This web domain (divorcedarling.com) began with the idea of being about recovering from divorce. I’m not forgetting that. My ex-husband was also a good friend. That’s not something you get over very quickly, or easily. So this blog has merged with a site I started on Blogger, Romance and Bondage. I think they are a good fit, for me. Whoever finds this is welcome to read. I think it’s a good balance to have a blog about romance, sex, and relationships. In my own way, of course.

This is my original About page for Divorce Darling. I’m not changing the original message.

After the divorce it’s time for you to sparkle, darling!

If I could give some kind of support to any other woman going through, or just getting to the end of the tunnel with a divorce, I would tell her to sparkle. Don’t forget to sparkle.

Don’t forget how to sparkle. Especially on your worst days, find something that brings the life back into you. Take a day off when you can and go somewhere that brings you peace. Buy yourself something just a bit luxurious, decadent even. Treat yourself even if all you can afford is some cheap sparkly thing at the thrift shop or dollar store.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mae West and the others had it right. They were feminists before it was political. They were dripping in diamonds, glamorous and they had the attitude of a woman who had found her place in the world and was not too polite to keep it. They could be sexy and sexual at a time when women were not supposed to talk about sex. Somehow they created their own world around them as they wanted it to be. However things were going and however they felt on any particular day, they sparkled on the outside and seeing them, I believed they must sparkle on the inside too.

Divorce isn’t a time to be sad for too long. Take what you can get out of it then rebuild your life, better and brighter than ever before. Become your own phoenix, don’t linger in the ashes. Ashes blow away if you let them.

Comments from the original post:

ptathuk January 10, 2013 Your advice about “don’t forget to sparkle” applies to men too. It is something I failed to do, after my divorce. I did treat myself occasionally. This helped a little. For a long time I felt quite isolated, even when surrounded by friends. The feeling is very like grief, after someone close passes away. This experience sadly becomes more common as one gets older. Perhaps not the most welcome part of getting older and wiser.

I like the recovery imagery you conjure (above). I hope this worked for you, and the others with whom it was shared.

Thank you

ptathuk

Laura January 10, 2013 It took a long time but one day I just felt ok again. I didn’t feel angry and I began to feel connected to the world again. I don’t know if if I’d say I’m over it. But, I’m not being sucked down by it still. Progress. :)

I really did feel like the phoenix, especially in the mid-early days, once I wasn’t feeling to numb to feel anything at all.

Best wishes to you.

robertd February 11, 2013 Numb is the best way to put it. Also “acceptance” and “relief”.

Alex February 13, 2013 Hi,

Just came about your site. AMAZING!

Question (if you want to answer it), are you still friends with your ex? Sometimes marriage doesn’t work for two people but that doesn’t mean they don’t like each other or can’t get along otherwise. That’s what it might be with you. I understand it’s kind of personal, you of course don’t have to answer it but I am just answering to this great post.

Alex

Laura Brown February 14, 2013 It’s a more delicate friendship now. Broken and yet still held together. I very much remember the day his email address changed and I didn’t have any other way to contact him online. That was a jolt. I realized I did want to keep in touch, even before I wanted to rebuild the friendship. So that was how the friendship held up. I just didn’t want to lose it entirely. He is still someone I can trust. My family think we made such a great couple and don’t see why we don’t get back together. I can’t patch things back to be that way with him again, as a lover. But, we are friends. I don’t think I will ever be that close to anyone again. The burning up changed me and I don’t think I ever really want to be that close to anyone again now.

robertd February 18, 2013 You might that ose to someone again–you never know. I’m sorry it hurts so much right now, but it will get better.

Laura Brown February 18, 2013 Its more than ten years now. I’m not hurting so much any more. Just not rushing to do it all over again. But, I am kind of a romantic so I never really give up on meeting someone. Thanks for your kind note.

We had no furnace for almost a week. A chilly adventure. It's fixed now, the house didn't even take very long to warm up. The men were here most of the work day installing a new furnace and the new hot water tank which was required because the old one wouldn't work with the new furnace. (I blame it on computer software).

Then, when it all seemed OK and the men had left in their  truck, the thermostat wouldn't work. The heat started going down again and I could not turn it up. So, some phone calls, then one of the men came back. He looked it over and installed a new simple thermostat which doesn't have PeakSaver (the fatal flaw which kept it from heating up the house). So a bit of complications, construction and now the house feels like a place fit for human habitation again.

I didn't feel much like writing when my hands were frozen and the rest of me was cowering under blankets. But, I did sew. There's some irony in there, somewhere. I've set myself to make seven Christmas stockings. I want to get them done in time. I also want them to look nice, maybe even clever.

So that's how my week has been going.

What would you write about your own week, if you were to write a short note about your week on impulse and without any planning ahead?

From the Boing Boing forum on Flickr come these photography quotations picked by forum readers:

"Photography...it's the easiest medium in which to be competent. Anybody with a point-and-shoot camera can take a competent picture. But it's the hardest medium in which to have, to express, some kind of personal vision. Because there is no touch, there is no hand, there is no physicality. The fact that you CAN have something that's recognizable from 50 feet across the gallery as a Diane Arbus or an Irving Penn...the fact that you can have recognizable authorship means they really have done something." ~ Chuck Close

"…to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude." - Susan Sontag

"The best camera is the one that's with you" - Chase Jarvis

"Shoot for the secrets, develop for the surprises" - Diane Arbus

"I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself." Diane Arbus

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." - Robert Capa

"He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful." - William McCleery

"No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." - Robert Adams

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it." - Ansel Adams

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." – Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph." – Matt Hardy

“Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times…I just shoot at what interests me at that moment." – Elliott Erwitt

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow." – Imogen Cunningham

"You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper." – William Albert Allard

"If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up." – Garry Winogrand

“I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn’t that good." – Anonymous

"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." – Ansel Adams

“It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get." – Timothy Allen

via » How I Changed My Life, In Four Lines :zenhabits.

Making change is not easy. Like breaking a habit, it takes will power, focus and patience too. If you look too far ahead the job of changing seems too big to attempt. Many things seem bigger before you have begun doing them. It takes that spark of getting started to push yourself into change. I like the Nutshell Principles, especially starting small, giving yourself a goal you feel you can reach right from the start. We are likely to succeed when we believe we can!

I haven't been writing so much of my own unique content lately. I will get back to it. My excuse is twofold: family weddings (2 of them) and just plain needing a break.

Also, an interest in blogging as a content curator versus writing all the content yourself. I prefer being the brains behind my own blog but I admit it is nice to take a break and let the voices of others have a say for awhile. It's also a great way to pick up more ideas, gather information and mix the resources you find into something new and interesting. It's a great way to form opinions and pull together ideas.

So that's my excuse for being a bit on the slack side lately. The second wedding is this weekend, just before our Canadian Thanksgiving which is on Monday.