Dear Reader,

Does everything really happen for a reason?

Recently, I was talking with a dear client whose divorce journey makes the 12 Labors of Hercules look tame.

Nobody has an easy journey out of a narcissistic marriage.

Narcissists put a lot of time and thought into making their former spouse’s liberation as difficult as they possibly can. They operate a scorched earth policy. They don’t need to do that inasmuch as their former spouse would never willingly choose to re-engage. Nor is their former spouse likely to try taking them to the cleaners.

But Narcissists do get a thrill out of being as cruel - even sadistic - as they can without creating problems for themselves.

Still, my client Susie’s former spouse was something special. He had the temperament of a Bond villain. He didn’t operate on a grandiose scale. He wasn’t out to destroy the whole world. But he was hell-bent on destroying Susie’s world, forever after.

Susie and I met when she was at a crossroads. For years, Trigger (not his real name) had worked to humiliate Susie enough to turn her into a zombie. For years, Susie had justified staying in the marriage by engaging in an internal trade-off. She committed to giving her child the best two-parent family that she could even to the point of trading her own misery for her child’s serenity.

That is a trade-off that I can relate to, having done the same thing myself.

Sadly, it is a trade-off that can never work. Narcissists like Trigger always want more of their drug of choice – hurting, humiliating and diminishing a compliant partner.

Susie needed to get out of that toxic environment ASAP. Trigger was out to destroy not just her but the thing that mattered most in the world: her relationship with her child. Everything she told me pointed to the fact that Susie was working on a very short timeline. She needed to salvage herself while she was still in with a chance.

Susie’s marriage was, by then, a terminally cancerous relationship. There was only one way it could go.

Broken as she was, Susie had the courage to leave.

Trigger wasn’t the brightest bulb in the narcissistic box. But that didn’t stop his little, reptilian brain from coming up with the almost perfect plan to erase Susie from her own life.

For a while Susie dropped out of my life as she clung to her own by her fingernails. Her battle for emotional and financial survival has been epic.

When I caught up with her most recently, she told me that the battle was essentially over. Trigger has done his worst and largely run out of firepower. Still, she knows that he will continue to make trouble whenever he can.

But Trigger has lost his power to… well, trigger her.

Had Susie known before she started down the road to divorce and liberation what she would have to go through, she would never have done it. She would have been way too frightened and hopeless.

The Trouble With Being Called “So Strong”

We talked a little about all that she had been through. I congratulated her on her extraordinary resilience. We also talked briefly about what I have been through with my partner’s Alzheimer’s. We commiserated about how it happens that when you are going through a major life crisis, few of the people around you seem to have any idea of what you are doing battle with - despite the fact that these situations are all too common. And then, all too often, they offer you that horrible little payoff about being “so strong”.

Because we all know that pesky little booby prize that people haul out that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

(Little do the realize, seemingly, is that “strength” doesn’t mean gliding gracefully through impossibly hard. Situations. It simply means dragging yourself on to fight another day even when you would like to curl up in a small ball and give up.)

Neither Susie nor I would make any claim to be “strong women.”

We are merely women who had to dig very deep to keep going despite overwhelming fear and hopelessness.

We each know how messily and completely we have fallen apart.

We also know exactly what happened next.

Nothing.

We just became sorry puddles of ourselves.

Nobody Came to Mop Up the Mess

Nobody came along to mop up the mess and rescue either of us. No prince either on or off a white horse happened along.

(But we did encounter predators along the way, emotional scrap-metal dealers, who wanted to sweep up our broken pieces and see how they could turn a profit on them.)

Having carefully revisited a lot of the romantic fantasies that we women buy into, I can report that there are no indemnity clauses in them. No compensation will be forthcoming. When your life blows up in your face, you can either go down or else you can pick up the pieces.

When nobody is coming to rescue you, you are free to remain in your puddle of misery for as long as you can bear to. Then, for want of a better alternative, you will likely pick yourself up and start putting your life back together.

I would love to say that I am the ultimate weeble and right myself as soon as anyone or anything knocks me down. If only.

When I go down, I can spend a fair bit of time as a puddle. (Rather longer than I might wish.) And then I get bored and frustrated with the situation. Puddle Life has nothing to recommend it.

That is when I pick myself up and rethink the way I do the aspect of my life that went horribly wrong.

The process of picking myself up is decidedly unglamorous. It takes time and effort. Plus, it requires motivation.

What initially motivated both Susie and me was our children. When we were at rock bottom, we didn’t feel that our lives were worth much at all. But our children…

When we survivors are at our lowest ebb, we find our motivation where we can. If we have no children, we will find another reason to get up and fight another day.

The collapse becomes the new plateau we start from.

And, over time, we put the various pieces of our being into a new and enhanced Lego structure.

But it is not the hardships that make us stronger. We make the tough choices and work through the painful scenarios that redefine us.

We can be grateful for who we become. We can also take rightful pride in our emotional growth. In fact, it is only right that we should.

How Susie Put It

Susie and I both deeply object to the thing that people often say to the “strong” person who has fought their way through a lot. They say:

“Everything happens for a reason.” (That “reason” (which nobody needs to know) saves them the trouble of having to look at the difficult thoughts and feelings that our experiences might trigger.)

Susie sees it differently. As she puts it:

“We go through what we go through.”

That is all that there is to it.

We go through what we go through.

When, like Susie, a person grows through what they go through, that deserves to be honored.

We go through what we go through because of the things that happen along our life’s path. There should be no shame in that. Predators predate. Open-hearted, trusting souls fall prey to them. It was ever thus.

But growing through what you go through, like Susie has, however slowly or messily that might happen, is extraordinary. She had every reason to give up on herself. Many times, she came close to doing so. But she dug deep and kept going. And now she is hugely grateful to that wounded self for doing so.

Susie has amazed herself. You can, too.

Warm wishes for your healing and happiness,

Annie