She walks into her therapist’s office ready to repeat the ‘same old, same old.’ This is a new person she’s been seeing for about six weeks, and she’s just not feeling it. Not yet anyway. But anyone who validates her is good enough.

True, she’s been through the mill. Divorce is hard enough, and when it’s a narcissist, all bets are off. And if that’s not challenging enough, she gets involved with another who she believes will rescue her, pushing her closer to the edge.

“What is going on? Why is this happening to me?” she howls at her therapist. Instead of being her usual self, a deer in the headlights with an unyielding sense of disbelief, today she’s found her voice and is mad.

“This isn’t the life I’m supposed to have!” She doesn’t say this in a self-righteous manner, but one that’s steps away from panic. “How can this be?”

After waiting a beat, her therapist speaks calmly yet assertively:“Yes,” she says and leans over to look straight into her eyes. “But this is the life you have.”

As if the world’s come to a stop, she looks around the room, noticing pictures and books in an old wooden bookcase for the first time… She wonders if this is reality. And if it is…. The pit in her stomach says it all. After many moments of silence….

An epiphany.

“Oh my God!” she says out loud, “this is my life!” For the first time since this whole mess began, maybe even for the first time ever, she suddenly gets it. No one is going to rescue her, no one is going to dig her out of this hole she’s in, and in this moment, she’s alone in what she has to do. In some ways, she thinks, “I knew this day would come.” She’s ready… she hopes.

It’s as though the heavy mantle of perfection is lifted. She’s freed from preconceived beliefs about who she should be. Life isn’t just given to you as a right because you have expectations. She wonders why no one ever told her this. Or maybe they did, and she didn’t hear them.

So, she begins. She starts taking control of what she can, which unfortunately feels very little. Her world is still at the mercy of the courts, the lawyers, a sociopath, and very frightened children. To deal with all of them, she looks forward, not back. It’s only when she’s alone that she allows herself to wonder when this pain will end. Not allowing herself to doubt her own abilities, she accepts moments of heart-pounding panic, allows the discomfort to be, and then wonders what all these fears are about.

In a moment of clarity, she thinks, “All this time these emotions have been telling me that there’s something very important out there that I’m not paying attention to.” Another revelation follows. “I’m no different from anyone else.” Events of great pain and misfortune happen in people’s lives. Some remind us that we all make mistakes and can learn from them and grow. Others are moments of joy and connection. We only realize their value because of the others.