Life Lessons From My Divorce...

I thought some others might find this useful...these have been the lessons I have learnt over my journey of an abusive marriage, cancer diagnosis and treatment and becoming happy and content in where I am in life.

I was diagnosed with Breast cancer Stage 3 about 3 yrs back. When the doctor broke the news to me, my first reaction was to burst out crying. Not very brave I am afraid. My first thought was how much time do I have left. Death which had seemed like a distant thing so far suddenly seemed up, close and personal. I came out of the hospital and the first thing I noticed was the sunshine on my face, the wind in my hair and that I had taken god’s bounty for granted for too long.

I was in shock and disbelief for a few weeks. It was only when the chemo started along with bone marrow treatment that the reality seeped in.

The treatment was so brutal that sometimes I wondered if it was not much worse than the disease itself. All my hair fell off. I had never felt so much fatigue, nausea and dizziness in my life. I could not eat since even water tasted like metal. All my bones seemed to be aching...even a cough or a laugh was painful. Walking or even standing was painful and made me realize that there are bones in my feet that were tender. Most of the days I spent in bed just resting. Not much energy to do anything, to even get a cup of water.

Then after 4 months of all this, the doctors told me that the chemo was not working and the tumor was still growing. I sat in my car and cried for about an hour. It was a lot to take in. I have two little girls who were 4 and 7 at the time. Would I see them grow up? Or would they grow up without a mother’s love?

The oncologist send me to Duke Cancer Center for a second opinion since the drugs were not working. There I was told that the cancer could have gotten to my bones.

All in all, it seemed as if things could not get much worse. But they did.

But the starting point for this second sub story started way back in 2002. I had gotten married in 2002 in the midst of doing my MS in Computer Science. He was an engineer, seemed nice, charming and worked in the silicon valley. The first time he hit me was 3 months in our marriage. The verbal and physical abuse escalated over the years.

In all honesty my seemingly beautiful life was all a façade. After my cancer diagnosis, my husband ramped up his abuse, saying I deserved the cancer because I had stopped “listening” to him. While I was bedridden during chemo, he told my daughters I was an “absentee parent” and pointed out I didn’t play with them anymore and might die anytime.
All in all, it was really low point in my life – and there was a lot of emotional and physical pain that I was going through at the time. In fact in a quiet moment with my 4 yr old daughter one day, she asked me - "mommy, are you having bad dreams? Is that why you cry every night when you sleep?" That tore me up a bit because I did not realize that I had been crying in my sleep.

So what was the life lesson here for me? Everything seemed so bad..where was the good?

1)The 1st lesson is Know who you are and what you want to be– This is true for day to day life. If you can bring your thoughts, feelings and actions in sync with each other, then If you take all the fluff away from your life, expectations that people have from you, your perceived notions on what you “should” be doing – if you take away all of that, then what you would be left with is your innermost voice on what you should do.
As Steve Jobs said “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

2) The 2nd lesson is Facing and accepting death as the absolute truth- Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
My cancer diagnosis and painful treatment made me face my fears…death was no longer a fearful thing but just the next big adventure.

3) The 3rd life lesson was about seeking change and facing the unknown. Example - I finally decided to file for divorce in the middle of my radiation treatment. I would go for a radiation session, deal with my burnt skin and then go to court.
Was I out of my comfort zone? Yes, very much so. Did it feel scary? Yes, very much so.
But here’s the thing- you may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that you are familiar with even if not that great, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.
I am divorced now and have primary custody of my girls. I have never been happier or more peaceful in my life. I would not have had that if I had not chosen to walk away from an abusive marriage.

4) The 4th lesson is about loving yourself “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”. During our lives, we keep looking outward for love and support and in the process start taking our own little souls for granted and not paying it much attention. But if you think about it, who is best to nurture us than ourselves? After all who knows us better than ourselves? So at times, when I needed words, encouragement, love and support to carry on – I gave those to myself. I became my own best friend.

5) The 5th and final lesson is about being mindful - the practice of being in the moment. Happiness is not a far off destination point..something to be achieved after I have accomplished this or that. Rather it is the feeling of staying in the moment and feeling alive. To know what is going on within and all around. To be aware. To find your center so that regardless of the chaos happening outside, you are still able to find your balance.

I saw the movie ‘Secret life of Walter Mitty’ the other day. Sean Penn has just a couple of lines of dialogues in that movie but what he says is amazing. He sees a beautiful snow leopard walking on the mountains of the Himalayas. He is a wildlife photographer and is always looking through his camera. But for this moment he does not. When Walter Mitty asks him why he did not capture a photo, he says it is because he was just BEING in the moment. And there are some moments in life where you just need to BE in a moment. And clicking a camera would have taken away from that moment.

Life is to be lived and savored. It does not matter if you live for one year or 10 yrs. What matters is that you lived in whatever time you have on this earth. So do not die without having lived. During my cancer treatment, I went and took piano lessons, completed a 15K run, learnt classical dance and even performed on stage. Yes, I was sick and could have stayed home and felt miserable and sorry for myself. Instead I chose to go out and do activities that made me happy. I was more than my cancer. Knowing that I might die anytime soon made me more drunk on life.

I realized that good and bad is all one’s perspective. I have no control of the circumstances that I have to face, but I do have control over how I choose to react to them.

And finally as one of my favorite zen monk Thich Nhat Hahn says – “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”

 

Thankyou Venella!