Crap cleared: An identification with labels
My mind had created an image of myself as I thought I wanted to be, based on my upbringing and social conditioning. I imagined that when I was to marry, it would be forever. The title of a divorcee was never one that I expected to have... ever. My life would not go that way.
Well, it did!
So when it happened, devastation and a state of utter despair overcame me. When my husband walked away from me, and our two children, it was like I had my whole world, as I knew it to be and wanted it to be, ripped out from underneath me. For the last four years I have been trying to rebuild that world.
It pained me to come to terms with the fact that I was now labelled a 'Single Mother'. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would need to perform that role. I didn't know how to do it, so I conformed to what I believed was societies stereotype of this label and acted out the part. It was only when I began to listen to my heart, that my healing process began.
Many times I have wondered what lesson the end of my marriage was supposed to teach me. As I progressed through my many stages of healing I struggled to find the good that was to come out of it.
Well, today I found it!
As I read from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth this morning, I realised that I have finally accepted the loss of my marriage.
He wrote:
"Whenever you completely accept a loss,
you go beyond ego, and who you are,
the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges."
And
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful
for the evolution of your consciousness."
I realised that I could disassociate myself from the concept of "my marriage" as a thing that I identified my self-worth with. Until recently, I could not say, "I am divorced". I would tick the 'single' box on forms instead of the 'divorced' box and I got angry because I didn't think that the status I held in reference to marriage really mattered. I have now shed my ego-attachment to labels such as married, single, or divorced.
The road to recovery from that devastation and despair was long and hard,
but I travelled it and I’m at the end of the line.
- Peace love joy freedom.
- Oh world, if only you didn’t work in such mysterious ways. The fog of mystery is clearing.
- ♥♥♥
Thank you for leaving me,
it led me to discover who I really am.
Good on you Jo
ReplyDeletexxx
Yo
Nice awareness Jo. Being a single mum was my greatest fear, I manifested it when I was just 26yrs old and my daughter was 10mths old. I am now a single mum once again after another failed relationship (not marriage - I've never been married - yet... )
ReplyDeletePart of the reason I feared the reality of being a "single mum", was the social stigma attached to it, and the other part was the financial and emotional struggle that I'd watched my mother go through when she left my abusive step-father.
However, after the initial shock and the depression I fell into, eventually I began to rebuild in a direction that I would not have gone in if it had not been for him leaving us, so like you I came to the point where I too was thankful. It was a long hard road, and then when I met my son's father a new journey and a new lesson, but I don't regret any of it x
Thank you for sharing Jacleen. What wonderful lessons and amazing journeys we have.
ReplyDeleteLove to you.
Jo