In this month’s newsletter article we talked about getting perspective on our worries by doing something, anything really, to step out of our anxieties. We wanted to share Brianna’s story with you.
Brianna was a working mother of three small children—all under age 7—when her husband sprang the news on her that he wanted a divorce. As you can imagine, she was devastated. There hadn’t been any animosity or bad feelings, they had just grown apart living busy lives. But she was not prepared for that bombshell he dropped one morning.
She was feeling betrayed and alone, and for several days she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of all the ways she could have done things differently, of all the things she would say to her husband if he would stay. She fell into victim mode, feeling like all bad things happened only to her.
Then on Saturday, Brianna got up, fed her kids, then began doing the loads of laundry and cleaning the house as she did every weekend. Suddenly things felt a lot better. Things felt as if they would be, if not good, then alright. She realized how important it was to keep her kids in their normal routine, to preserve their peace as much as she could, and keep her own life on track.
Was it hard? Absolutely. Was Brianna able to pull it off? Definitely. After some marriage counseling, Brianna found that her husband’s heart wasn’t in it and they divorced. While it was not easy, things weren’t as hard for her as she thought it would be. She had her kids to take care of and her job to do, so in some respects nothing changed much. She was able to keep her own peace of mind and let her kids continue to be kids by sticking to her routine, just by doing something.