Are you an independent woman/man? Out there doing it, making it happen on your own? How successful are you at it doing it all alone? I would take a gander that you’ve faced some difficulties.  As a soon to be divorced middle age female I have seen all manner of STRUGGLE in the last year, it’s been no cakewalk. So many things have gone wrong, so many things have been broken and in need of a fix.  In my previous life if something was broken I could ask him to fix it, if I had a bad dream and woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with my heart pounding I could tap him and say, “hey, just had a bad dream, can I talk about it.”  I’m not living in that world now.  In leaving that dependency had to be and has been broken.  No longer dependent on assistance from a spouse, I had to figure out, how in the world to live and live well on my own.  I had to ask the questions: How does one person handle all the stuff that two have handled for so many years?  If I have a question, who do I ask? Does being on your own really mean being alone and duking it out in the cold world on my own? These were tough questions, especially when the knowledge is short and the resources appear to be even shorter. What I found out though is that I’m really not alone in all this and I am so glad about it.

There’s some folk my life, family, friends, church members whom I love dearly, who have been a wealth of information, a shoulder to cry on, and a sounding board for all manner of ideas as well as plenty of foolishness and carrying on.  I learned that there is no reason on this earth for me to feel/think/act as though I was under some sort of punishment for making the decision that I made. I finally got it that, even though I do most times decide to cry alone, if I wanted to cry/scream or express any other sort of emotion I could do it with those that I know, and love and trust, they were right there for me. I was hesitant to do so in the beginning, but I dipped my toe in anyway and found out what real love was, what family was. I count them all family. I also got a better sense of my spiritual self, I got to know that part of me in a very different very personal way because in the proverbial “midnight hour” there was no one but me and God and I couldn’t be more thankful for that relationship.

 Independence is good, learning how to get it on your own is fabulous, understanding that there’s no mandate for superman/woman-hood at the end of a long-term partnership was the most important lesson for me.  So again I ask the question, are you out there trying to do it all on your own? You don’t have to; will you ask someone to help you right now? Will you call on the one in whom you believe to see you through? Give it a try, you’ll be just fine for the effort.