Guest Author - Stephanie L Watson

Before you started the divorce process you probably had a script (in your mind) that described where you thought your life was headed. You were a certain character within your script and divorce has drastically changed your place in that life script. Being a wife was likely a main identifying factor in your former life script. Now that you're not going to be a wife anymore, now is the time you will begin reorganizing your life and revising your script. This re-scripting is not done just by your actions, but by your thoughts as well.

As you go through the shock and disbelief surrounding your actual divorce and move through adaptation and adjustment you eventually come to place where you are finally identifying with your new designation as a divorced person, an ex-wife, a single woman. This is a good thing, and it must come in order for you to move on to a happy and satisfying life. You aren't quite at acceptance but you are in a place where you can envision yourself in a new way. This is the best time to start deciding what of the old life to keep and what to change. A great time to figure out who you are.

Obviously if you are a mother you're always going to be that. But maybe you're becoming a new kind of mother. Perhaps you have to work a full time job, maybe you've become a student now, you may even be dating, regardless if it is one of these things are all of them, you are just now learning what it is like to be the new you. You may be a more easy going mother. You may require more of your children than you did in the past as to household chores and other responsibilities. None of these things are bad, because by doing these things you are probably experiencing a new type of freedom.

Enjoy this time because you're at a place where you can look back upon your divorce without terror, without anger, and without heart-wrenching sadness each time. You still do not know who you are, or what you want, but you're learning. Even if you're not totally sure about everything you're less inclined to believe that your life and your children's lives, are ruined and more apt to see the goodness of your new adventure.

You are shaking things up and becoming the new character in your script. When someone first meets you, you are no longer, “Mrs. So and So”, now you are “Just Me”. You no longer stutter and stammer coming up with an answer to who are you and what do you do. That can be a very freeing feeling because it means you're letting go of the past and moving into your new role.

You're now coping better with change and maybe you are starting to feel excitement about the possibilities. The ground you are walking on feels more firm, not topsy-turvy as it did in the beginning of this process. Continue on this path of reorganization by making smart choices born of thought and research, not fear, anger or resentment and before you know it you will finally be able to reclaim your life and it will be full, exciting, and all yours.