P2YL | 35. 4½ ways I found to rebuild confidence

After divorce and heartbreak

Underneath all the pain resulting from infidelity and abandonment and divorce, a justified anger comes bubbling up. 

It’s not a pleasant feeling, but used well it can actually help. 



‘Anger is an energy’ (Public Image Limited)

Any Gen Xer or Gen Yer woman will recognise that post-punk lyric. 

Maybe it takes something like trauma before you recognise the truth of it.

Anger contains an energy that you can use positively, first of all simply to survive, and afterwards to create the power to build a new life.

It did for me, and I’m no Wonder Woman, more the Nervous Kitten type. 

I used anger positively as energy for the actions below.

If this all sounds too much effort and too exhausting when you are shellshocked and miserable, please bear in mind I did it gradually over several years.

Self-development

I didn’t exactly have a stellar career at that point. My life was composed of a part-time job, freelance writing and editing, and homemaking which I loved.

Now circumstances had changed and I had to focus on the full-time careers market whether I liked it or not. 

I looked at various past jobs I had done, picked the one I had enjoyed the most and decided to up my chances in the jobs market by studying for a relevant professional qualification.

I started the one-year course in a spirit of resigned pessimism. I finished it pleasantly surprised at how stimulating and even enjoyable I had found it.

OK, some parts of the course came more naturally than others; I challenge any arts student not to feel blind panic at a module entitled ‘DITA: Digital Information, Technologies & Architecture’.

But one valuable takeaway was that you don’t have to be a natural at something to be able to learn enough to get through. You just need to get your head down and work at it. 

Doing this course at that time gave me something to occupy my brain, which otherwise might have been brooding on the recent past.

Change of scene

As the training I took involved relocating to a new city for a year, fresh sights and sounds meant I wasn’t being confronted every day with things that reminded me of ‘us’. Painful memories and emotions had a chance to fade. 

By the end of the year I returned to my hometown not exactly miraculously healed but nevertheless with some of the memories of the past sloughed off and beginning to wither

'House of Colour'

We are mind—body—spirit and I have found that tweaking the physical self has positive inner effect.

Wanting to boost confidence in my looks I put money into a monthly ‘Personal Budget’ to afford good hairdressers and beauticians. 

Once there was a sizeable amount in the budget I booked a day-long House of Colour consultant to learn to enhance my personal style and clothes.

I was so impressed with it that several years later, after I was remarried, I gave a House of Colour consultation as a birthday present to my husband. He actually enjoyed it and we both love the results.

Why ‘4½ ways’? 

What about the ½? 

If something’s listed as ½ it’s because I can’t in good conscience recommend it but honesty tells me to share it.

During my single years I had been a Good Girl, having boyfriends but not lovers, right up to a marriage in which I was completely faithful.

The shock of infidelity and divorce turned my ideas topsy-turvy. I rebelled against my virtue-core mindset. So the sort of fun flings I had avoided in my teens and twenties, I ended up having in my forties. 

Whatever the rights and wrongs, somehow I came away from it all with an enhanced sense of myself as feminine and desirable and more daring.

Still, this action gets only half a point in my list, because I can’t feel 100% at ease about it. In the end I didn’t want flings or the mindset that goes with it and I drew a line under that episode. 

Ultimately I knew I wanted an honourable relationship with an honourable someone, who, this time, would not let me down. 

🌱🍃🌿