Divorce and Healing in a Vibratory Universe

I pretty much gave up this African violet for dead this winter, and placed it in a corner of an unused room in a kind of quarantine situation. I’m usually ruthless about composting a houseplant once it reaches the point where everything I’ve tried to save it hasn’t worked, but I took a different approach with this one.

It went into survival mode, and stayed alive despite receiving maybe one watering all winter. Then, last weekend, there it was in beautiful bloom. It’s now in the living room window getting lots of light, nutrients, and love. I guess it just needed some time to recover and clear whatever negative energy bonds were keeping it tied to illness.

Last year, I wrote about a friend who was going through a divorce. It was an unremarkable divorce, but my friend’s resentment for her ex-husband was intense. I had hoped by now, almost a year after her divorce, that my dear friend would have stopped wasting her precious life force energy on hating and blaming her ex-husband. We talked the other day, after she had posted some nasty and questionable things about him on social media. I gave her a call, and we spoke for a long time.

I am no divorce counselor and never want to be, but when I see a friend whom I love trapped in a karmic loop of her own making, I’m going to do the best I can to help her. The ‘let her talk it out’ approach was not going to do any good: all my friend wants to do right now is conduct a character assassination against her ex-husband in front of anyone who will listen. She’s trapped in a lot of distorted thinking about what actually went wrong in her marriage and she’s having imaginary arguments with her ex-husband, in which she basically succeeds in annihilating him.

I think about my friend and I think about this African violet that healed itself. What this plant needed to do in order to restore itself was to become still and quiet, conserve its energy, be present in the moment, and rest. It needed to practice detachment before it could re-emerge more beautiful than it had ever been before.

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about cords of attachment (COA). The term refers to the unhealthy psychic connection we can have with people who are no longer a part of our lives, but whom we persist in thinking about. These people we refuse to release will regularly appear in our thoughts, and even from time to time in our dreams . We’ll talk about them to others, and even have imaginary conversations with them.

COA are so self-destructive, and yet, the people who cling to them often have no clue that the relationship, which is long since over, is still taking their energy. Even years later - imagine that.

My friend is not the first woman I’ve known who’s done this to herself. Women in particular have a propensity for staying intensely angry far longer after divorce than men. I have no idea why that is. But if I had a dime for every bitter, grudge-holding, money-grabbing ex-wife I’ve met or known of, I’d be writing this blog from a beach in Bali. It boggles the mind and really breaks the heart.

It breaks the heart because these otherwise good people don’t have to endure this. My friend absolutely does not have to spend her energy visiting past events, wearing a façade of self-sacrifice, and keeping her ex-husband in debt to her and therefore, under her control. That’s a lot of work to be doing in the name of a person who she doesn’t need in her life, and who doesn’t need her. It’s time for her ex-husband to be gone from her energy field.

This cord of attachment prevents her from being present in her own life. My friend is being amazingly narcissistic when she believes that absolutely no one can or should live happily without her. And yet, her ex-husband does – he’s lost a lot of weight since their divorce and looks and feels great, and is engaged to be married again. She’s been causally dating someone who doesn’t want to get too close.

The fact that she’s attracting such bitter energy into her life and is still emotionally dependent on her ex-husband may be what’s preventing her from traveling in the direction of her goals: to find another partner to enter into a loving covenant with – not just some guy to date indefinitely.

Deep down in her soul she knows that this cord of attachment is not for her highest good. She knows she needs to clear this negative energy bond, this co-dependent pseudo-relationship she has with her ex-husband, who, if the truth is going to told, wishes her well but would like it if she'd go away.

She’s drinking poison and expecting her ex to die. And her self-esteem is just poor enough that she believes that all of this is his fault, and that the best thing she can do for herself (and their children) now is to tell anyone who will listen what a horrible person and parent he is. (Can you imagine how that makes their children suffer? It's a form of child abuse and should be stopped. It makes one cringe.)

She’s clinging to a blockage that prevents her from moving forward and blossoming again. And it’s likely that she’s carrying those issues into her new relationship, which may explain why her steady boyfriend is not interested in becoming a committed husband.

This African violet thing happened just before my friend and I talked, and that was beneficial to us both. I pointed to the tenacity and wisdom of this little houseplant as an example of healing. We live in a vibratory universe. Cutting a negative COA sets us free, but we must do it out of love - love for ourselves, and love for the other.

I want my friend to hear this: she does not have to spend another day of her life spreading hate (and a few lies) about her ex-husband, and she doesn’t have to feel the quiet shame that inevitably comes after she’s attacked someone who isn’t there to defend him- or herself. She can stop harming her children by telling them directly or indirectly what a failure their father is. That’s just abusive parenting.

She doesn’t have to ever again waste a minute of her precious energy finding ways to drag her ex-husband back to court hoping to steal his freedom (and his money). She won’t ever again have to badmouth him to their children. She doesn’t have to write to him or talk to him ever again. She can stop social media-stalking him and his fiancée, and she definitely never has to mention him on her Facebook account ever again. (Stop that, girl.)

My dear friend needs to re-frame her mind, and break the cycle of bitterness. There is no place for her ex-husband in her life anymore. There are no more lessons she can learn from him. She needs to go to a better place, and she must do that internal work alone, because this is a 100 percent do-it-yourself project.

Having done that, my friend - like the African violet that relaxed and let go and hence redeemed itself – will step through new, brighter doors. Things will come to her when she wants them to. Relationships will shine. Love and light will come into her life. She’ll have more energy, and she’ll sleep better. Her spirit will heal. The past will take its rightful place in history. But she has to accept the letting go.

Barbie xo