Ah, the bad behavioral patterns that we developed from the time we were a child that followed us into early adulthood, our marriages and our mothering. If you're not careful you will find yourself slipping. And when you're in the moving beyond phase of your divorce, you have to be on the look out for the ghosts of bad behavior from your past.

At 51 I think it's a little late to blame who I am and what I've done, at least in the last decade of two, on my parents. They tried. They did their best. But, it simply wasn't enough. If you're somewhere in my age bracket, then you were raised by the children of the Great Depression. Hell, my mother was born in 1930! Our parents felt that if they clothed, fed and sheltered us, we were good to go. They had no way of knowing how introspective we would all eventually end up becoming.

It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs — there are six levels with number one being the most basic, food, clothing and shelter. Six is Self Actualization. Our parents did not have time to consider the meaning of anything outside of paying the mortgage, cooking, working, cleaning. But today, in the throws of the Information Age, we are all searching. Self-help books and DVD sales are at all-time highs.

But, the bottom line is this: We want to love and be loved. However, the exact process to find this Nirvana has eluded us. We're divorcees. Give me a break. Our marriage failed us. We failed our marriage. We walked away for lack of emotional or financial support. We left because of infidelity. We scrambled out barely with our lives in tact.

However, the last thing we need to do is to repeat wrong behavior. If we had become a door mat for our husbands, a "yes" woman, a punching bag — either verbally or physically (me), we need to make sure we're not sliding back into that. Ever.

If you were married to one very particular type of person, say, the deer head on the wall, lifetime NRA member redneck type, then it would stand to reason that you just might want to step outside of your regular pool of male types and go for something exotic.

Perhaps an African-American instead. Yep. That was sort of my mind set when I finally decided to have sex again after being divorced and removed from Stinky for a year and a half. And younger. Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's see I am 49, so what about someone, say, 23 years younger than me. Yep, again. That might just work.

Well, my dear FWW'ers. It didn't. In fact it was quite the disappointing fiasco. Naturally, we'll keep the names out to protect the innocent. Or is it the guilty? Ah, well.

God love him, he was so young and inexperienced, but very drawn to me, and, naturally, I was loving the hell out of that. He pursued me, and let's just say that I didn't resist. I mean, he was a living doll, and he was young and virile, or so I thought.

It was Jan. 1, and I'd heard that whatever you do the first day of the New Year is what you'll do the most of for the rest of the year, and it damn sure was not going to be laundry! So, I took the plunge. Of course, I did have to drink a couple of glasses of wine to get my courage up, then I just showed up and we had sex.

It wasn't horrible, but it needed much improvement. Unfortunately, the second time was twice as bad, and I just decided to throw in the towel, dress and go.

He wanted me to help him, and he said I could be his teacher. Well, women, I have to tell you that being a young man's teacher just doesn't have the same appeal at 50 that it did at 40. No, really. It doesn't.

I'm right back at that place where I want somebody else to "knock my socks off." I've been working for years at pleasing others, and now, now it's my turn.

Do you believe in "signs"? This is not a rhetorical question. Do you? Remember in Sleepless in Seattle when Meg Ryan said she didn't believe and then the vintage dress tore in the attic with her mother, and she said, "It's a sign."

I believe in them. And isn't that really why most of ask these type questions — so we can tell you what we think and then give you an example? (Smile)

My mother died in October of 2000. It's easy to remember the chain of events that happened the fall before and the fall after. On September 29, 1999, I was driving my Isuzu Trooper into the city of Anchorage, Alaska, for the very first time in my life. And the fall after my mother died, 9/11 happened.

About a month after she'd passed and in early November of 2000, I was sitting in my house in Alaska feeling alone, cold, and depressed. Stinky was spending most of his time up on the North Slope working in the oil industry, and that particular afternoon, the children were sleeping. I put in an old VHS (ah, remember those?) of the movie Ghost.

What's important here is that my mother went to the movie theater twice in her lifetime: once to see The Way We Were and second to see ET (I took her). She was not a movie or television fan. She read books, and lots of them. However, she'd bought this movie for me for some reason. She came home with it and gave it to me as a gift. She said, "I thought you'd like this." Odd.

That afternoon in Alaska, I decided that I needed to watch this movie, so I pulled out a big comforter and hit play.

At one point in the movie, Demi Moore sees Patrick Swayze for the first time since he was murdered, and at that very moment, in my own "life's" movie, my door flew wide open and a rush of leaves blew in. It was simply magical.

I was inside a building that blew up. Yep. KaBam! Boom! Pow!

When the explosion ended almost in a matter of one single second, I found myself blown out of my office chair and on my hands and knees under my desk.

What had just happened? I asked myself, completely unaware of the second and third degree burns that covered my feet, ankles, hands and face.
I immediately scrambled to stand and rushed to get out of the building, as I was quite certain another explosion was to come. I still had no idea what had happened.

That was 25 years ago, but the same emotional shock and confusion and even physical pain would come again when my divorce was final. What had just happened? Yesterday I was married. Today, I'm a single parent raising two young children on my own.

Divorce wreaks your life. So, if you're considering it, please make sure you know that there simply is no other way to survive, literally. If you can find a way to make it work, find that way and make it work.

Divorce is the last resort. It should not be used as an excuse to remove yourself from a situation that has become a little hard, challenging and less fulfilling than it once was. It should not be an excuse to go shopping again for something that you think might bring happiness to you.

Divorce is not an escape valve. It's serious business, and it breaks hearts each and every time.

I am in the "moving beyond" for FWW. That is who I am and what I am doing. It comes with its own set of challenges each day. It comes with its own unfulfillment, it's own lack luster. It's own boredom, strife, heartbreak.

What wonderful changes can you expect when you move beyond divorce? Hmmm, let's see. Depends, really. Some women who become depressed stop eating altogether. Some eat constantly. Some drink. Some go searching for random acts of sexual contact. I did a bit of drinking the first year, and that coupled with fast food, as I was sad and unwilling to cook (which I think is a happy act) allowed my body to find new mass.

Lovely. Weight gain. My favorite thing. Yours, too, I just bet.  

But rather than dwelling on the negative right off the bat, let's start, instead, with the positive. As a 50-year-old woman, a little extra fat in the face makes Botox something completely unnecessary. So, think of it as a free face lift compliments of Ritz crackers, squirt cheese and Tabasco olives, French fries, and sweet tea by the gallons. 

A larger bust - maybe depending on your body type. More breast, I don't need. Hell, I paid $12,000 to have them reduced after Joseph was weaned. But, for some, a little extra might be welcome. 

OK, that's about it for the positive. 

The negative? Ah, where to begin. My skirts hug my waist so tightly that the hug should really be considered a choke hold. My tops "pop" a little if they have buttons in the front. And, for the first time in my life, I have this roll beneath my breasts. And that roll, that roll, is so large it should have an address! 

My neck. OK, where exactly did my whole neck go? I mean it's still there if I push my head out away from my body. I can almost succeed in hiding the extra flesh in pictures with this little move.

Since the divorce (two and a half years ago) and in the last year, I have discovered something quite wonderful. It is that each and everything that we do is important. So, consequently, I am no longer in a rush. Seems I spent 12 years rushing, rushing, rushing to please, to prepare, to arrive on time, to make sure "they" were on time, to get things done. And it nearly killed me.

Today, I take pleasure in the smallest of things. I simply look at the job at hand and begin. I cut linings for my friend's drawers today. I did not over think it. I did not look at all the drawers and think, "Oh, my God, there are so many of them."

She gave me the assignment, and I poured myself into it. I sat in the sun at my "work" station, which was a bench on her deck. I sat on a cooler with wheels, and I had a razor blade and a block of wood, an ink pen and a tape measure to complete my work.

I sat and drank a Smirnoff lemonade thing and began the task at hand. I did not care if there were rolls and rolls of this shelf liner that needed to be measured and cut and that the dimensions had to be 19 ¼ for some and 8 ¾ for others. I spread the material and measured and marked and cut using a quarter round to hold down the liner. I ran my blade as close to the quarter round as I could, paying attention to the fact that I wanted the edges to be smooth and not ragged.

I accomplished my task.

When the kids spill Pepsi or milk. When my dog gets sick and throws upon my floor or when the kitchen pipe under the sink leaks and I have to stop my current task or effort to relax and must stoop, bend, twist, unscrew, wipe, I do it willingly and almost happily.

I am a grateful Samurai, today. A soldier with Krud Kutter and Lysol as my weapons.

Have you ever planted a garden and followed all the garden etiquette and made sure that the soil was fertilized and softened to encourage the growth of the new seed or tiny seedling? Have you pulled your children out from their warm beds to rush barefooted and still in their PJs to see the first tiny tomato bursting forth before all the others?

What is it to grow a garden? To till the soil and fight the rocky ground and force the it to make something grow from next to nothing?

As I came into the spring of my first year away from my crazy ex, I decided that the children and I must grow a garden. I took them to the farmer's co-op and together we selected our tiny plants that would entrust their miniscule lives to us for the next several months.

We chose Big Boys (I'd heard they were very good tomatoes) and Earlies and Tommie Toes (what we called them when I was a child). We picked peppers and cucumbers and squash. I let my children decide.

Caty and Joe became excited and began to pick flowers and leafy green things that would help make our tiny house a home. And...I let them. \No rational evaluation of what would or would not grow. They picked their flowers and their vegetables and together we took our bounty to the check out stand.

And when the total came to well over a hundred dollars, I paid the bill with a smile on my face. We were putting our hands in rich dirt and fingering green leaves of various plants. And it all felt so good.

In Middle Tennessee, the ground is filled with rocks. We sit on top of limestone, I think, and the first few inches of soil usually yield a dead end in the form of hard, impenetrable bedrock.

Springtime in Middle Tennessee is beautiful. The house I live in had flowers planted already, but for two springs they haven't bloomed. My landlady tells me that they are Irises. But, as I said, they haven't bloomed, so how would I know?

Irises come in many colors. The prettiest I think is the periwinkle blue (don't you just love that word — periwinkle — I love saying it). But for two springs, I've seen no blooms.

That changed this morning, a morning of my third spring. I'd seen it coming because I watched some green leaves sprout, thicken, and become stalks. Every morning, the stalks grew a little taller, and eventually I began to see the tips begin to swell. There was something good coming. I could see it, and I could feel it. 

Your recovery from a divorce is much like my Irises. The roots are still there, and the plant is living, drinking and growing, but simply not producing a flower. It may take a year, two years even longer, but as long as you're still there, standing and living, you're okay. 

What you will discover along the way is that you eventually will not feel quite so forlorn. You will notice that you are smiling a bit more, and that what used to bring you joy seems to be gradually easing itself back into your heart.  

A beautiful sky painted in dozens of colors that nearly moves you to tears. A sudden breeze that waves branches of trees and makes your hair blow around your face like an actress in a movie. A butterfly. Four-week-old kittens. Your favorite song suddenly playing on the radio and so you turn it up and sing along and feel alive and free and, dare I say it, happy. 

After Hurricane Katrina blew my life apart, but gave me the opportunity to escape my prison sentence with Stinky, I was in what some people call a bit of a state of shock. I was traumatized. Yep, that storm blew my house, my children's school, and my office away, and Stinky had knocked me clean stupid.

So, though it's been two and a half years, sometimes I long for those first months (okay, it was actually a year) of being so confused and unhappy and scared that I couldn't hold down a full time job and was afraid to really do anything more than get up, get the kids to school, and brush my teeth.

That's when I found my new friends: Crown Royal and Mimosa. Mmmm. I had no money, but I actually bought the complete collection of all six seasons of Sex In the City and after the kids were in school, I would come home and I would put in the next DVD open a bottle of Frexinet Brut or Extra Dry, mix a mimosa and sit down to plunge into complete oblivion watching four hip chicks living their lives in the Big Apple.

Ahhh. Those were the days. By noon, the champagne was gone along with a king sized bar of Hershey's dark chocolate, I would lay down and sleep for two hours, awake refreshed, brush my teeth, again, and go get the kids.

Then after baths and homework and giggles and stories of their day, and once they were both snuggled in for the night, I would shower, slip into my bed and put in the next DVD and hit play. I would also begin drinking the four Crown Royal highballs that would lull me into a deep sleep, so deep that I would not have the nightmares that had plagued me the first few weeks after my departure from the coast of Mississippi.

Keep the ring! Wear it, don't wear it. But for God's sake, keep the ring! Sell it, have it made into a necklace.

Was your ring important to you? What does a wedding ring mean? You belong to someone? Wait, that would make it more like a dog collar and a rabies license wouldn't it? If lost, please return to Mr. so-and-so at such-and-such address.

Okay, now I may just puke. Did I say keep the ring?

But, you can throw away reminders, photos, papers. I tossed and burned those, too. It made me feel good. It was like shaking off the last really awful memories of a very painful and disappointing marriage. I was glad I did that. 

Of course, what about the photos with your ex and your children? What's that old saying, oh yeah, "that's like throwing out the baby with the bathwater." Yeah, I held on to those photos. It used to hurt to look at them. It doesn't anymore.

When you can look at the photos or the items that came into your life while you were married without feeling pain or sorrow or regret, you are healed.

I don't seem to care about anything related to that part of my life anymore. I am moving forward and onward and upward. I am no longer "anyone's" possession. 

Nobody owns me. I am my own person. I am free.

And, my fellow FWW visitors and bloggers .... me likey, me likey a whole lot! 

No one to judge me. No one to bitch because there isn't any tea made. No one to expect, demand, blame, cage.