In order to understand THE RISE, you must also understand THE FALL
Typically I’m pretty articulate. I love words. I think they allow you to communicate even the most complex thoughts and feelings when you find the right ones. I love @breneebrowns series on @hbo “Atlas of the Heart”. I read the book cover to cover, but for those of you who don’t like to read you should watch it. She talks about language of the human experience in depth and it’s so, SO important. I feel this type of knowledge should be taught from a young age, the same way learn math and english. Mandatory.
Anyways, when it comes to that chapter of my life, the life after my ex left me, I still find my language blocked. I think in part because I blacked out (and blocked out) most of it but I also think, “how do you talk about it without sounding like a whiny little victim?” More recently, I’m acutely aware about the kind of love and marriage I have with Charlie, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, so how do I talk about that part of my life without making it feel like I’m unhappy today? Or minimizing this wonderful man? So here’s the thing, both things can be true. That chapter of my life was effing hard and awful. This chapter is lighter, filled with more beauty and joyful (though not always easy). That is my truth. My best friend Danny sent me a Lex Fridman podcast recently, he interviews divorce attorney James Sexton on marriage, relationships, sex and more (episode #396) I listened to all 3 hours, 30 minutes and 16 seconds intently (twice) and took extensive notes.
“That years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute.” Edgar Allen Poe
No one has summed up the experience of my divorce more eloquently. For almost 14 years of my life I loved a man who didn’t love me the same way. The language of that distinction is SO important. There was love, yes, but our individual experiences of it were so vastly different that I couldn’t comprehend his choice to end it. Age 19 to age 31. All that love, all that life - replaced by bitterness, resentment, anger…hatred.
In order to understand the rise, you must understand the fall. It wasn’t one decision that led me to this part of my life. It was a million little choices (wrong ones, right ones, necessary ones) that led me to create Hafsa and Co., to choose love, to say “no thank you” to corporate America, to stand up the bullies and their accusations (to this day), to say goodbye to friendships that do not serve me, to end relationships, to break in all the places so that a transformation could take place. To have faith that this was Gods plan for me all along - even though I doubted Him on a daily basis and sometimes still do.
The photo on the left (below) was taken a month after he left me, I was 30 pounds lighter, on antidepressants, I couldn’t sleep without medication and I felt like I was rotting from the inside out. The photo on the right, a “transformation”, my life here and now. Proof that life is worth living, and that life is so, so beautiful.
So I start here with you. I’ll share the journey from my perspective, my experience. If you don’t wan’t read it - I understand #unfollow. For those of you who’ve asked me to bare my soul, thank you for allowing me to be brave.
xo H
