Welcome to episode five of this series called surviving an unwanted divorce. And of course, I’m here with Dr. Joel Mudamali and Jim Crest. You know, recently I was out to lunch with some friends and one of them asked me, “What was the number one thing you did that helped your healing?” >> And at first I rambled a bit and then I landed on one powerful word, >> acceptance.
So I replied back to her, I have finally accepted my life. Now this was not a resignation. Not at all. It was a declaration that I’ve made the decision to love my imperfect, messy, unpredictable, sometimes unfair, and sometimes unbelievably good life. M >> I have decided that I am making peace with the fact that there will be very odd things about my reality and I am not living the cookie cutter norm.
And a big part of that is because of the unwanted divorce I walk through. But it is time and I think I’ve gotten there where I’m making peace with what is now really hard because of this divorce. I’m making peace with the fact that I may never get some answers to some really important questions.
I’m making peace with what is, what isn’t, and what I don’t know about my future. >> And this acceptance was hard fought for. >> Yeah. >> You know, I remember one time I was talking to my oldest daughter and I was just saying, I I just want life to be normal again. I I just want to feel at peace again. and she very quickly said, “Mom, you might need to redefine what normal is and what peace is in this season of your life.
” >> And I felt like that was such profound advice. And as we’ve talked so many times, Jim, acceptance is a really important part as you walk through the stages of grief. I really felt like this episode was so crucial in this series, surviving an unwanted divorce, because you will do a lot of grieving.
I did a lot of grieving and honestly because I wasn’t grieving the kind of loss where a person passed away. I was grieving a loss because someone walked away. Yeah. >> I didn’t know how to grieve this. And also when you get a divorce, people if if someone dies in your family, people know what to do.
Like they bring a casserole, they come and sit with you, they attend a funeral, and there’s a protocol that kind of marks this very hard event in your life. >> Well, I’ve often called my divorce the death of my marriage, but nobody’s bringing me casserles. No, you know, the world doesn’t pause when you go through a divorce, and a lot of times people don’t know what to do.
So there was not only grief of the divorce, but it was also grief of what losses happened in other relationships. There was a ripple effect that went out and it was there was a lot of grief to deal with. So Jim, I want you to go through the five stages of grief and let’s talk about those. >> I had a thought a moment ago in all serious.
I wish uh your husband, my friend and brother, our friend and brother Chaz was here. He’s such a powerful uh 12steper and they’re so good. And of course in the 12 steps we have many good things. Uh and the the big one is the serenity prayer. God grant me. So it’s not coming from other people or just within me that God grant me the serenity.
