How to Be Beautiful in Divorce
“But babysitting is for teenagers .”
That is the thought that ran through my 26-year-old mind.
I was living and working in Los Angeles while my husband went to school and wanted to be perceived as an adult, not someone who had time for babysitting.
It was really a one-off request, not a big commitment. A family I knew from my time in Minneapolis had just moved to the area and wanted a friendly face to watch their kids once while they made new connections. I agreed somewhat reluctantly and showed up ready to be of service.
As the couple started to leave, they said an interesting goodbye to their daughter. They said, “Ok honey, have fun, be beautiful!”
They could tell from my quizzical look that I wasn’t tracking the last part about being beautiful. The mom herself had been a print magazine model, so I wasn’t sure what she was trying to convey. She took me aside and said she wanted to raise her daughter in a way that recognized beauty as a function of behavior and not one of looks.
It mattered a great deal to her that her daughter understand that she is beautiful when she thinks, feels, and acts beautifully. She is beautiful when she acts with love toward herself and others.
When we use the word beautiful to describe other people in the traditional way, we are employing a version of the old line “Congratulations on your face.” The genetic lottery does not create beauty. Our hearts and actions do.
Obviously it stuck with me, and I am often commenting to my clients how beautiful they are. Being this kind of beautiful in divorce has nothing to do with our hair, our makeup, or our outfit.
Being beautiful in divorce has everything to do with how we evolve into the kind of people who protect ourselves, interrupt our hurtful patterns of relating, and start Living in a Way that aligns with our new reality.
Last week I watched some of my truly beautiful clients do these things:
Show up and be the bigger person around her former in-laws for the sake of her children
Own that parts of her divorce really aren’t that hard when she lives out of her home base of values
Speak truthfully and let her former partner feel whatever it is he needs to feel rather than anticipating and attempting to control him
Face her own truth that the emotional abuse won’t stop if she keeps putting herself in harms way
Planned a graduation party that includes dad, even though it is awkward for her, so that her child can feel supported by both parents
My heart is full of stories like these of people making their lives better and more aligned with their values. On the road of divorce, which can be so long and so very challenging, it is vital that we rearrange what it means to do this well and to do this beautifully.
Keep being beautiful, my friends.
