I honestly have no idea where to begin with this post… my healing journey has been a tangled mess. It still is.

Some days I feel like I’ve made no progress at all. Other days I can look back and see glimpses of the progress I have made. I just keep moving forward because I have had an overwhelming realization that I am losing time. Maybe it is not the same for everyone, so please do not take my words to be gospel for your situation. For me though, I have felt like I have battled in my trauma, anger, bitterness, depression, anxiety, etc. for a lifetime and with all of the work I have done over the years I feel like I should be further along in my healing journey by now. I am 41 years old and two of my children are teenagers. I do not have much time with them before they go out on their own.

My three children are a product of a broken, toxic marriage and toxic parenting. Now they go back and forth between two households with conflicting standards, rules, and expectations. One of the reasons I stayed in the marriage as long as I did, was to avoid exposing my children to the trauma of divorce. As the oldest of four kids, I experienced a lot of childhood trauma due to my parent’s divorce and the aftermath. My siblings in different ways did as well. Unfortunately, staying in a toxic environment can cause just as much damage (if not more) as a divorce. I recognized that I was never going to heal if I did not remove myself from the toxicity. What I did not understand was toxicity does not go away overnight. Toxic habits need to be broken and healthy habits need to be formed.

Often during divorce, families spiral in the chaos and the toxicity gets worse before it gets better. My family was no different. Besides the divorce, we moved to a different state and transitioned from military to civilian life. I started working full time to support my household as a single mom of three children. I developed debilitating chronic migraines (which I still have to parent and work through) on top of my anxiety/depression/PTSD, two of my children developed anxiety/depression, and the third child developed irritable bowel (which several of us also have). All of the changes created a high stress environment in which our toxic traits are only exasperated.

Several years of Divorce Care classes, trauma therapy, Bible studies, accountability, podcasts, books, Facebook support groups, etc. have all played roles in my journey. With recent conflict and turmoil, I have had new revelations about my marriage dynamic with the help of my therapist and accountability partners. I have been able to recognize and name behaviors in a way that I have not been able to in the past. They are very much still triggering, but being able to vocalize them and understand from a different perspective in a sense gives me strength to push through the trigger faster. I find myself devouring information about healing from emotional and mental toxicity as well as learning tools for parenting, controlling anger, and setting boundaries.

If anyone ever tells you that healing is easy or that healing should be accomplished in a certain amount of time, they are lying to you. I wish that my journey progressed faster than it has so far. However, looking back, I can see how each revelation in my journey came with various traumas and milestones. Each of them were necessary to bring me where I am today. Yes, I regret some decisions I have made and I am continually working on repairing damage that I have caused. Ultimately, though, I know that there is light at the end of the journey and hope along the way. My story will help others going through similar circumstances. And I believe that, eventually, there will be peace in my life and home.