5 Lessons I Want My Memoir To Deliver

It’s been a while since I’ve watched daytime TV, much less a talk show. But this week I’ve been tuning in to one particular show, and I want to encourage you to do the same. Not every day—just next Tuesday, when I’ll appearing on ABC7 Windy City Live to talk about my book.

Despite the sage advice from several people to “just be yourself,” I feel some preparation is necessary. So I turned to the talking points I wrote for my publicist some months ago. These are the messages I hope to convey in my book, and I wanted to share them here, with you, first.

1. When you’re betrayed it’s easy to live in blame and become bitter. It’s tempting to remain on the floor when your world is knocked out from under you. But there comes a moment when you have to get up and trust that you can take the next step. 

The most devastating moment in my story was when my husband of twelve years asked me to join him at the table, where he sat with a piece of paper and two fingers of scotch in front of him and delivered the news: He’d been unfaithful for more than ten years, and he was leaving me for someone he’d met and known for one day in Las Vegas. I slid off my chair onto the floor and he walked out, leaving me alone with our three kids sleeping in their beds. Eventually, I had to get up and figure out what to do.

2. For me, peace became possible only when I began to consider that life was happening FOR me rather than TO me. 

One night my son ran into my bedroom while I was dressing and said there was a man in an orange cape sitting at our dining room table. It was a Buddhist monk from Thailand; he was a friend of our babysitter’s. He didn’t speak English, just sat there quietly drinking tea while I went to a therapy session and listened to my husband say hurtful and shocking things. And I kept thinking about the monk because how many people have a monk unexpectedly appear in their house? I took that as a sign that peace was available to me and that there had to be a bigger plan at work.

3. Staying present to the small kindnesses and comforts that continued to show up for me helped me move forward. 

There were little things that got me through each day: the heated seats in our minivan in the middle of December when I was frozen with grief; the cup of tea and piece of toast my neighbor made me when I couldn’t eat; a bag of sliced Honeycrisp apples from another friend that I found in my purse; my youngest son calling me huggable and kissable when I felt blubbery and mean.

I also learned to be present to the pain and allow myself to be in sadness. There was one morning I listened to the same song for four hours, lying on the floor. As Rumi says, the cure for pain is in the pain.

4. Even when you’re facing your worst fears, there is a better, higher version of yourself that has gone ahead and is pulling you forward. You can trust it!

After the divorce was final, I struggled with the sense that the ordeal couldn’t possibly be over, that there must be another hurdle to clear. I couldn’t relax because I kept expecting something terrible to happen. As I was complaining to a friend that I didn’t know what to do with myself, that I almost felt bored, I heard a voice in my head say, “What if this is what freedom looks like?” That question again shifted me into considering that everything that happened was exactly what I needed to live the life I’m meant to live. What felt like empty space was, in fact, a wealth of possibility.

5. Your story matters and you have a right to tell it. 

When you’re betrayed or going through a bad breakup, you may believe that you’re all alone or that your story is so common that no one will care. When I posted the first chapter of my book on a website for divorced women, I did it mainly as a way to make myself accountable so I wouldn’t stop writing. I didn’t expect a big response. But that chapter was picked up by the Huffington Post and syndicated to Germany and Australia. It got a lot of comments and seemed to strike a nerve. I realized that my story mattered to other people.

And so does yours.