Today marks the end of my mourning and I feel ready for it. At the start of this purposeful mourning period, I carried around the dead body of the marriage I once thought I had. In some way, I was unable to accept the reality that a stinking rotting corpse was what I had treasured. I minimized myself in an effort to save the relationship and lost my identity in the fog of abuse. Eff that!
I am a strong, lively, genuine woman deserving of the same respect and thoughtfulness I give. I deserve to not be abused, but loved and cherished instead. Kindness is not just for others, but myself also.
I finally treated myself kindly when I gave myself permission to feel sorry for myself. That act of my compassion allowed me to be weak and imperfect. This allowed me to release a lot of shoulds I had accumulated.
I know there will be moments of anger and sadness that rise up, but I no longer feel an overwhelming sense of loss about my place in life. I have adjusted to my reality, which includes a world of promise in my future. I am genuinely happy to cross this threshhold.
❤
Married to Hyde 
Amen! I am so happy for you.
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The difficult thing is losing something toxic yet still needing to grieve. I love how you are giving yourself permission to allow self-pity. I come from a family of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop feeling sorry for yourself” words that are spoken with no love and because how I am feeling makes someone else uncomfortable. And then there is hope, and promise of a better life as you said. I am happy that you are allowing yourself this time to grieve and rejoice.
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Thank you, Michele. My dad is very much a “pull-yourself- up” person in an unhealthy way and it has skewed how I dealt with things up to this point. I believe there is a lot of unshed tears from the past stuck inside of me, keeping me linked to the past. I took my first yoga class in over a year and found myself crying in class…that sad energy wants to leave and I need to help it find the exit.
My 21 days have passed, but I am going to honor my feelings when they come and not try to cut them off. The purposeful grieving was really about giving myself permission to do this because I grew up understanding that ANY self-pity is bad. Wrong. Self-pity is a type of self-care when it is not used as an excuse to do nothing.
There is hope for all of us, no matter how bleak circumstances get. Hope in God’s promise to never forsake us. ❤
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