Hi there,
Divorce was the most painful, gut-wrenching chapter of my life. It was not something I wanted, not something I ever dreamed of. At the time, it felt like failure. It felt like shame. I would never wish that period of my life on anyone.
And yet, with the clarity of hindsight and the grace of healing, I can say this with complete honesty: My divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I don’t say that because divorce is easy — or liberating in the ways movies sometimes suggest. It wasn’t. It broke me open. But it was in that breaking that I finally saw myself clearly. It was in that loss that I was redirected toward the life I was meant to live.
I learned that I didn’t have to fight to be loved.
When I was married, I told myself that my job was to hold everything together, no matter the cost. My focus was singular: keep my husband. Don’t lose him. That was the goal, the obsession, the undercurrent driving every choice I made.
I silenced the parts of me that whispered, But are you happy? Because the truth was, I wasn’t. I was deeply unhappy in that relationship. I just didn’t want to admit it, not to myself, not to anyone. Admitting it felt too terrifying. It would mean everything I had built, everything I had invested in, was falling apart.
So I fought. But I wasn’t fighting for love. I was fighting to be enough.
And here is the hard truth I had to learn: It’s one thing to fight for love. It’s another thing to fight to be loved. And we must know the difference.
No one should ever have to battle to prove their worth to their partner.
How to reclaim your life after a divorce or a big breakup.
When a big break up happens, there’s a loss of identity on top of the pain and heartbreak. This is what I want to talk about: How to find yourself again and how to meet yourself in this new form — when you’re no longer someone’s spouse or serious partner.
When the marriage ended, I felt like my world had ended.
I grieved not just the relationship, but the identity I had wrapped around it. Divorce isn’t just about losing another person — it’s about losing the life you thought you were supposed to have.
But one of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve ever had was learning that so much of our suffering comes not from what happens, but from the way we frame it. At first, all I could see was rejection. Over time, I began to see something else: redirection. My divorce was not just an ending. It was the beginning of, as corny as I know this sounds, my destiny.
Chaos truly can be the doorway to transformation if we are willing to step through that door. You have to rewrite your story. My divorce was my chaos. But it was also the soil in which new growth could take root.
Without the marriage to define me, I had no choice but to ask the harder questions: Who am I really? What do I want?
I began to turn inward, to do the work I had been avoiding. Slowly, I began to see that my worth had never been dependent on whether I could hold on to my ex. My worth had never been up for negotiation. It had always been mine.
This realization was not neat or easy. Healing never is. It was a process of unlearning old patterns, rewiring the way I related to myself, and recognizing that love is not something you beg for, it is something you build, first within yourself, and then with someone who is truly capable of reciprocity.
You are the hero, not the victim.
Whatever you are facing right now, whatever huge mountain of an obstacle or heartbreak is before you, you are the hero who can overcome it. Not the victim who gets trapped in it.
Remember that.
Like any hero’s journey, it means the shattering of an old life. But the gift of every hero’s journey is the discovery of strength, wisdom, and resilience you didn’t know you had.
I emerged from that season scarred but stronger. I emerged with the humility to admit my own patterns and the determination to break them. And I emerged with a new mission: to help others see what I could not see then — that their worth is never tied to someone else’s capacity to love them. And, that love and relating are skills to be learned.
When Your Life Is Not What You Thought It Would Be
Our blueprints tell us that they are the only paths to happiness. Without following our blueprint, we won’t ever find contentment or peace. But the reality is that most people’s lives do not end up exactly following the blueprint. And most of us have to sit with the knowledge that our lives did not turn out like they were supposed to.
Had I stayed, I would have been miserable and far, far away from my potential. Had I stayed, I would not have become the woman who now helps others find their voice, their power, their worth.
My divorce was the ultimate redirection. It taught me that heartbreak, as unbearable as it feels, can be a teacher. It taught me that endings can be beginnings in disguise. And it taught me that the most important relationship we will ever have is the one we have with ourselves.
If you are in the middle of your own chaos, I know how tempting it is to believe this is the end of your story. I promise you — it isn’t.
Pain is real, yes. But meaning is what transforms pain into purpose. And when you decide to tell yourself a different story — not “I failed,” but “I was redirected” — you begin to change your life.
You don’t have to celebrate heartbreak. But you can honor it as part of your journey. You can honor yourself for surviving it. And one day, like me, you may look back and say: It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Love,
Jillian
I could have written the title of this. After twice separating and caving in when my husband of almost 30 years love bombed me, he eventually left for a high school girlfriend (my very 1st school friend) by sneaking out of the home we raised our 2 college-aged daughters in AT XMAS. I ended up being hospitalized for over a week with massive gall bladder attack days later during which time there were crickets from him. He then filed for divorce seeking half assets, half value of my business (he hadn't worked meaningfully for 15 years) & alimony. The incoming was so much I had no choice but to weather each storm as it hit. I quit drinking, had surgery and got through mediation and his reneging on our written deal a week before trial. Almost 2 years later I am oddly grateful not only that he left, but that he did it in the truly unkind manner that he did, because I now know I would have just kept trying to 'fix' it. The difference between loving him and loving how much I thought he loved me was lost on me until I got a lot of physical and emotional distance. I never imagined going no contact with my partner of 30 years & the father of my children, but it helped tremendously. Once I was left with myself, I learned that I am a rock star and my new found resilience is serving me in every aspect of my life. While I am not foreclosing the possibility of loving again, I am SO enjoying learning to love myself at age 57 - it's like a game deciding what I really want after spending most of my adult like figuring out what others wanted and making it happen. While I also do not advocate Divorce as a concept, in my case it was the BEST. THING. EVER. Thanks for sharing Jillian!