Debbie Ford - Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life

Anger, fear, heartache, guilt, helplessness, sadness, loss, relief, and powerlessness are just a few of the emotions that might be running through your body at this moment. Thoughts like, How can I get through this? Will this ever end? Why is this happening to me? I cant make it on my own. I should have left earlier. Ill never be happy again. These are the bitter, obsessive fragments of mind chatter that might be running through your head, disturbing your sleep, robbing you of your joy, interfering with your ability to be present for your family or your work, and devouring countless hours of your life.

Does this sound familiar? This is the process of divorce, of separating from someone you love or once loved. It is a horribly lonely time, with the emptiness of loss tugging on every choice and encroaching on your ability to think clearly. This is a time when you will more than likely question who you are, where you have been, who you loved, and the choices you made or didnt make. This is the time when you will examine your worth, assess your values and, hopefully, decide that you deserve to heal your heart and move on with your life. I use the words heal your heart with some hesitancy, because the truth is that our hearts our already healed. They cannot be broken. Underneath the deep pain and the dark feelings that obscure the love that is alive inside of us, our hearts are perfectly intact. They are, even if masked by disorienting sadness, filled with love, peace and contentment.

So what is it that gets in the way so that we cant feel the good stuff and are left only with the bad? Why do we experience heartache and hopelessness and feelings of despair? This is how it works: think of the sun for a moment and its bright shining rays that warm the earth and send energy to the fields so that our crops can grow. It is always perfect. It always knows what to do and when to do it. But often we cannot see the sun because it is hidden behind a cloud. Maybe there will be rays of sunlight breaking through from time to time, but other times it will appear as if the sun does not exist. But we know this is not true; it has been proven that the sun is there even in the midst of a destructive hurricane or a blinding blizzard. The same is true about our heart. It is always there with the power to illuminate our lives and nurture a new future. It is always there with the power to bring us healthy love, emotional healing, hope, and possibility, and, most importantly, peace of mind. Our hearts and the good feelings that exist within and around them are just beneath the emotional cloud cover, waiting for the storm to pass.

Heartache and emotional pain are merely cloudsan accumulation of negative emotions. Yes, they might be black clouds, clouds like youve never experienced before in your life, but still, they are only clouds. Spiritual Divorce and the process that is offered in the pages that follow are designed to support you in dissolving those clouds so you can create a life of deep meaninga life that you love.

You deserve to heal completely from whatever you are going through. No matter what you have done, what mistakes youve made, or where you are at this moment, the possibility for a life beyond what you can imagine awaits you right now. The process will not always be easy, but if you allow it, it will be profound and life-changing. It will be a time for you to grow and evolve and open up to parts of yourself that you have never encountered. It will be a time to step into a new evolution of yourself and look at who you are and how you can live life in an entirely different manner.

It has been six and a half years since the conception of Spiritual Divorce I am writing this new introduction because every time I lead a seminar or give a lecture several people always come up to me just to thank me for this book. The same message in different words comes out of their mouths: Spiritual Divorce saved my life. At a time when I thought I was drowning, I learned to swim. Thank you.

I give deep thanks to the one I call God, because writing this book was truly a divine experience. There was never a moment when I didnt feel guided and compelled to share my pain and heartache, as well as my joys and triumphs. Even after I wrote this book I had an opportunity to read it again and use it myself to get through another failed relationship. Once again I was able to see that these principles that I wrote about are imperative for good mental health. They are vital if we want to learn from our past, grow and evolve, and most importantly, if we want to leave the past where it belongsin the past. Then we are free to move on to greater realities and deeper loves.

I invite you to enter fully into this spiritual experience, the experience of lifting the cloud cover that hides your ever-loving heart.

Debbie Ford

B y the end of our first year of marriage I think we both knew it would never last. I lived in my world, and Dan lived in his. Many times we tried to come together and heal our relationship, but there was always a block on either Dans side or mine. Then one day I asked Dan to sit down so we could discuss our problems. Moments later all of Dans withheld emotions, which had been pent up since the time I was pregnant, were released. I sat there, stunned, as I listened to all of my husbands anger, resentment, and dissatisfaction. Dan finally expressed his truth, and a few weeks later he moved out.

I felt as if I was caught in the middle of the second act of a bad play. The third act was about to begin, and the outcome could go either way. I could choose to be relieved and call my marriage quits, or I could hold on to the dream of living happily ever after, until death do us part. Now I was torn between two worlds, and neither one held the promise of happiness.

I had waited thirty-eight years to find the right person to share my life with me. I had promised myself that I would never do to my children what my parents had done to me. I was thirteen when my mother broke the devastating news to my sister, brother, and me that my father had moved out and their marriage was over. My fathers departure from the house started the painful process of learning to live without a real family. It took me more than ten years of therapy and too many tears to count to come to terms with the pain of my parents divorce. I promised myself that my children would grow up in a happy home with both a mother and a father who loved them. It shook every bone in my body to think that now I too was going to fail, and that my son would be a product of a broken home.

As I faced my shattered reality, my emotions changed as often as the weather outside. One moment I was calm and hopeful; the next I was depressed and withdrawn. There wasnt anything I didnt blame Dan for, and I was sure the collapse of our marriage was entirely his fault. I didnt understand why Dan couldnt change and be the man I thought I had married. In the wake of my pain I asked myself, Why is this happening? Why cant I stop it? And why am I reliving my worst nightmare?

It was asking these questions that seemed to have no answers that led me to the process of creating a Spiritual Divorce. These questions forced me to look deep within myself and to examine my inner world. Many sleepless nights I lay in bed trying to figure out what had gone wrong and how I had managed to create so much anger and resentment in my partner when my deepest desire was to have a happy marriage. How could I have been so blind? What had kept me from seeing the signs of distress that now seemed so clear?