This post is a part of Divorce Guru’s “Divorce, Women, and Success” series. For the next few months I will profile women who have achieved the bulk of their success after divorce to provide you with hope,motivation and inspiration that you too can succeed in life after divorce!
Yours in success!
- Divorce Guru
“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”
C.S. Lewis
Get STRENGTH after divorce
We had private airplanes to whisk us off for weekends in Las Vegas and we golfed at different places all over. The world really was our oyster and then it all came to a crashing end with the realization that my husband had been unfaithful to me, I found the missing piece of the puzzle that I had been seaching for a long time.
Being a stay-at-home mom, a ‘domestic engineer’ was extremely rewarding and I truly thought my husband valued my contributions, but in the end I learned he used it as a weapon against me.
I tried to talk about our problems, but his coldness and deafening silence shot a bullet through my heart. When he shut me out of his life and spent nights away from home working, I begged him for help, but as I heard from friends he accused me of being “a nag.” Exhausted by the lack of compromise and broken promises, I withdrew and my self-confidence and sense of worth took a massive beating. His cruelty in withholding physical affection from me was the most shattering blow.
In his need to control and punish, he began to tighten the financial belt and this made me extremely insecure about mine and my sons’ future. He often displayed such a mental strength and intimidation that I feared him in some way. I stopped believing in my inner voice, that was telling me this is not right. I lost faith in myself.
My saving grace was my continuing to work out. I had always been a believer in exercise and good nutrition. I had been circuit and weight training for years and even
competed in amateur bodybuilding and won the title of ABA Miss California in 1997. I was physically strong, but emotionally weakened by the disintegration of my marriage.Divorce was just not in my vocabulary and I always wanted to believe our marriage could be saved.
I let up on my healthy eating habits during this low point, but my weight was still under control because I pushed myself to go to the gym and that’s where I found my solution to what seemed an impossible situation.
It was at the gym where a simple song would help me out of the deep well of depression and defeat and place me on a different path. One day as I was working out, I heard a song playing that caught my attention. The lyrics were “Get Up.” It appealed to my artistic side as I had always dabbled in graphics, so I started creating some designs with that theme on some t-shirts that afternoon. Later on that day, I went with a friend to a Bible study. The lesson was about getting up and stop being a victim! The scripture read was John 5:8–”Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up they bed, and walk.”
The hair on my arms stood up. I knew God was talking directly to me and immediately my thinking and emotions made a shift. At 42, I made a decision to change. I divorced my husband in 2005. I learned by body and my mind had to have a connection with my soul. The strength within me was there all the time. I know now, that inner voice will never deceive me.
My experience inspired me to pass on what had been given to me to others. I took my love for fitness and turned it into a career and I call it StrengthInUs. Through my video series on my website www.strengthinus.com I demonstrate and create awareness about the benefits of exercising and good nutrition.
Whether my clients work out with me in person at my gym in Glendora or visit me on the web, the message is the same: We all have the ‘strength in us’ to accomplish whatever we want to do. by increasing workouts and improving our diets, we are on the road to better health. My parents who are in their 70′s are work out partners with me!
Exercising on a regular basis has allowed me to be physically strong and at 50, I forgive myself if I occasionally miss a day of exercise. For me, variety to my workouts adds excitement and challenge to make it more interesting, but the key is to get up and start moving.
If you think you are too old or it’s been too long since you exercised, here are five tips to help you get started:
1. Work on a gradient start out slow and then increase, add a little bit more each time.
2. Define on paper your passion and visualize yourself doing it.
3. Write out decisions you have been avoiding making
4. Establish behaviors you want to change and list them.
5. Say it out loud it makes you more accountable. Practice listening to yourself. Write down goals, no matter how small.
Work on these lists each day, adding more to them as you go along without judging or self-slandering. You will find as you do this, you will hear your solutions, so pay attention!
By taking one step at a time and then one day at a time, you will feel both physically and emotionally stronger. Remember, on days that you are feeling good that an extra step forward towards your fitness goals and the rewards will be wonderful.
I’m Julie Stokes and together we have the strength in us to anything!
