Tag: moving forward

Falling Into Place

Published on by Kimberly Novak5 Comments

Tough Decisions Ahead Road SignRemember that age-old question that we were all asked when upon high school graduation and even during some job interviews?  “Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20, 25…years?”  I totally answered mine wrong, if we were graded on that I would’ve flunked out!  Thank goodness those hopes and aspirations are not written in stone, therefore we can change them any time we want!  But when we are forced to change them, that’s when it get’s tricky.

At this point in my life I am supposed to be happily married enjoying the last of the teen years with my children, and getting ready to prepare for empty nest syndrome. I am clearly not where I planned to be!  During my divorce I often found myself in the “crystal ball” moment.  Saying things like ” if only I could see what was coming”.  I think we all feel that sometimes, if we could see the path ahead we may make our decisions differently.

Those of us that are divorced, or have lost someone near to us never imagined we would be where we are today and coping with it takes patience, perseverance, hope, faith, strength, and most of all courage.  There have been a lot of decisions I’ve had to make over the past two and a half years and not knowing if I was making them correctly was very stressful.  I had no idea how one decision would lead to another, and so on.

In the heat of the moment right on divorce day, I made a decision that has caused, stress, financial strain and fear; surprisingly lately happiness.   Had I been asked that same question again after the divorce I still would have gotten it wrong!  Survivors of loss most often fear change for the rest of their lives because the change we faced was so painful for us; the change that came from my decision was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do since the divorce.

Tonight a little light was shined on my path and I am now finally starting to see that even though I would never have thought this is where I would be, things are actually starting to fall into place.  Perhaps I am on the path that I am supposed to be on.  Ironically, I had been pathlightworking on a literal path just yesterday right in the place that I thought I’d never be.  Here I am and I’m a survivor!  I didn’t know it was happening but I have embraced this very difficult change, faced it head on and I am rocking it!   It is becoming clear that just because I thought I made the wrong decision, doesn’t make it wrong.  It may just mean that the purpose I thought it was supposed to fill in my life was not what I envisioned.

I am where I am today because that is right where I am meant to be, and I will have many more decisions in the future that are connected with this big one.

If there is one tip I can pass along on this subject, it is to trust yourself, even if you think you are making the wrong decision it may actually be the right one down the line.  And also realize that you never know who you are going to need in your life or how you are going to need them.  Keep those that love you close by you so that when you are in a low moment or are ready to celebrate the happy ones they will be there to share in them with you.

Tonight I can see that my initial decision was so  hard  for me to make because deep down I must have known that it would impact my life for a very long time.

Is there a decision you made during your struggle, that will be connected to the next?  Please share.

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

Related links/Blogs

Overcomer, Mandisa

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don’t panic

Published on by Kimberly Novak6 Comments

dream-butterflyThe caterpillar has just realized that she is trapped in her cocoon until she is ready and strong enough to fly on her own.  What do you think is going through her  mind?  I’d like to think she is calm, relaxed, and reflecting on what her future will be like once she is transformed.  Perhaps she closes her eyes and in a calm voice whispers to herself, “don’t panic”.

They are only two little words, 8 letters in total but when I speak them or hear them there is no calm in my voice.  Recently after a Chinese dinner I opened a fortune cookie.  I’m usually very excited to see what lies ahead, but this time when I read those two little words my pulse began to race.  All I could think of was why?  Why should I not panic?  What do I have coming that I will want to or need to panic, and how long to these Chinese fortunes last?

Life is full of bumps along the road and hills to climb and panicking through them will only make it harder to survive.  I thought about the past few years and wondered if there were any situations where I did panic, and I was able to think of a few.  When I look back on them now I can see that being in a panic mode did not really help me to resolve anything.  Then I looked even further back into my marriage, to an incident that if I would have processed it correctly, I would have seen what was happening then, instead of six years later.

When we panic we over-anticipate things which can make it look to us like we are over reacting.  That is what happened to me.  Instead of calmly looking at the situation one piece of evidence at a time and focusing on the facts and what I was seeing, I panicked.  I went into a OMG mode and I missed clues,  over looked facts, and ultimately that led me blindly into the false explanation that I would soon accept as truth.  Those emotions can cause you to look at things irrationally and at times you may even become fearful and hysterical.  I had immediately imagined the worst but because I was in that rushed surge of emotions, I convinced myself that I was wrong.  The emotions that panicking brought out of me were crazy, therefore I discounted it all.  Since then I have learned to trust my gut feelings and I know now that if I want to really hear them and feel them I have to go through difficult situations in a calm manner.

I can’t go back and change that moment but I can certainly learn from it.  I can let that moment go and make sure that in the future I pause before reacting.  Storms come and go in our lives just like in the weather.  At times we get a warning and other times they just drop out of the sky.  It is important that we have our emergency response system working properly.  At the first sign of trouble, or when the first dark cloud rolls in….pause….take a deep breath and whisper “don’t panic”, I’ve got this.  Then try to focus on the facts and what you need to do in order to grow, change, or move forward out of the storm.  Learn what ever life lessons are coming from it, accept any changes, and take pride in knowing that you have survived it.  As the storm passes, spread your wings and soar!z_p18-The-butterfly

I do not even want to imagine how many dizzy butterflies there would be if every caterpillar went into a OMG panic mode when they emerged from their cocoon.  Don’t be a dizzy butterfly….take a deep breath….close your eyes…..and whisper “don’t panic”.

Have you panicked and it altered your reasoning?  Please share in the comments.

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

3/17/13

Related Links/Blogs

Need You Now, Plumb

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Across the Bored

Emotional Memory

Published on by Kimberly Novak7 Comments

Brain-conceptual-image-puzzleAnyone who has spent time on a fitness program knows that the muscles of our body are equipped with muscle memory.  Meaning that when we work out our muscles grow accustomed to different types of movement, thus turning it into an unconscious learning process for the body.  What would happen if we apply that to our emotions?

In my last post I talked about PTSD after divorce and this topic goes right along with it.  Recently I have suffered from effects of both PTSD and what I believe is emotional memory.  It has taken me by complete surprise.  I was even reluctant to publish the post thinking that it wasn’t really relevant to those suffering a divorce, but I was quickly put to ease when I started researching it.  I’m glad I decided to talk about it because it is a real problem and there are many of us suffering from it.  With support and the ability to share our stories, we can all learn how to get past this current emotional state.

At this point on my journey I was convinced that I was past all of that.  I had dealt with what I thought were all of my emotions during my divorce and for the first year afterwards.  Like I said in the previous post, I had forgiven and moved on.  I am finding out now that the journey of healing is a longer road than I thought.  I have reached a pretty high mountain and it was no where on my radar screen, it just appeared.

Take a second and pretend you are a  little kid again and have  just entered an amusement park….I bet right now you are feeling excited and happy and it feels just the same as it did all those years ago.  That is emotional memory.  We don’t think about it when it is something that makes us happy, we just accept the feeling because it is a good one.  It affects us in a totally different way when it is an emotion that caused us pain or sadness.

I was recently in a brief relationship with someone and just before it ended I could sense that something was a little off.  My intuition, which I finally am in tune with, was telling me that something was different.  When we had the conversation and ended things I felt exactly the same as I did when I received the email telling me my marriage was over.  I was overcome with emotions that I should not have been feeling because they were left over from the divorce.  It made no sense to me because you could not even compare the pain of my divorce to this current event.  However, since both situations ended in a loss, that was the trigger.  Even though they had very different outcomes the same emotional memory response was felt.  When this happened I started out being very angry with myself.  I was upset because I was spending more time with these emotions that I had already dealt with two years ago.  I was feeling very frustrated with the fact that maybe I’m crying now because I was too strong when I should have been weak, and really taken the time to face those feelings.  I quickly realized that is not the case.  No matter how much time I took dealing with those emotions as they were happening, my brain was busy storing them up.  It took this event to bring them back to the front of my memory, thus filling me with the exact emotional response. emotional memory

I will admit that all of this has been pretty scary.  I’m now faced with the fact that anything in life may produce these memory responses, and that they can happen at any time.   The hardest part will be allowing myself to live life and experience situations where some of these feelings may resurface.  I was under the impression that only the divorce itself could produce those emotions, and that since the divorce was over, I should never feel like that again….I was wrong.

I know now that my journey of healing is still very much in progress and I am thankful for the recent relationship.  Not only because it brought joy and happiness back into my life, but also because it took losing it to know that I still have a lot of work to do!  It is a blessing to me that I had enough courage to put myself back out there.  I am also grateful that it has happened now rather than ten years down the road.   Because right now I am still in battle mode and I will use the strength that I gained from having survived the divorce to learn how to handle this new stage of the healing and transformation process..  When it comes up again, which it will, I will be ready and know how to respond.  I’m slowly getting past the anger of it all and realizing that only I can choose how I handle this.  I am the only one living it, therefore I am the only one who can move me past it.   In a recent conversation with someone who means the world to me, I was reminded of an old song that speaks volumes for how I am currently feeling.  In the voice styling  of Joe Cocker  and Jennifer Warnes:  the road is long and there are mountains in our way, but we could climb a step every day….love lift us up where we belong!  I like to replace the word  love with they’ll, because as I climb each step of  any painful mountain, they’ll bring me closer to being fully healed.

I’ve begun keeping a dream journal to help me see what other subconscious emotions may be brewing inside this little brain of mine.  Talking it out with close friends and my counselor has also been beneficial.   I think it’s a little early for me to offer any concrete advice but I would like to suggest that if you are going through this, do not try to suppress it.  Let it out!  It will be very hard to feel all of the painful emotions again but it is the only way to heal through it.  If we keep suppressing them our emotional memory responses will never learn how to properly process them so that when they are brought out they are less painful each time.

I had several comments on the post relating to PTSD and I hope that there are other’s who will share their stories relating to that topic as well as this one.  Your comments and advice are welcome below!

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

1/11/13

Related Links/Blogs

Unconscious Emotion, Current Directions in Psychological Science

Intense Emotions and Strong Feelings, Psychology Today

What Comes Out When Squeezed, Missy Tree

What It Means To Be Human, anonymoUSly obvioUS