A couple of years ago, not long after my divorce, I was sitting at my friend’s favorite wine bar across from the lake on one of those Sundays that's almost too pretty for words and one that definitely didn’t reflect how I actually felt inside. The water was doing that thing where it bounces the light like dancing children.

I was living in Mexico at the time, but I’d flown home for a few days to avoid a Category 5 hurricane that was headed straight towards my beachfront condo. And since I was not interested in the week ahead without power or running water, I high-tailed it out of there.

So here I am, in the last city I shared a home with him just the year prior, and I couldn’t tell you where he was even laying his head these days.

I had a mimosa flight in front of me, because why not, and one of my closest friends across from me. And then she said something so stupidly ignorant I started laughing…head back, belly out, deep down from within my soul, complete with a snort. I actually had to set my glass down before I spilled it.

A second later this thought walked in without warning: I haven't laughed like that since before. Shortly after we separated my mom was diagnosed with cancer, so there was very little laughter and joy during that season. I waited for the sadness to follow it in. It would usually show up on cue, right behind a good moment telling me that I had no right to one. But It never came. I just kept laughing, looking out towards that lake like it had finally earned my attention again.

I’ve been in enough hard seasons now, oh so many hard seasons, to know that healing doesn’t arrive at your door like certified mail, with a signature request and delivery confirmation. It just starts annoyingly showing up in places when you aren’t watching…leaving you to say, “Oh.”

First you notice a decision you made without spinning out for three days first, unless you’re a Libra like me, then spinning out is simply a Tuesday. Then there is the Sunday you get through without thinking about them once. And then you surprise yourself with a cruise you booked for the fall, which means some part of you has already decided you’ll be around, and fine, and going places by then.

It took me a while after that Sunday at the lake to understand what had actually happened. So here’s what it looks like, broken down, in case you’re in the middle of it right now and can’t see it yet either.

At some point you were keeping score. It’s been eleven days since you cried, three weeks since you checked his profile, forty-two days since the house finally stopped smelling like him. You do this because you need the number. It is proof you are still standing, proof that you survived one more day than the day before.

Our brain needs to feel in control, and counting feels like control when nothing else does. In the beginning, the math is the only thing that makes sense, so you keep a running total. You wake up, you check the tally, you go to bed that night a little further from the worst of it than you were that morning.

Then one Sunday you’re sitting somewhere with a beautiful backdrop and a glass of wine and you go to check the running total out of habit, and you can’t find it. You actually have to think back to figure out what week you’re even in. That pause, that little stumble where the number used to be automatic, is the whole thing. You didn’t forget. You just stopped needing the scoreboard to know you were okay.

The best part about coming back to yourself, is feeling sure in your decisions. Say, for instance, someone canceled on you, or your plans fell through, or you had to make a call about money or work or your kids, and you just made it. There was no three-day spin. You didn’t have to go to the group chat to talk yourself into something you already knew (or ChatGPT if we’re keeping it a buck).

Before that, every decision felt like you were defusing something. Should I respond. Should I wait. Should I read into the fact that he liked the post but didn’t comment. Your brain treated the smallest choices like they carried the same weight as the breakup itself, because for a while, in a way, they did. Everything felt connected to the thing that broke.

Then one day a friend canceled dinner with little notice, which is usually the kind of thing that would’ve sent me into a spiral, because now what do I eat, but I just texted back, “no worries, let’s reschedule,” and went on with my day. I didn’t notice until that night that it hadn’t even occurred to me to spiral.

That was evidence of a nervous system that finally stopped treating every small disappointment like the big one.

And here's where the getting gets good. Life truly does go on.

So you buy a ticket, book a trip, or say yes to something three months out, and don’t think twice about it until later…which sounds small until you remember that not long before, you couldn’t picture a future at all without them, let alone one worth planning for.

You can usually plan as far as the next meal, maybe the next day if you’re doing well. Anything further than that feels like lying to yourself, like you’re making a promise your body isn’t sure it can keep. So you don’t make plans. You just get through the day in front of you and call that a win.

I remember the day I booked some time away, by myself, somewhere I’d never been, without running it past anyone or talking myself out of it first. I didn’t think of it as brave at the time. I just wanted to go. It was only looking back that I understood what it meant: some part of me, the part that does the real accounting, had already decided I was going to be around to use that ticket.

That’s the proof and it’s been there all along.

Divorce is hard. Letting go is brutal. Starting over is confusing and scary and lonely. But acceptance is healing. And finding your joy again is worth it all.

You’re going to be ok.

This week, write down three small wins from the last month. Note: The fact that you cooked dinner and didn’t cry through it counts.

Tell me one of yours in the comments. I read every single one.

I used to think healing would feel like relief, like finally exhaling after holding your breath for a year. Some days it does. Most days it just feels like a normal Sunday at a wine bar laughing uncontrollably while surrounded with friends, and it took me a long time to understand that was actually the whole point.

If you’re noticing your own version of this, the small stuff that doesn’t make a big deal of itself, that’s not luck or randomness. It’s you, doing the work, even on the days it doesn’t feel like work at all.

You’re further along than you think. Keep going.

— Donteacia 💛

P.S. As I read through this issue I remembered what prompted me to write it. Every single newsletter issue I write is for an audience of one. It’s usually a friend, a client, or because of a random conversation I’ve had with a stranger. This one was for a friend who just got divorced and wasn’t sure she’d ever experience joy again.

No matter who I write these for, I hope it reaches the right person who needs it at the exact time they need it.

P.P.S. I’m good. Life is good. See you next month. Yes, here on Substack.