According to a survey on YouGovAmerica.com the majority of respondents listed fall/autumn as their favorite season. The autumnal climate and seasonal foliage offer variety and beauty, lending credence to their selection.
Weekend excursions to the wineries or evening walks on tree lined streets in the burbs, autumn is a season that few of us could hate.
But, how could we ponder it is the season of divorce?
Why DMK selected Fall
When pondering what season our team and contributors felt most represented our readers' current lifestyle, fall/autumn was the overwhelming winner.
It doesn't take a DMK divorce scientist (btw, there is no such thing) to recognize the reasons why; but, we thought we would expand on those reasons in this seasonal article in order to provide some much-needed seasonal inspiration during such difficult times.
Comparing the seasons to life events
Seasons are cyclical. They provide us a track of time upon which we live our lives. Much like our relationships, the stages of our lives and the events that occur during them, seasons can be good or bad and affect how we feel, what we do and how we live.
Seasons certainly can be compared to marriage and divorce.
What season best represents marriage?
If marriage was a season we found spring to be the most representational. Spring represents budding, new life. It provides a backdrop in both spouses' lives made up of warmth, growth and possibilities. Year after year, new challenges, rewards and spousal maturing occur. With every success, challenge met and problem conquered, the marriage grows stronger. It's affect is positive on the couple's lifestyle and each spouse's feelings and behavior.
The more loss, failures and disconnections (arguments, apathy, lost trust and disrespect) between spouses - the more negative the marriage has on each spouse's life. In this case, spring gets sprung free and the couple enters into a new season, summer. During which the scorching hot sun bears down on each spouse and their marriage begins to seemingly evaporate.
If the couple decides to divorce, the next season they'll enter is fall.
Comparing divorce to fall
We realize the comparison between divorce and the beloved fall season may be a bit controversial. While most of you may already get the comparison, some may have doubts that such a lovely season could represent an event that most of us would like to forget. We put together four reasons below hopefully to dispel your feelings about it being a wrongful comparison, as well as provide you a better outlook of your life during and after divorce!
1. Autumn is commonly referred to as the season of change
Fire and ice
We can compare summer to the blazing fury of a marriage gone bad and suggest winter as the ice-cold freezing time experienced when living alone after divorce. But all states in the U.S. require a transition period to establish terms and legally conclude the marriage. The term of this legal establishment is "divorce".
There will always be a "fall" in divorce, a period of transition
Such a transition period represents the beginning of a change that, by law, never happens overnight. It usually takes months or years and it's easily described as a sort of limbo. While some days you may not feel married or divorced, hot or cold, others may seem hot and cold, you - angry and depressed.
This is a time period just like the autumn season. It's a buffer zone removing your status as a married person and returning slowly your new identity as a singleton.
Fall may be less obvious for some
Some years autumn may barely emerge after scorching temperatures before the blast of cold blows in. In divorce, some of us may also not fully realize that transition between the decision to divorce and its completion.
All we know is there's a pile of s*#@ ten miles high that's blocking our path to happiness and a snow shovel isn't necessarily what we need. In this case, you'll first need to bunker down and get serious about making good decisions and setting goals that will clear the way to recovery.
Clear your path to a better life
When you're ready, you may need help clearing that new path you are on. Consider hiring a professional skilled in helping those trying to get over their divorce (e.g., counselor, mediator, advisor, mover) to help you clear all that emotional, legal and household crap out of your life.
This is how you do this.
- Stop reading this article (finish it later - it will still be here)
- Search the DMK Directory™, GOOGLE®, Bing® or Yahoo® for professionals near you
- If the professional is a health professional, check your insurance company (not the provider) to see if a visit to the provider will be covered
- Schedule the appointment
- Keep the appointment
- Go to the appointment
- Develop an affordable coarse-of-action or plan with the professional for anticipated clearing of said crap
- Stick with the plan
- Get more out of life
2. Autumn is a season of inspiration, denial and possibly ignorance
Take off your freedom goggles when deciding whether you should divorce
Divorce could be seen as a colorful mirage, an end to our problems or pain that in its initial stages may inspire us to easily accept it as the best way out of our depressing relationship. It provides an opportunity to legally end a relationship that makes one or both spouses unhappy.
However, what it entails is legally and emotionally complicated and for most overwhelming. So, be cautious when walking into the bright, colorful light since in a short time those brilliant, bright colors of the season turn to brown, decay.
Winter sets in about the same time we get the bill for last season
Leaves fall to the ground and blow aimlessly before being crushed underfoot, smothered by frost and eventual ice and snow (most of us call this our first installment to our attorney following the retainer).
Prepare yourself for what's ahead but know there could be situations for which you can never prepare. When they happen, have your moment and move on. Don't get stuck in the snow.
Some journeys are better started without knowing every little detail and detraction
This period of time can also be quite helpful in many ways. Just as we would be unprepared for scorching temperatures one day and an ice storm the next, this season of divorce, meant to end our unhappiness, provides the courage to begin the difficult journey necessary to achieve personal happiness. In other words, if many of us saw the massive mountain we must climb to survive our unhappiness during and after divorce we may elect to stay unhappy and married. So, know it's a challenge, but don't overthink it.
Faith in time, self and desire
While many of you may not have a positive outlook in the height of a winter freeze, rest assured spring is not far away. You just have to believe first, take action second and remain consistent with your desire to achieve what you want for yourself and those you love.
3. Perennials and annuals begin to change and so will you
Perennials live longer than one year
Autumn is when we begin to see many plants, wood plants (trees) and shrubbery change in preparation for their dormancy during the cold winter months. These perennials are meant to slumber during the harsh winter months often losing much of their foliage right before or shortly after. They often have the appearance that they are dead.
Annuals die after one to three seasons
However, annuals like impatiens, pansies and begonias die off with little to no hope of their return.
Annuals are not meant to last forever despite how vibrant and beautiful their blooms appear during spring, summer and early fall. We could look upon them with disbelief that they could parish before the end of the year. We may even plant some without knowing their anticipated life expectancy.
..not meant to be
Much like a bad marriage or relationship, despite the robust passion in their early stages of life, some things were not meant to last. You can water, feed and desperately try to save them, but eventually they will succumb to their predestination (regardless of if we realized it sooner or later).
However, the average human life expectancy is not an incomplete cycle of one annum.
You are not an annual
You are more like a perennial, as is your potential for love.
Both you and your relationship status may go through periods of lows. At times, like a divorce, your [love] life may seem so uneventful that you may not feel it will ever return to normal. However, it is simply dormant, not dead.
Take care of yourself and your life will continue to get better
Like a hardy mum, some initial care in order for its reemergence is helpful in producing greater, more brilliant blooms year after year.
Care for yourself and your family. Get good legal advice and emotional support early on and your potential to grow, learn and improve your life and relationships following your divorce will be higher.
1. If you were to awaken in spring...
Divorce isn't something you do every day. It can be a strange period of time that can cause a great deal of fear of the unknown. Think of it this way...
Emergence of life at the dawn of spring
If you were to suddenly awaken, a farmer and family in the season of spring, with all your intelligence, but no memory of prior existence, then live through the hot summer months and early fall, you may begin to fear the world is coming to an end as the fall season comes to a close. Quickly every leaf falls dead from the trees that only weeks earlier were more beautiful than in the prior two seasons.
The sky is falling
As the dead leaves crunch under your boots, skies begin to grey, air turns icy cold and night falls fast upon you, the fear may quickly overtake you. You may easily act out of character, panic at times.
You may fear what will happen in the coming months; wonder if your family will be okay.
You change as your world changes
As the fall season finally concludes and the long cold winter settles in, you may slowly find darkness within you that distorts any former impression of life. You may no longer feel warmth in your heart or expectation of life as it was in the beginning. You may catastrophize everything and everyone when you compare the stark cold winter grey to the warm spring rain, beautiful flowers and sunny skies.
Even with glistening trees and cascading hills of snow in full view, your anxiety distorts any beauty of the season and goodness it provides. It delivers instead fear of a world on the brink of extinction.
How will you provide for your family? You cannot grow anything, the ground frozen and temperatures too cold.
You are saved...but were you really ever in danger?
After winter something quite wonderful happens. Life. Renewal. Sunshine and warmth. Your world as you knew it returns.
It may be a little different than remembered; some because seasons year-over-year have their own unique qualities, but most because you have matured, grown and learned.
Wiser, stronger, happier
You will appreciate each season more. Autumn will be your season to anticipate great change, but with each year's experience, each life event, each change or challenge will become easier to conquer.
Fall is the season of divorce
It's the beginning of a necessary journey that will return your life to where it feels "right". It will take time. So, don't hop on a plane headed to the tropics just yet. You really can't escape the cold from the journey of divorce recovery, even if you're in the Caribbean Islands.
Be patient, but not complacent. Actions must be taken to complete your journey before it's purpose and your quest for happiness begins to fade or become distorted.
Stop the panic disco
Know that your sky will not fall upon you. The anger, sadness, loneliness will subside. Some of you will suffer a greater, longer winter than others, but like my mother always said, "this too shall pass".
May every autumn you revisit how far you've come
We hope that every fall season following the first after your divorce you find your life improved or have an action plan to make the next autumn season wonderful and everyone thereafter a representation of how far you've come since last. We hope the season always inspires you to initiate more life discovery and opportunity with every day!
Happy autumn from all of us here at DMK!
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