Original Post Date: January 18, 2018, Portugal

Bravery, not so much, more like Longing, Awareness & Grief.

A few folks have described my adventure as being brave….while arguing with my readership is not a grand idea (‘wouldn’t be prudent’), I do feel compelled to provide some additional ideas on this topic. 

The idea for this adventure was sourced out of several things…., a heart longing, the inspiration to start fresh, an identified need to get out of Charlotte and some much earned time for self-indulgence (self-care) and rediscovery.

First, I am extremely privileged to be able to make this journey and I am very aware and grateful for that privilege. I owe 20 yr old Jaime, 25 yr old Jaime, 30 yr old Jaime, and 35 yr old Jaime many thanks for working so hard, being financially savvy and creating the opportunities that I am taking advantage of at the age of 40. 

I also owe my parents for sending me to good schools and instilling in me a drive to succeed, that shaped my 20’s and 30’s in such a way that I find myself in this position.

The only way that I can really accept the end of my marriage is to do something magical and incredible with the pieces of it. I don’t think I could be able to accept the undoing without having this other greater, bigger thing on the other side. Otherwise it just hurts too much.

There has been a tiny seed of an idea for a book slowly taking root in my heart since this summer. When I began to accept the finality of the end of our marriage, it opened up the possibility for me to truly pursue the book idea with immediacy – I had previously planned to weave it into normal life, but now it could become the focus. This book idea inspired the choice of destinations for this trip and the trip evolved from there (more on the book in another post).

Knowing Myself – Saying Good-Bye to Home

I could have waited to pull the trigger on the travels, the book, and spent time instead sorting out the ‘what’s next’ of my life…finding a place to live, thinking about a job, blah, blah, blah. 

But you see dear reader, I am coming to know myself better, and my large seeking compassionate heart could not have handled staying in Charlotte – I needed to get away. 

I knew that it would break my heart further to watch my family (husband and children) continue to live remnants of our life together without me in it the same way. And that I wouldn’t be able to handle it well if I stayed.

When we were sorting out the details of our separation, we decided it made the most sense for him and the kids to stay in our house. I wanted to travel and didn’t know where I might settle, the house is perfect for them, near to work, less disruptive for their lives to stay – it just made sense. And in truth, I don’t want to live there, if we are not together.

This is hard for some of my friends to understand as the house was originally mine. I bought it at 26 as I was putting down roots in Charlotte and made it my first adult home. It was filled with art and color, the sanctuary that I needed to build for myself at the time. 

We met when I was 30 and slowly made it ours over time (though I was admittedly resistant to change) and then a few years ago we gutted the house and completely rebuilt it. 

This was very hard for me – I didn’t realize until the project was underway how much of my identity was intertwined with the goofy little house and I mourned its destruction very intensely. I had also just lost my mother around this same time and I was facing a lot of identity issues and grief simultaneously.

But we were also building something beautiful together – we collaborated on the design, the materials, the shape of the new spaces…and we won several awards for the beautiful results. It became our joint space completely and I fell in love with that newer version in a different way than I loved it’s predecessor. 

Fast forward to our separation and I knew I wouldn’t be able to live there. If it were just me in those spaces we designed/created together, it would hurt too much.

In fact, I’ve spent the past few months as a ‘visitor’ in that house, living upstairs in a newly remodeled attic space, saying good-bye to the house (& my life there). 

It was a hard process, many friends encouraged me to move out, make a clean break, but I knew that if I didn’t go through the grieving and separation process, with the house, that it would hurt much worse at a later time and I might miss my opportunity. So I slowly said good-bye with intention. 

As I packed up my bags to leave for this trip and packed up my belongings to put in storage, I said good-bye to that house one last time, and it no longer felt like my house or my place. It felt like it had already said good-bye to me as well, and I was now a stranger in its midsts, which was a new and different sort of pain.

Self-Preservation & Self-Indulgence

I’m sure some of you may be shaking your heads, ‘how can she have this much feeling about a house?’ I have learned I am a much more emotional creature than I ever previously acknowledged. I’ve learned to strip away many of the masks I’ve worn for so long and let the emotions and thoughts of the real me out into the light.

I knew that I couldn’t handle staying in Charlotte and having a front row seat to the ‘moving on’ phase for everyone (my husband, our children, our friends, our colleagues and customers). I have accepted our separation/divorce and even come to agree it is the right answer, but what the mind knows intellectually, it takes longer for the heart to accept. And while I love him and want nothing more than for him to find his greatest happiness, I knew that I need some distance and space in order to handle this moving on phase with grace.

Note: Some of my friends have expressed frustration at my ‘zen’ attitude about our separation, but it is extremely important that I not only respect myself and how I handle this, but set a good example for our children on ways to handle sadness, grief and the curve balls that life can throw at you. 

I want them to know it is ok to grieve, but it is also possible to love though the process, and how incredible the outcomes can be when we do so. Pain can be beautiful and transformative simultaneously.

And so this is where the self-preservation and self-indulgence come in to play. When we’ve been hurt, we all have a tendency to want to lick our wounds, cuddle up in our jammies, eat proverbial bon-bons or ice cream, and indulge while our heart grieves. And while this is generally acceptable for a day or two, not for many weeks. But to mourn the end of a 10 yr relationship does not happen in a day or two. 

So this trip is permission for me to have several weeks of indulgence and self-care….I sleep late, eat chocolate mousse, play/create with photography and writing, am inspired by beautiful scenery and let my heart grieve as it needs to do. 

I know how lucky I am to have been able to gift myself 10 weeks in which to do this. And if a book, a new career, or a new life adventure unfold from all of it – woop-woop!

The past several months have been some of the most painful of my life – slowly reframing every day existence in new ways. 

I think divorce is one of the hardest things to experience because it is the simultaneous deaths of so many things all at once – our identity as a family, as a couple, our home life, our community life, our work life, and the plans/hopes/dreams we’d envisioned together. And so it is grief on all those layers at once. It is also the grief of those who love you – our children, our friends, our families, our community and dealing with their feelings, as well as our own.

And we are so very lucky – we are still friends, great friends. We saved our friendship by ending the marriage when we did. We still love each other and respect each other. 

But this makes it hard in another way as well – because there is also grief over ‘what might have been’ because there are still very real glimpses of that in our interactions. There is sadness in ‘being close but not quite the right fit’. 

Because we are still friends, we still connect about life and what is going on with one another – this also makes the letting go much harder. And so in order for me to stay rooted in a place of love, for all of us and my sanity, I need to be half a world away 

So back to bravery – my choices are based in self-preservation, self-care & an attempt to make something beautiful out of the shrapnel of my former life. 

Not bravery. Bravery are the men and women that stay in the same communities, living slightly different lives, day after day, with no break to heal and grieve, as needed. I am thinking of two dear friends in particular, whom I admire and adore, their daily courage and bravery blows my mind. They are the definition of courage – that resounding roar of the tiny voice at the end of day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow’.

I am grateful for the distance and space to heal and grieve and to learn how to be happy even when I am sad. I do not think of this as bravery, and yet I will acknowledge it is a bold new adventure.