Healing from a Toxic Marriage

It’s hard to believe this was 17 years ago today. Inner work is the hardest, quietest kind of work a soul can do, and also the most rewarding.

For the past eight years, I’ve been doing deep inner (and outer) healing around my marriage and divorce. There’s so much I could say, but today I just feel grateful.

Grateful for how the marriage shaped me. For the ways it held me, and for how it revealed what healthy love truly looks like by showing me its opposite. Grateful for the years of practicing forgiveness while married, and for the years after spent learning to forgive myself, and to forgive David.

I’m grateful for reconciliation, and for the friendship we share now. For having experienced a taste of marriage, and for knowing I’ve healed the patterns that once kept me small. For growing into someone who can say , with peace, that I still desire marriage, and will be ready for a healthy one when it comes.

I’m grateful for eight years of singleness that have allowed me to grow up, to root into my spiritual and earthy identity, and to form secure attachment with my family again.

But most of all, I’m grateful for my growth. For my willingness to heal the trauma born from a toxic partnership I entered into so young. For taking responsibility for my part in it, and for becoming someone who still believes in (and is ready for) soulmate love, despite (or maybe because of) it all.

Photos by the best @justinwrightphoto