Guest Author - Stephanie L Watson

When you go through a divorce after you've gone through the shock and disbelief and all those horrible feelings eventually you have to learn to adapt and adjust to your new life. Sometimes the fact that we got a divorce makes us question our entire belief system. It makes us wonder who we really are. If we aren't so and so's wife who are we?

Often when a couple divorces one of the spouses ends up keeping the friends so that means your social life changes too. If you and your husband used to play cards with the Carter's on Friday night, or play golf with the Joneses, or do a lot of social activities with his coworker's families then even your very support system of friends may be gone too.

Many times when you get a divorce you have to find a different house or move to an apartment instead of a house because the money won't stretch far enough to keep it. That means your neighborhood changes, your child's school changes, pretty much everything about your surroundings changes.

If you were a stay at home mother, it is likely that you are now going to have to enter the world of the working mother. Again, another change.

All these transitions can be traumatic because they happen so quickly. But, after you get over the shock you can and will adapt. The thing is, you have to actually "actively" seek to adapt to your new life. If you don't and you keep focusing on what was - treating the past like your "real" life and the new life like a nightmare, you will not adapt and adjust and you will continue being sad, miserable, and depressed.

If you're stuck in the past take your first step towards the future by accepting your new life. Call it a new life. Call it a new journey. Your new changed life is a new and exciting adventure. I know it sounds silly and too simplistic, but our minds are wonderful because they really can adapt to a new way of doing things and learn to be happy in it. The trick is to take baby steps into our new life. You don't have to accept it all at once. Before you know it, you really will not want to go back to the past. You really will be happier with how things are right now.

To help you along with your goal of adapting, get a notebook, or use your computer, and start a gratitude journal. Write in your journal each night after the kids are down, the chores are done, and you are ready for bed. Write at least one good thing that happened to you each day right before you go to bed at night. While you're laying in bed, falling asleep focus on that good event.