Last night I went out with my group of friends from the Divorce Support Group that I organize. At one point during the evening, I looked around the room and realized that during the last year and a half I had been a part of making the group grow – getting the word out so people would have a place to come for support and healing. April of 2010 we were a meeting of 5 or 6 people who knew the strength of meeting together to share our stories and offer feedback and warmth. After deciding to join www.meetup.com we now have 250+ members on-line and 40+ members are actually attending the in-person events and meetings that are scheduled throughout the week. I, of course, am not the only one working to lead all of these meetings, but I have been instrumental in growing this group which originally helped ME so much when I was going through my own divorce. I am giving back by inspiring others to navigate through the sadness / depression / anxiety / loss / fear of their own break-ups. It is gratifying to see others flurish over weeks and months as I and my co-organizers inspire the newly separated to contemplate what they will do with their new-found freedom. How they will turn an extreme negative into a positive-life affirming bold joyful new stage of their journey. Sometimes, after the passage of time, in reflection, we find ourselves saying that we were really miserable in that marriage that we struggled to hold onto – and that now we are so much happier. Not every marriage needs to end when it hits a rocky path, but it is important to reflect on who each individual is to figure out how to proceed. I have inspired the growth of this group when there is no way around failing marriages (the group is mostly made up of people who are being left – rather than the ones who are doing the leaving.)

My main function in the group seems to be asking whether or not you choose to divorce – what are your personal goals apart from your spouse? In the next few years or decade, do you want to start a new career, volunteer to save something natural or help people somehow – “what’s your whale to save?” How are you going to make the world a better place? By painting pictures? By helping in a food pantry? By having really deep conversations with new-found friends? What made you tick 20 years ago? That might be a passion you’d like to pick up again, OR you might like to try something totally new. The thing is – I try to get people to start thinking about something other than how miserable they are that their spouse is leaving them for bits of time and they end up finding tiny bits of JOY where the depression starts to receed. That’s how it was for me when I went through it.

And the other thing I find happening is that I inspired others to take leadership roles and now THEY are highly energetic and doing massive amounts of organizing and inspiring many, many more people than I could ever reach on my own. One guy, Ron, has even created another whole new group about an hour away from our group! He’s coming to ours to learn the ropes, but he got so much out of what we do, that HE WAS INSPIRED to duplicate our process! Bob and I are going to go to his first few meetings to help him get started with the support circle. It’ll be tiring, but I am excited about the process growing and so many more people being helped.