The Breaking Point

Hello fellow Alimonia-ites!  It’s been three years since I started my journey as a “single woman” after being married for 18 years.  I finally feel like I’m turning a positive corner on what in retrospect has been the hardest decision and process that I have ever encountered in my life.  I mean let’s face it girlfriends, none of us Cinderella’s who feel that we have found “Prince charming carrying our golden slipper” ever approaches the altar of holy matrimony thinking, one day far in the future, this marriage that I have staked my whole life on is going to end in pain, lovelessness, emptiness, and loneliness, and any other adjective that you can muster to describe the trauma of a marital relationship coming to an end. 

So that morning in August, everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING in my life as I had known it for the past 18 years came to a screeching halt! All of the years of endless arguing and fighting about issues that would never be resolved, my husbands out of control emotions that mounted to epic proportions after he discovered the infidelity on my part, all hit like an avalanche, and collided with the force of a locomotive train.  This argument that had raised the roof of our house, although it was number 1 million-and-one of the million we had encountered over our 18-year marriage, this one was different.  The impact of this one, felt like a collision of unrecoverable magnitude.  I knew in my heart that what the little voice inside was telling me was true “You just cannot do this anymore.”  The anger and rage I felt towards my husband were palpable, and I feared a physical altercation if I didn’t leave and leave quickly. 

As I write today, the emotions of that day are still so very real.  I sit weeping now as I type these words, remembering the look on my teenage daughter’s face, as I stood shaking, and emotionally distraught from the interaction I had just had with her dad. With the lump still in my throat, I finally took a deep breath and formed the words, “Your dad and I are not going to be able to stay together, and mom is leaving!”   I have just described to you the day that I reached what I like to call my breaking point.  Breaking points don’t always feel highly dramatic (as mine was) they are sometimes reached when a woman makes a silent inward decision that she is done! Maybe you remember your breaking point, or maybe you’re there right now?

Here are a few signs to identify when you’ve reached a breaking point:

·         If you have talked and talked so much in your relationship, that you’re all talked out, and you now have no more energy, or more importantly desire to engage in arguments that lead you on a rabbit trail, you’ve probably reached a breaking point.

·         If the emotional abuse and neglect suffered at the hand of the abuser/spouse is no longer tolerable to you, you’ve probably reached a breaking point.

·         If you and your value have been continuously diminished and marginalized over and over again, and you’re have now been forced to the point where you have to make a decision about your future happiness and fulfillment, you’ve probably reached a breaking point. 

What I can tell you is that although the stress of divorce is real, you can and will survive your breaking point, despite being so stretched and stressed at times, that you will feel like you’re going to have a break down.  But I found the old adage to be true, every opportunity to “breakdown” has hidden within it an opportunity to “breakthrough!” The choice is yours, and you can do it!  The power is yours, and the ultimate outcome of your health and well- being comes from the choice you make today to finally choose YOU, over and above anyone, and everything else.

I look forward to sharing various parts of my journey with you in hopes that you will be inspired and filled with hope. It’s time to finally embrace the fact that you too can navigate the rocky, turbulent, unfamiliar, and sometimes downright earth-shattering emotional tsunami of divorce, and come out on the other side stronger, wiser, clearer, happier, and with a zest for life that you never thought possible! 

Let’s go!  Let’s move beyond our breaking points, and into new places of breakthrough, where we learn how to not only survive but to thrive after divorce.

Jana Hartley-

When I started Alimonia Life I was unsure of the direction, I just knew that I wanted to
create a safe space for anyone who found themselves on the road to divorce.
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