@startoverstrategy: This morning I saw two very different responses to limitation. On my walk, an elderly man was slowly making his way across uneven rocky ground with a walking stick. He was clearly limited by age and mobility. But he was still moving forward. Earlier, I had seen a post from a younger couple talking about why they couldn’t improve their financial situation over the next several years. People offered ideas and possibilities. The response was simple: “That’s not an option.” Now, sometimes that is true. Real limitations exist. But one of the things I see over and over among women rebuilding after controlling marriages, high-control churches, and divorce is that years of disempowerment can teach us to stop looking for options. We learn to focus on barriers instead of possibilities. We learn to wait for permission. We learn to assume we have fewer choices than we actually do. The opposite of helplessness isn’t having unlimited opportunities. It’s being willing to ask: “What CAN I do from where I am right now?” The women who successfully rebuild after divorce aren’t the women with perfect circumstances. They’re the women who keep taking the next step, even when the ground is uneven. #StartingOverAfterDivorce #LearnedHelplessness #ReligiousTraumaRecovery #LifeAfterDivorce #WomenRebuilding
