Women, Divorce & Halloween – Spooky!

Remember being young and wearing your new Halloween costume trick or treating on a crisp autumn evening, then going home and sorting out favorite candies.

One Saturday night after my divorce I was invited out with friends to a Halloween party and had to wear a costume. Since I didn’t have one, they insisted I stop by their home early in the evening, and they would have something ready for me to wear.

Then I realized something spooky. Many of us were married to a spouse who was in disguise, who hid his true self behind a mask.

Even more frightening was that many of us began to wear our own disguise, especially if we were in emotionally (or physically) abusive relationships. We disguised our feeling and our thoughts to keep peace and to protect ourselves. We believed this would keep us safe, but we were wrong. And we began to disappear.

It takes tremendous courage to take off our mask and see who we really are. The “trick” is to trust how we truly feel and what we instinctively know. And the “treat” is that we will rediscover our authentic self.

Then we dress ourselves, not in disguises that hide us, but in costumes that reflect this genuine self. We can delight in the glitter of our costumes and enjoy how cool we feel when we spin and our cape twirls around us.

We all have the power of Wonder Woman, the grace of a Princess, the ability to transform like a Butterfly. My costume that Saturday night was Spider Woman. In many Naive American traditions, the spider is a reminder we are the weavers of our own destiny, and we have the ability to weave the past and the future and create delicate, yet amazingly strong threads that sparkle when touched by the sun.

Please remember your power, your grace, and your ability to transform and weave a new and beautiful life.