Stay In Your Lane!

Increase what you love: Release what you don’t.

One thing I have learned on this wild terrifying ride called Divorce, is that I can handle anything thrown my way, as long as I stay in my lane.

What is my lane?

My lane is anything I choose, and I choose beauty and magic and generosity. My lane is love and light and laughter and abundance. It’s gorgeous–splashed in sunlight or shimmering in moonlight. There are waterfalls and flowers blooming, hopping baby bunnies with big paws and floppy ears and fluffy kittens sitting calmly with starlight in their whiskers. Sometimes I’m driving through a pink marshmallow world with bouncing rainbow unicorns, or near the sea under the moonlight with glittering mermaids sitting on rocks, combing their hair, or through a tunnel made of flowers with fairies taking baths in the dew drops.

But when it comes to divorce, I sometimes have to drive through other people’s towns, which look a lot like lawyer’s offices with white boards and conference rooms and the only good part—candy jars.

Other towns look like dusty offices of overworked therapists with dusty fake flowers in vases, sticky magazines(why???), and dirty coffee cups laying around.

The scariest towns I drive through look exactly like courthouses where everything is wood, there are flags and state seals, and everyone is extremely serious and your entire life hinges on whether your judge is feeling irritable, hangry, or joyful that day. (Guess which adjective I’ve never seen on the face of a judge?)

But I’ve found, that if I can just stay in my lane, I stay out of danger. But it’s no easy task when people and circumstance are playing chicken, trying to make me swerve, switch lanes, or the worst—run me off my road completely.

It takes focus and hourly practice.

It takes this: Increase What You Love, Release What You Don’t. (Increase the pets; Release the husband!)

Divorce brings out the worst in people. Before my awesome car analogy, I described it to my sisters like this: I feel like I am a villager in an ancient settlement in the forest, and there is growling all around me and glowing red eyes in the trees and I am standing in the middle with a wooden stick to defend myself and my kids, and I don’t know where the next attack is coming from, so I spin around and around on high alert, shaking my stick, trying to figure out how I will protect my family.

Psychologists call it hypervigilance and it wreak all sorts of havoc with your body, like panic attacks and inability to sleep or eat.When I had my first panic attack, I thought I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t even thinking about anything stressful. I was driving the kids to school, feeling perfectly happy when all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt like it was squeezing and I had to pull over and get out of the car and hunch over till I caught my breath. The world turned wavy and spotty and I thought I was going to pass out. It terrified me and worse, it terrified the kids. My Dr. told me that when a person is under a lot of stress, the body can start shooting out adrenaline at random times, thinking it’s in danger and it’s time to run. Once I knew that, Kim told me how to combat the feelings with deep breathing and focusing on something beautiful—a flower, a blade of grass, the light shining through the leaves. She said, focusing on something beautiful signals the brain that its not in danger and everything is safe–or you wouldn’t be looking at the gorgeous yellow swirl on the flower petal. It actually overrides panic and fear and all those very powerful and seemingly uncontrollable negative emotions. But turns out they are controllable.

With the divorce, I was out of my element, in a dark and nasty town surrounded by people who were negative, toxic, dishonest, greedy and miserable. My first reaction was outrage that on top of all the trauma the kids and I had been through, the “players” and “aspiring players” in the divorce would be trying to cause us further harm. (“Aspiring players” are those meddlesome fools who want to a make everything worse by trying to get involved.)

But then my next response was: I refuse to participate. That isn’t my world. And I choose not to live in that world. My world is beauty, love, light, kindness, generosity and abundance.

When I thought of all the “players” up against me and the kids, it felt like I was being slimed by toxic ooze.

When I thought of my world, it felt like I was swimming in joy, a golden waterfall of light with pink blossoms floating around me, beautiful and full of light.

I wrote on an index card: I release all greedy, litigious, dishonest, negative people.

I wrote on a few index cards in bright pink marker: I step into light, love, generosity, abundance, kindness, joy, beauty, and magic.

I taped the “Release” card in the corner of my bathroom mirror and put the “Increase” card front and center so I was seeing it all the time.

My trauma therapist had once told me that you could help rewire your brain from trauma by thinking of some symbol that makes you feel safe—for me it was a sparkling nest surrounded by flowers next to a sign that said “LOVE”. Then she said, anytime the trauma came up, move your eyes up and to the left (like you are looking at something in the upper left corner of a ceiling) and visualize the nest. She said do it over and over, and something about moving your eyes that way with the visualization helps to override panic and push out the trauma so it doesn’t have power over you and you feel safe.  It sounded like hocus pocus, but I did it and it worked!

The trauma caused me pain and panic, the nest soothed me and made me feel safe—it’s a no brainer that I should practice focusing on the nest instead. It’s much easier to tell your brain to do something, than it is to actually make it do something. But looking up and to the left works the magic for you. At least it did for me.

I put one of my index cards in my greenhouse next to a waterfall on a branch of my camellia tree, so if I’m sitting or standing in front of my waterfall, my magic words are up and to the left. They say “Love Light Abundance Generosity Kindness Magic Joy” and incredibly, when I go in there even for one minute to breathe and look at my waterfall and my words, I immediately feel soothed and empowered.

I’m back in my lane.

I have noticed the kids have started doing it on their own. I see torn pieces of paper taped up on their mirrors, scribbles in their school notebooks, words that fill them with strength. I love getting glimpses into the worlds they live in when I’m not around, and I love seeing them find their own strength and courage to face all this loss.

This is a terrifying time! I don’t know what the future holds for me and my kids. I don’t know how I will support them, coming from being a stay-at-home Mom and trying to create a career at the age of 50, with a broken heart and a closet full of crazy hats. There are so many things I love love love to do! And none of them pay. Sigh. But if I stay in my lane, I will figure it out with grace and style. I will drive my sparkly car, wear my crazy hats, and encourage the kids to stay in the lane I have created for all of us.

Will we end up swerving into an alleyway, carjacked, and forced into panhandling with torn gloves while singing “It’s a Hard Knock Life”?

Maybe, but I hope not. And at this point, that’s what I have—hope.

Hope that we can handle anything life throws our way.

Hope that if we stay in our lane, at least we will be filled with light and love while life plays out.

And the more we focus on the light and love, the more it increases, while the other stuff releases.

Increase that you love; Release what you don’t.

Stay in your lane.

Staying in my lane!