Divorce Lessons from Dorothy

In the story, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is living a normal Kansas life until a tornado blows her house up into the sky & oh my, she’s not in Kansas anymore.

Divorce can certainly make us feel that our lives have been lifted from their foundations, spun around and dropped into a very different place. We want to cry or scream, “How did I get here? This wasn’t what my life was supposed to be like!”

When Dorothy’s house lands with a thud in an unfamiliar world, the first thing she does is open the door and peek outside. If she never opened the door there would be no story.

The same is true for us. When dealing with divorce we each need to “open the door,” figure out where we’ve landed and take that first step forward. This applies not only to the practical issues, but also to our emotional journey, and it takes tremendous courage. Dorothy has this courage & so do you.

Dorothy’s dog is named Toto, which in Latin means “everything.”  She already has everything she needs with her for her journey, and so do you.

Dorothy has a great pair of shoes – those ruby slippers. They give her more power than she realizes she has, and you guessed it, so do you. Sometimes, though, these shoes end up in the back of our closet under an old pair of jeans, and we don’t have the time or the energy to look for them. 

The wicked witch desperately wants those shoes, but when she tries to take them off Dorothy’s feet, sparks fly, and she quickly pulls her hand back. She cannot take those shoes from Dorothy just as no one can take our power from us. It is uniquely ours, We may have become disconnected from it, forgotten about it, or no longer believed in it, yet when we reconnect to our power and to ourselves, we can always find our way home to the heart of who we are.