This week I had cause to remind myself just how grateful I am for the life I have been lucky enough to enjoy. The challenges that people face and overcome never cease to amaze me. After a long discussion this week I was reminded that you can find positives in even the most challenging of situations and when you can, real change for the better is affected.
I spoke with a friend this week who has managed to come out the other side of a very difficult and violent relationship with the father of her young son. She spoke to me with much honesty and insight about her experience- so much so that I asked her if she would consider perhaps speaking to other women who have or are having similar experiences as I have no doubt that her story would both inspire and assist many.
What astounded me about her story was her capacity to separate her own hurt and pain from her child’s experience of his father. I struggle at the best of times to rationalise how someone who has suffered significant physical or emotional harm can then be expected to accept that same person as a parental figure to a child. It must be incredibly challenging but for my friend she has, through much personal insight, been able to come to understand her own feelings, accept them for what they are, learn from her experiences and then understand and accept that her child has had a different experience of his father. She walks the fine line between protecting her young son and at the same time ensuring he is able to experience a positive relationship with his father that I can only imagine is incredibly challenging every day.
So I asked her, out of genuine interest, how she had done this- how has she removed herself from a violent relationship, rebuilt her life and her confidence and at the same time protected her son and yet enabled him to develop a positive relationship with his father?
Her frankness of conversation as she described what she had done to pull herself through was inspiring. Her experience reminded me of so many women I meet each week in my work. I asked her whether she might share with me three things that she thought a woman in her situation could do to help themselves through. She stopped and looked at me in surprise as she could not understand how what she had done was in any way interesting or inspiring. I begged to differ and a few hours later she had kindly sent me the following comments in an email which she called “My steps to Happiness”. She said-
a. Find a song that makes you feel strong and sing it over and over until you believe in yourself.
b. Get something that person gave you and keep it in a corner. This item is to remind you how much stronger you can be without them.
c. Take every day as it comes and see how many good things you can name every morning about yourself. Name them and believe them.
My friend’s life has been so very different to mine, but my time with her this week touched me and reminded me that if we want to control or change our lives, we can, it takes perseverance, understanding and forgiveness.
I did ask her just which song was the one that got her through- she chuckled and looked a tad embarrassed as she revealed her passion for Taylor Swift’s ballad- “We are never ever getting back together”…
I thought I had better check the lyrics….
We are never ever ever getting back together,
We are never ever ever getting back together,
You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me
But we are never ever ever ever getting back together
Like, ever…
