How to Handle Anxiety and Fear After Divorce

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After my divorce, the future seemed very uncertain. Suddenly, there was no longer an anchor to my life — no familiar structure or plan. There were many possibilities, but it felt as if there were almost too many — I could start a new job, move to another part of the country, go back to graduate school. The possibilities were endless and overwhelming. 

But lately, I've begun to look at my life from its end: what would I, in my last moments of life,  wish for this current period of my life? What would I want to come from the divorce and from my manic episode and diagnosis of bipolar? Would it mark the beginning of a downward spiral in my life,  or would it be the catalyst for something new, for something good?

When I think of my life from its end in this way, I begin to feel like its creator, its author. And suddenly, all the doubts, fears, anxiety about the future fall away, and it all becomes very clear: I know what I want to make of this period of my life. I know what I want to come of it.

I want to acknowledge my faults and failures and to use them as the basis to grow. I want to live in the space of forgiveness and grace each day, in gratitude for a love so amazing and undeserved. I want to use the darkness of my life as the basis for something beautiful.

I've been feeling lost for months, and yet the answer came to me so clearly the other day: I want to write books that connect with others. I want to start my own private psychotherapy practice to help others with mood and bipolar disorders.

More and more, I feel the light and certainty grow in me, that this is the way forward, this is how I make peace with the darkness to go onto live. That there is a purpose to the pain, to the darkness, and it is to more deeply understand the beauty of the light.

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