the garbage truck’s giant jaw grinding somewhere nearby, chewing up the rubbish from my neighbour’s weekly life

Then the gears shift as it gets closer, the motor is sluggish and then surges, lumbering along, slowly heaving its way down the street

The phone starts chirping off in another room.

Later when I look out the window

There is nothing left on the sidewalk but a wet, black, bare patch surrounded by a little mound of white flakey snow. The kingdom has been abandoned.

Feeling far less rigid and cold – I wonder-

If deceit were a colour then what would it be?

There are moments in life that we never forget. They are markers -there was a before and an after and life was never the same. That night many years ago when my marriage ended was just such a moment in my life.

Silhouettes and Silence

He parked the car and turned off the engine.

Frost slowly seeped up the windows creating a cold metal cocoon, a shroud to the outside world.

His silhouette, the one I had known since I was a child, from that love at first moment so many years ago, etched a sinister black line against the window.

His shoulders sagged. His chin dropped.

Moments passed, the evening chill surrounded us, and then his voice mumbled, his lips barely moving.

Words spilled out into the cold night air. Slowly, one word followed another and wove a tale of deception that stretched back years and years, all the way back to our childhood.

I sat there numb with shock and anger and disbelief. Where had I been? What life had I been living with him?

His words carried away my history. It evaporated into the night.  All that was left was the shame I felt for believing in him.

Gone was the life I thought I knew. Gone was the warmth of our shared family memories. Gone was every reality I thought I had lived with him.

A whole life was snatched away from me that night.

There was only one question to ask.

“Why?”.

“I thought you’d never find out,” he said.

We sat together in the car for a while, so near and now so far apart.

Silence filled the space between us.

If you are in need of a place to seek some advice on a way forward during separation and divorce please write to letterstolinda@thedivorcemagazine.co.uk – Reaching out is the first step. 

Click here for more articles by Linda as well as Letter to Linda

ABOUT LINDA SIMPSON

“I take strength from your calm, your honesty, and the hope you give me for my future.” Cheryl 

Linda is a fresh voice in the divorce advice world. She offers a pragmatic, common sense approach to life after divorce issues based on over twenty years surviving and thriving following a very traumatic divorce.

As a single parent, her sons are an enormous source of joy in her life. She is a loving mother and grandmother to four delightful grandchildren.

She holds a degree from the University of Waterloo with concentrations in sociology and philosophy and guidance counselling certification from Queen’s University.

She is an accredited trainer for The Peace Education Foundation, a leader in conflict resolution training. The institute is ‘dedicated to educating children and adults in the dynamics of conflict resolution and promoting peacemaking skills in home, schools, and community.’

In a long and successful teaching career, she also served as a counsellor and workshop facilitator for SEL (social emotional learning) programming and The Peace Education Foundation throughout her school and school district and was a frequent conference presenter for SUNY Potsdam Faculty of Education USA.

She writes for The Divorce Magazine UK and her blog is seen regularly on Huffington Post Canada where the focus is life after divorce and parenting issues.

She is a writer and poet and is presently at work on a book based on her divorce experience.

‘fame is no talisman against human pain ..adultery is still adultery’ wrote Julia Cameron in her book The Right to Write.

It was in reference to her very public divorce from Martin Scorsese in the 1970s and his very public affair with Liza Minnelli.

She goes on to describe the feeding frenzy on her grief. There was the gossip that exploded everywhere. Friends thought she should see everything written in the tabloids. All of it caused Cameron enormous pain and yet the gossip continued.

Unfortunately, divorce breeds gossip in our society. It happens whether your breakup was tabloid-worthy or just the talk of your hometown.

Although I am not a public figure, our family was reasonably well known in my hometown at the time of my divorce.

It was a traumatic divorce based on his secret life, deception and abuse. It didn’t fit with his public persona, so I made the choice to tell people the truth. I hoped it might head off gossip. It didn’t.  The gossip trickled into my life through every crevice in my battered psyche.

When I read Cameron’s account and recalled my own experience it made me wonder- why do people gossip over someone’s divorce misery?

My closest friends were a circle of love and support. But people I didn’t know or knew very casually had a different reaction.

Does emotional distance affect the need for gossip-something like reading a tabloid? What happens to our compassion I wonder? Perhaps the person is thinking -phew I am glad that is not me -or naively-my spouse would never do that. No doubt, there are many reasons. As Cameron observed – we are all real people in the divorce gossip story, with real feelings.

You can’t stop people gossiping. But what can you do about the gossip that inevitably finds you after your divorce?

Prove to the people and the community that you are more than your divorce. How do you do that? Be big and bold in your post-divorce life. Cameron says “use your negative feelings as positive fuel’.   You do it in whatever way works for you. Julia Cameron got to work on a new script and the day after it was done she sold it to Paramount Studios.

I got to work on a project to work abroad for a year. It was a dream I’d had for some time. I had no idea how I was going to pull this project together but I went at it with the philosophy -You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

First and foremost, I wanted to make sure my sons supported the idea. They were young adults at the time. They were extremely supportive and excited about this opportunity.

There were many mountains to climb. After twenty-five years of marriage and being a couple, I was alone. This was my sole responsibility to make happen.

I wrestled with personal fear but gradually the excitement took over as my goal inched closer. It took me two years of meticulously checking off the ‘to do ‘ list.  My finances needed shoring up because like most people he left me with debts and commitments I had to fulfil.

I started getting more organized financially which was important given the project. After much planning, the day arrived. I filled two large duffel bags with a year’s worth of my life and boarded the plane. For a year there would be an ocean between me and my divorce.

The year abroad was life-changing. My future took shape. I began my writing career by writing a once a month travelogue for my hometown newspaper. I was slowly shaping a post-divorce me.

When I arrived in the country I knew no one. I made good friends quickly and travelled extensively. I learned to love the country and found out that my ancestral roots were there.

From that year experience, I was introduced to hill hiking. That led to a decade of organizing hiking trips and introducing many to the natural beauty of my adopted country.

The experience changed my life in many ways. There were many challenges and they helped rebuild my emotional strength. When I returned, I was not ‘the woman with the sordid divorce story’ but the woman who made the big bold decision to work abroad on her own for a year.

Every week, for the year following my return home, someone stopped me on the street to congratulate me and tell me they followed my adventures in the newspaper. I was more than another divorced woman with a salacious divorce story. I had successfully made a giant leap into my future.

Divorce is a detour and not a stop sign. Take control and fuel up your life with conviction. Write a brand new, exciting chapter in your life story.

If you are in need of a place to seek some advice on a way forward during separation and divorce please write to letterstolinda@thedivorcemagazine.co.uk – Reaching out is the first step. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ARTICLES BY LINDA SIMPSON 

ABOUT LINDA SIMPSON

“I take strength from your calm, your honesty, and the hope you give me for my future.” Cheryl 

Linda is a fresh voice in the divorce advice world. She offers a pragmatic, common sense approach to life after divorce issues based on over twenty years surviving and thriving following a very traumatic divorce.

As a single parent, her sons are an enormous source of joy in her life. She is a loving mother and grandmother to four delightful grandchildren.

She holds a degree from the University of Waterloo with concentrations in sociology and philosophy and guidance counselling certification from Queen’s University.

She is an accredited trainer for The Peace Education Foundation, a leader in conflict resolution training. The institute is ‘dedicated to educating children and adults in the dynamics of conflict resolution and promoting peacemaking skills in home, schools, and community.’

In a long and successful teaching career, she also served as a counsellor and workshop facilitator for SEL (social emotional learning) programming and The Peace Education Foundation throughout her school and school district and was a frequent conference presenter for SUNY Potsdam Faculty of Education USA.

She writes for The Divorce Magazine UK and her blog is seen regularly on Huffington Post Canada where the focus is life after divorce and parenting issues.

She is a writer and poet and is presently at work on a book based on her divorce experience.

When we divorce we lose a partner and we lose a shared history connected by people, objects and memories. This profound sense of loss is often the result of the hurt and haste in the leaving.

A friend describes how it happened to her:

 “I chose to leave our home. In all that tension and heartbreak I didn’t do the proper sort, purge and pack. I left with a suitcase, then came back on an arranged date with 4 friends, a car and a pickup truck for the other essentials, we had agreed on. No photos of my past, with him or even whatever I had in the house from before that. No cards, letters from anyone, not just him. Anything sentimental has been lost.‘

Does that sound familiar? The emotion of the moment does not usually lead to clear decision making. What has preceded the leaving is often a stark and vicious time. We are so emotionally battered there is hardly a space for collaboration.

For others what is left behind after the leaving is a little less tangible. Perhaps the division of property had been more equitable. However, the shared memories of raising a family, or special holidays spent altogether, and any number of other events might be so painful to consider we lose the pleasure of those happy memories as well. The loss cannot be boxed up to carry out the door but is just as much a loss as any piece of furniture.

Whether they are solid like letters or intangible like memories, in the aftermath and the resurrection of a life and future we need to accept the losses that have occurred.  Railing against the injustice of it all helps for a time but is not the long run solution.

There are so many strong emotions when we divorce – anger and the emptiness from the sense of loss being two that sit at the top of the heap.

Facing loss and dealing with it are part of the healing process. It is a step in reclaiming our personal power. We might have felt powerless during the lead up to the separation but we do not need to feel that way after the divorce. We need to make the choice to face our losses and find a place for them in this new life.

These are some lessons I learned about loss in the aftermath of my divorce.

The first decade of my marriage involved many happy family times. It all happened well before the abuse began and the lifetime of deception was revealed. It would be years before I could laugh together with my sons about shared family times.

I allowed my grief too much control over me. It is one regret I have because I denied my sons the opportunity to affirm that there were happy times in the beginning in spite of the misery that shaped the final years of the marriage. My inability to face the loss denied my sons the comfort of those shared memories together for a time.

As my counselor said to me when I felt my former spouse had stolen my whole life with his secrets and lies—my memories and my happiness were mine. She was right.

I worked to find a way to laugh with my sons about those happy times and make them our memories. It didn’t happen overnight. But finally it did. We sat together and laughed and even acknowledged my former spouse in the conversation.

As for tangibles, be cautious in what you throw out or change in the aftermath of a divorce. In my situation our family cottage had been the scene of many hurtful times leading up to the divorce. After the divorce my oldest son was adamant we would sell the cottage. There were too many bad memories.

But my intuition said we could weather this and create our own cottage memories. It took a number of years and it wasn’t easy but it was worth it.

Now it is the family beacon. We have a bounty of new laughter and memories at the cottage that belong to us. The ghosts of the sad times still linger a bit. But they are there to remind us of our great good fortune in having what we have today.

Learn to mould favourite traditions into your future. The Christmas holiday season is filled with family customs. One that has remained for me is the playing of a certain record every Christmas morning. That music announced the morning for me as a child and then for my sons as they grew up. As we all gathered on Christmas morning this past year my four grandchildren danced with joy to that same music. That is my memory!

Be patient with yourself. It takes time to tame the many aspects of your loss. Remember –it is your life, your memories, and your future. Make it the best it can be.

If you are in need of a place to seek some advice on a way forward during separation and divorce please write to letterstolinda@thedivorcemagazine.co.uk – Reaching out is the first step. 

READ LINDA’S COLUMN – LETTERS TO LINDA HERE

ABOUT LINDA SIMPSON

“I take strength from your calm, your honesty, and the hope you give me for my future.” Cheryl 

Linda is a fresh voice in the divorce advice world. She offers a pragmatic, common sense approach to life after divorce issues based on over twenty years surviving and thriving following a very traumatic divorce.

As a single parent, her sons are an enormous source of joy in her life. She is a loving mother and grandmother to four delightful grandchildren.

She holds a degree from the University of Waterloo with concentrations in sociology and philosophy and guidance counselling certification from Queen’s University.

She is an accredited trainer for The Peace Education Foundation, a leader in conflict resolution training. The institute is ‘dedicated to educating children and adults in the dynamics of conflict resolution and promoting peacemaking skills in home, schools, and community.’

In a long and successful teaching career, she also served as a counsellor and workshop facilitator for SEL (social emotional learning) programming and The Peace Education Foundation throughout her school and school district and was a frequent conference presenter for SUNY Potsdam Faculty of Education USA.

She writes for The Divorce Magazine UK and her blog is seen regularly on Huffington Post Canada where the focus is life after divorce and parenting issues.

She is a writer and poet and is presently at work on a book based on her divorce experience.