Why Your Former Spouse is the Best Gift You Are Getting This Holiday Season
I have a friend who seems to go inside my heart, rifle around secretly, and then present me with the most beautiful, longed for and perfect gifts. She looks at my life, sees what is missing, and sends it to me with a card that says some version of “You’re amazing. You need this. I love you”.
For those of you who don’t have a friend like this, never fear. The universe (use your own meaning here – God, Spirit, Essence) has this same uncanny gift of giving you exactly what you need. Unfortunately, it may not always be what you want. If you are divorcing or divorced, I can guarantee you that the universe has already given you the perfect gift this holiday season – it’s your former spouse.
I can hear your resistance from way over here!
Most of you right now would categorize your former spouse as a lump of coal at best, certainly not a gift, and not at all what you want. But hang with me for just a minute. What would be different about this holiday and your day-to-day life if you could see your former partner as a gift? To get you shifting in this direction, here are some ways I know that your former spouse has been and continues to be a gift to you. They definitely…
Helped you earn a life school graduate degree in communication and problem-solving.
Divorces start with amicable intentions, but the devil is in the details. The ongoing discussions, exhaustion, and triggered emotions often lead to painful breakdowns in communication and problem-solving. The way you talk through, think about, and approach your former spouse about tricky topics will grow or already has grown immensely through this process. Their particular ways of resisting, complaining, and gaslighting have already matured your communication patterns. Tackling other difficult life issues pales in comparison to what it takes to handle this one. Bring it on, you’re more ready than ever before.
Pushed you to become an even better parent.
When you co-parent with someone who routinely lets you down, or worse, lets your child down, you step in and you step up. The mama bear in you has been working overtime since your marriage started dissolving making sure that your kids are ok. The other parent’s failure to show up, unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, and inconsistencies have produced in you an unwavering commitment to the safety and protection of your children. You are a beautiful mother. You became so in the pressure cooker of handling the difficult situations your former partner presented you with.
Focused you to carve out a clear identity for yourself.
During your marriage, you likely compromised some part of yourself on behalf of your partner’s wellbeing. You did this out of love, and you don’t need to regret it. When you move through divorce, though, your primary focus is no longer the other person’s happiness. Instead, you have room to start looking at your own life with greater attention and experimenting with what really matters to you. You drop certain things and take on others, all while clarifying your values. What mattered to your former spouse served as the jumping-off point from which to start evaluating what now matters only to you.
Left space for you to become stronger and smarter than you’ve ever been before.
Divorce breaks you and remakes you. The space left by your partner’s absence forced you to develop an internal sense of perseverance. You had to figure things out, and you did. You rooted into yourself even more than you did when you were married. How many of you figured out how to run the lawnmower, fix the weird noise in the sink, or handle your financial investments for the first time? Did you become your own tech support or figure out how to expertly juggle kids’ schedules and equipment from two addresses? Your capacities now are way bigger than you thought possible.
Developed a compassion in you for others on a hard journey.
Divorce takes you to some very dark places. The despair is real and all-encompassing. As you start to recover from the struggle, you now have in you a deep compassion for the struggles of others. I tell my own kids that we all have a limp in life. For some, it is a visible limp, and for others, it is a limp of the heart. You come alongside those limps now with a sensitive heart. You know what it’s like to have it all fall apart, and you know how to show up for people who are new to that path.
It may not come wrapped with a bow this year, but take a few quiet moments this season to reflect on all that you’ve become through your divorce process. Our former partners are a gift – not in the traditional sense – but in the sense that they open us to new ways of living, new strengths we didn’t know we had, and new commitments to being the women we most hope to be in the world.
