Fear of Flying Solo: An Empowering Guide to Recovery from Divorce

by Marsha Vaughn

Overview

Are you newly and shockingly divorced?

You bought the “til death do us part” thing. Now you are alone, and perhaps feeling unlovable? Is being single again overwhelming, scary, and totally not what you want? Are you freaked out about ever getting your life back together? Do you ask yourself, “Where do I start?” every day, then take a few steps and give up when the grief or panic overtakes you?

In Fear of Flying Solo: Recovery from Divorce, Licensed Clinical Social Worker Marsha Vaugn teaches those going through divorce how to manage the transition and all of the overwhelming to-do’s that come with it. She guides them through asking for support, what to do (or not do) about sex and dating, how to begin anew, and what practices carry them forward into their new life.

If you are caught in the divorce transition and don’t want to do it alone, Fear of Flying Solo is there for you every step of the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642790115
Publisher:	Morgan James Publishing
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marsha Vaughn, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is an author, life coach, clinical supervisor, professional trainer, and public speaker. She specializes in helping people who are dealing with overwhelm and loss. In her professional practice, she has helped people feel more empowered, focused, and competent. Marsha lives with her two small dogs, Henry and Ellie, in Richmond, California in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

* * *

I saw her wince, I saw her cryI saw the glory in her eye Myself, I long for love and light,but must it come so cruel, must it be so bright?

– Leonard Cohen, Joan of Arc, Stranger Music

When I stepped through the curtains of the dressing room at the bridal shop in Brooklyn, my bridesmaid, Deb, and my maid of honor, Sandy, spontaneously burst into tears. My dress was beautiful beyond imagining and it transformed me into the perfect, the quintessential bride. It didn't matter how much it cost. This was my dress. It fit my picture of my perfect marriage to my perfect husband, and would make sure that this perfection was sealed.

Now, I already knew that he was far from perfect. But marriage before my friends, family, and God, in a picturesque and quaint Connecticut church was going to iron out all the imperfections and bring us to what I thought of then as the ideal state of being: married to a handsome man and on the road to building a successful life together.

I did get that first part right. We found a wonderful little white church in a bucolic neighborhood in Connecticut. I had the dress of a princess, three gorgeous bridesmaids, and three handsome grooms. My youngest brother was my ring bearer in his little tuxedo. Both of our families attended, as did hundreds of our friends. The pastor told the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, encouraging us to know that love gets deeper as it gets raggedy and worn through the years. We cried and kissed. Our guests cried and hugged. Our wedding photo album is a treasure of beauty. In short, we created the perfect wedding!

We lasted for 14 years. In those years, we traveled the world together. We bought a cabin in upstate New York and then my dream home in California. He was my best friend, my companion, my advisor, my family, and for some years, my sole provider. A lot of the time, I thought I was living the dream.

But the cracks that had been there even when we were dating widened when we began living together and eventually became chasms during the marriage. What do you do when the road you dreamed of develops chasms? Well, of course, you get really, really good at building bridges. Or at catapulting over them. Or at finding a long path around to the other side. That's what I did. Instead of facing the cracks directly, we both figured out ways to avoid them, temporarily repair them, and keep moving on.

Before I describe some of the pressures that cracked and then destroyed my marriage, I have to say that there was absolutely no lack of love in my marriage. We did not divorce because we stopped loving each other, because we fell in love with someone else, or because we realized we never had loved each other. Love was not the issue. Not really.

My ex-husband was gay and didn't want to be. He thought and I bought into a reality where this could be ignored and wished away. He struggled with hating himself for his attraction to men. We spent lots of time in therapy, relationship workshops, and in other attempts to "process" the discord between us that was caused by this very simple fact. It speaks volumes about the depth of our denial of reality when I tell you that it took us 14 years to realize this was not going to work. This was not going to be the perfect, ideal union of a marriage that we both so desperately wanted. I wanted a fairy tale romance. He wanted to be heterosexual. Great fantasies, both of them.

My ex-husband died in 2016 saving someone else's life while swimming off the coast of Mexico. That is who he was. He gave a lot to a lot of people. Including me. And yet....

Our marriage was filled with incredibly ugly, drunken, violent scenes. Like the time he called from the freeway raging and clearly intoxicated. Driving home, he threatened me over the phone. I called my sister to come over. We were both waiting for him, hoping that her presence would calm him down. His car screeched into the driveway. He crashed into the garage door with a tremendous bang. Car door slamming. Steps pounding up to the front door. He flung the door open with such force that it cracked hard against the wall. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His nostrils flared with his labored breath. He paused only momentarily in his trajectory when he saw my sister. He stepped forward and slammed her against the wall, screaming at her to, "Get out! Get out of my house!" She stayed with me while I gathered my things. We both left. I, for the weekend, to reconsider. My sister, for the duration of my marriage to him.

The regular threats, physical abuse, and rages followed by the next day's silent treatment were intermittent. They were followed by periods where he was conciliatory in profoundly moving ways. Not just with huge bouquets of roses delivered to my work, but trips to magical places, spa treatments, and fabulous jewelry. It was a wild, wild ride from the depths of rage and hatred to the heights of bliss and beauty. Through all of this, I continued to love him. Changing the gender in the Longfellow poem so it makes sense, I used to say that, "When he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad he was horrid." I convinced myself for 14 long years that the good made up for the horrid. Towards the end of the marriage, in an attempt to again catapult over the chasm, he flew me to Paris for Valentine's Day and ushered me into the most ornately stunning hotel room I had ever seen. Ten-foot-tall French windows opened out onto the sparkling night skyline of Paris. We had dinner in a basement restaurant off a cobbled street, where I imagined brilliant French artists had sat and eaten before me. The romance was palpable. He told me over a glass of delicious French wine that he wanted to "see other people." I put down my wine glass and said, "No, not if you want to stay married to me." We left our meals unfinished as I started to cry. We returned to the romantic hotel room. His anger escalated as he attempted to convince me of the reasonableness of his need. As I sat at an 18th century desk weeping, he strode over to face me, grabbed my face and shook it so hard that the next morning I had fingerprint shaped bruises on both of my cheeks. That was the night – Valentine's Day – that our marriage ended. It took until August to negotiate a divorce. In November, with six of my female friends helping me carry boxes and furniture, I moved out of our dream home in the pouring rain. My devoted friends made trip after trip up and down the dark, wet steps to load up our cars and take me to my new little yellow house. My tears flowed like the rain on the night streets.

When my friends left me in my new home with all my wet boxes and our cats, my own transition from married to divorced to single began. Let me be perfectly clear. I did not welcome it at all. I knew intellectually that there was no going back. There was no way to fix it, no possible bridge that could be built to reach across the chasm this time. Still I cried every night for a year about wanting my dream back. I wanted that picture of perfect love, life-long companionship and unconditional support that I had worked so feverishly to believe in.

My process involved slowly coming out of denial about what was and making peace with it. I tried a lot of things. Frankly, I wallowed in misery for too long before I reached out for help. I was broken, afraid, alone, ashamed, and hopeless. Some decisions I made were helpful. Some, not so much. I do believe that life only gives us love and/or lessons. At that time, I continued to get a lot more lessons, as I didn't know how to connect to the love. I muddled through for years. Which is the reason I have decided to write this book.

You don't have to muddle through. You don't have to take years to heal from the disappointment and devastation of losing your marriage. I am not saying it will be quick, easy, and overnight. What I am saying is that you can take advantage of the things I learned to guide you on your way. You don't have to make as many missteps as I did.

One of the gifts of my divorce was that I also got to use these lessons in my work with both my clients and the people who I train to be clinicians. I believe I got these lessons in order to become an effective teacher who can support women to find their way out of that dark, dark place and into the sunshine.

CHAPTER 2

THE PATH

* * * Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking on the path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

– Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to guess that your divorce came with an onslaught of intense feelings and an overwhelming to-do list. Doesn't it feel unfair that at a time when all you want to do is crawl into bed – or even under it – there are suddenly a slew of tasks and details that need to be handled? What this book and I can help you with is to guide you through the recovery process, step-by-step.

In the coming pages, you will learn practices that you can use for life so that if your boat is ever rocked like it is now, you have ways to steady yourself. I don't want you to need this book again ten years from now. I know you don't either. One of the risks of not doing the work now is that you could find yourself in another relationship – even marriage – and repeat the same scenario over again. This is remarkably common. One of the reasons I wrote this book is to help you avoid that. No guarantees, but if you take the steps in this book and practice the practices, you are more likely to create a different result. Your future is in your hands. I am reaching out to hold them.

Chapter Three will help you understand the difference between a change and a transition. Chapters Four through Six will address some common areas that need immediate attention in your life such as money, housing, etc. I will give you practices to help with these areas. In Chapter Seven, you will begin to assess yourself and discover more deeply who you are now. Chapter Eight will teach some practices to deepen your connection to yourself and your spirituality. In Chapter Nine, we will start to look at marriage as a choice. Chapter Ten will focus on the lessons learned. Chapter Eleven will give you practices to support you in manifesting your new life. In Chapter Twelve, I will describe ways you could stay stuck or have difficulty moving forward as rapidly as you might want to. Finally, in Chapter Thirteen, you will create a new Life Plan to follow.

EXERCISE

We are starting out fun and easy. I want you to pull out your iPod, open up Pandora, and listen to upbeat, happy, inspiring music during the day. One song I recommend: Three Little Birds

– Bob Marley.

CHAPTER 3

THE TRANSITION

* * *

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

There is a model for understanding how to move from an actual change in your life through to a new understanding of it. This is called The Transition Framework. It was created by William Bridges for the purpose of helping companies, teams, and individuals adapt to change and honor the emotional component that comes with these changes. So why am I referencing a corporate model for change in a book about being newly divorced?

We throw the words change and transition around like they are interchangeable. Mr. Bridges teaches that they are not. For you, one change happened on the day you got divorced. There may also be a series of changes that happened related to that. Each of them is an event with a date on the calendar. We can't do much about them. They happened. What we are going to talk about is how you are dealing, coping, and making decisions around each of them. These are your transitions – the emotional responses to the changes you have gone through. Each change brings with it a corresponding transition.

Your path changed direction when you got divorced. We are going to examine where you are on your path. The reason to do this is to see what it will take, and to do what it will take, to nurture the transition from the state of being married through the state of being divorced. It is also my goal to help you to accept joyfully being single again. This transition is from one identity to another. It is from one status to another. Each identity and/or status had or has its own set of meanings and values for you. For instance, being married means something to you that is different from what it means to me. Being single or divorced also has an individualized meaning to you. Let's look at that now.

Your exercises in this chapter involve journaling, so if you have one, please pull it out now.

EXERCISE

Buy yourself a beautiful journal. The one that jumps off the shelf at the bookstore. The one you can't stop looking at. It doesn't matter if it is lined, unlined, big, or small. Just buy it.

Get some colorful pens that you love writing with. I love multicolor gel pens because they write so smoothly. Maybe you love writing with a fountain pen.

(Optional) Get some fun stickers from the local craft store to decorate the pages of your journal as you write. Flowers, cartoon characters, stars, whatever floats your boat.

Here are some questions to answer in your journal:

[check] What did it mean to you to be married?

[check] How did it make you feel about yourself to call yourself someone's wife?

[check] What does it mean to you to have a husband?

[check] What did it mean to you to be a married couple?

[check] When you were out in the world as a married woman, whether with your husband or without him, how was that different from how it is today to be out in the world knowing you are divorced?

Now let's dig a little deeper. Again, write your answers to these in your journal.

[check] What are some things that you did to let everyone know that you were married? Of course there are the obvious things like wearing a wedding ring. But what else?

[check] Did you just happen to mention in conversation with a new person the words "my husband" in order to let them know your marital status?

[check] When talking about future plans, did you always say "we" instead of "I?"

[check] Was your husband often the main character in the stories you told to friends and family?

[check] Did your stories illustrate the ways in which you were together, the fun you had, or the ways you knew each other?

[check] Maybe your stories to friends weren't always about the happiness in being married but were about the struggles, conflicts, and challenges. How did you talk about your marriage with others? How often?

The answers to these questions should begin to inform you about your identity as a married person. There is absolutely nothing bad or wrong about any of this. There is nothing to feel embarrassed about or to wonder if you should have done differently. Please do not go there! You are black and blue enough without beating yourself up.

The stories we tell ourselves and others define us. They define our identities and how we fit into the social world. They provide clues on how to interact with each other. This is why we do it. Telling the handsome, young man at the gym that your husband has a personal trainer lets him know that you are not available. But thanks for flirting with me anyway.

We are defining the ways in which you established and maintained your identity as a married person. The shifting and transforming of this identity started with the change of the divorce. This transition comes with its own set of emotions. When your identity was one of being married, you may have felt pride, a sense of belonging, and thought that you were doing things right. Alternately, you may have felt trapped and confused as you sensed there was something wrong in the marriage. Either way, you still identified as married. Either happily or not. The identity from being a married person is the transition we have to make.

Now you are in uncharted waters. Not married. Not single. You are divorced. What does that mean anyway? I will talk about that in detail in Chapter Nine, The Choice. For now, what we're going to do is look at how you are moving away from the status and identity of being married. I know firsthand how crummy and confusing that moving away feels.

Your marriage ended. That is the change. The meaning you give that statement is at the heart of many of your emotions right now. When something ends, we often feel loss and grief. But not always. You lost something when your marriage ended. You may or may not have wanted to lose it.

Did your divorce bring other changes to your life? Did you move; start or end a job; stop wearing your wedding ring; buy a new bed; get a new car; take public transportation instead of driving; or drive yourself instead of your husband doing it? Each of these represents a change as well as a loss. How you feel about each of those things is going to be different and part of the path you will take into a new identity.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Fear of Flying Solo"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Marsha Vaughn.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction "Houston, we have a problem",
Chapter One You Are Not Alone,
Chapter Two The Path,
Chapter Three The Transition,
Chapter Four What Do I Do About ...??,
Chapter Five Jumpstarting Your Joy,
Chapter Six The Next Right Thing,
Chapter Seven Who Are You Anyway?,
Chapter Eight Practice Makes Imperfect,
Chapter Nine The Choice,
Chapter Ten Love, Fear, and Lessons,
Chapter Eleven Manifest and Get What You Want,
Chapter Twelve What Will Keep You Stuck,
Chapter Thirteen Your New Life Plan – Let's Do This!,
Thank You,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Sources and Permissions,