Starting again is difficult at the best of times. Add a major life change on top of it, and your head isn't just mixed up. It's a storm you can barely see through, let alone navigate with any clarity.
After my divorce, the one that broke something in me I'm still not sure ever fully healed, it took a good two years to even begin coming to terms with the adultery. And honestly, after writing all of this down, after everything these guides have pulled up from somewhere deep inside me, I'm not sure I ever fully did come to terms with it. Not completely. Maybe some wounds don't close so much as they quiet down over time.
I didn't expect this process to feel the way it has. Writing it all out, piece by piece, has been more therapeutic than I ever imagined it would be. Cathartic in a way I didn't have words for until I started doing it. Maybe this is what I needed all those years ago, not just to survive it, but to actually sit with it, write it down, finally give it somewhere to go instead of carrying it silently for two decades. I'm not a counsellor. I never claimed to be. But this process has helped me more than I expected, and if it's helped even a little, then it was worth every difficult word.
If you're starting again right now, please, take your time. Please don't underestimate the sheer power of hurt and betrayal, how deep it goes, how long it lingers, how it can resurface years later when you least expect it. I am so grateful I took this journey, even the painful parts, maybe especially the painful parts.
Eventually, my work moved me to Spain. At first, it felt like magic. Exciting, new, sun-drenched, like one long holiday that never quite ended, the kind of fresh start you dream about when you're deep in grief and can't imagine ever feeling lighter again.
Then, after two wonderful years, I was made redundant.
And it hurt. It hurt in a way that felt disturbingly familiar, the rug pulled out from under me for the second time, the ground giving way again just when I'd finally started to trust it was solid.
I looked at my options. The job market back in the UK was grim, offering nothing that felt like a real path forward. So I looked, almost out of desperation, at digital marketing.
And it saved my life. Genuinely, completely saved my life.
It meant I could keep working from Spain, keep living in the sun I'd fought so hard to build a life around. And since then, my life hasn't just stabilized, it's gone from strength to strength, piece by piece, in ways I never could have imagined for myself twenty years ago, sitting in the wreckage of a marriage I thought would last forever.
Liz x
