Sometimes I don’t want to feel all my feelings because there are so many of them when navigating life after loss and divorce and deconstruction… and f*ck this is a lot.
This season has been so disorienting as I find my footing after splitting from my partner. It’s been two years, and it still feels really really heavy. Even though we have gotten into a groove of co-parenting the kids and seeing them on a consistent basis, it still feels awful.
There’s been a lot of big feelings in our house.
Big feelings from the kids. Even bigger feelings from me. Learning how to regulate our emotions individually and collectively has been…. a TRIP.
I’ve felt a lot of guilt,
a lot of shame
a lot of anger
a lot of loneliness
and a whole lot of everything.
I know it won’t feel this big forever. But some days it feels like it will.
My therapist told me the other day that it usually takes about 5 years to feel settled after divorce. FIVE. YEARS. UGH.
A lot of these feelings post-separation have been intensified by reclaiming myself after leaving the evangelical church, and settling into parenting after loss on my own.
I’m learning how to trust myself. Trust my own voice. Trust my choices. Trust my body. Trust me.
It’s been a lot of trust building. A lot of sitting with these big emotions.
It feels scary, and big, and impossible.
And yet, I’m learning to sit with them, bit by bit.
I’m reminding myself - as I once did when I experienced all those pregnancy losses, which feels like centuries ago - that it won’t feel like this forever.
It.
Won’t.
Feel.
Like.
This.
Forever.
So even though it’s scary, I will feel all my feelings so that I can be the best version of myself for me… and my kids.