How Women Can Benefit from “Lowering the Bar” for Themselves During Divorce

Written by Barb Greenberg

A friend treated me to dinner at Carbone’s Pizza in St. Paul to offer support as I was struggling through my divorce. In between bites of a delicious, cheesy slice, I moaned about my painful situation. “I can’t do this.  It’s too hard. I’m not handling this well at all.” Really, I’m NOT handling this well at all!”

With a knowing smile she asked, “Are you getting out of bed in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re handling it.”

Well, I was hoping I could set the bar a little higher for myself, but I took her words to heart and discovered I made more progress without the pressure of that bar. 

My ego was not happy and hollered in my head. “You can’t do that? What’s wrong with you? You are being irresponsible.  You need that bar.”

Even though my ego ranted, my spirit  was grateful and so was my body.  Lowering the bar eased the pressure I was putting on myself, lowered my stress level, and I have no doubt kept me healthy.

Lowering the bar, I gave myself permission slow down.  I heard TV commercials all the time about how “Fast” is so much better than “Slow.”  That may be true for internet connections, but not necessarily for healing. 

Lowering the bar, I gave myself permission to reimagine my journey. I always held the image of traveling the road of life, but now the road seemed hard and dusty, filled with dangerous twists and turns, and I had to keep moving or be run over by whatever was coming behind me.

One day I read that life isn’t a road.  It’s a meadow.  I loved that image. It felt soft and fragrant, and I could sit and rest when needed. Maybe the road I had been on led me to this meadow.

When you choose to lower the bar for yourself, you can ease your stress and improve your health.  And lowering the bar gives you time to reimagine your own journey.  You may prefer a country road edged with wild flowers. You may choose to imagine floating down a river or even floating overhead in hot air balloon.  Or you could be driving  down a highway in the cutest sports car ever.

You may not only want to lower the bar, you may want eliminate altogether, putting it in a corner and decorating it with bright streamers or simply recycling it. Turn it into a ladder to use when you are ready to climb back into life or break it into pieces to use as firewood and build a fire to warm you and lighten the darkness.