What amazes me about going through divorce is that it has brought me closer to so many people in my circle of family and friends. These are people that surrounded me my whole life, and now that I am going through the my most difficult trial to date, they are there for me in ways I could never imagine.
With every conversation I have about the divorce, I connect with my loved ones on a new level. I take away something significant from their insight. I also take away new perspective on that person and how they handle crisis, by the way they choose to support me. My parents and siblings drop everything to help me with babysitting, meals and the house. My grandmother calls me to check in. My aunts, uncles and cousins reach out regularly to send their love. I have friends who text me funny pictures and sayings. Some friends drop off beauty products, others wine and others still make plans to go out on the weekends to keep my spirits up. I love every gesture. I appreciate all of it, more than I can ever explain.
The one that brought tears to my eyes early on was from my uncle — a man of few words, but much action. He is very successful, very kind and as I recently discovered, very sentimental. He was so upset when he heard about the divorce (it came as a shock to many). He called me immediately. He offered anything he could do. And then he did something that showed me a side of him I never knew existed…
He dropped off book he thought would be helpful and inside of that book, there was a note for me…written by me. What? I did a double take. It was a note that I had a written to him when I was a little girl. On one side of the note was a poem about rainy days and how gloomy life is on a rainy day. On the other side, there was a poem about sunshine and how beautiful life is after the storm.
Those poems, situated on opposite sides of loose leaf, were a perfect representation of life’s ups and downs, and a well-timed reminder that every storm clears.
I am a romantic at heart. I love when I see life’s irony; life’s balance; life’s way of bringing everything full circle. But what I loved even more, was that by keeping that note for over 30 years and sharing it with me at the perfect moment, I learned that my uncle sees life that way, too.
What beautiful perspective 🙂