I had lunch with a friend whose husband threw her away five years ago, and has steadfastly refused to settle assets.  She has been left with huge attorney bills and a husband who gets away with thumbing his nose at the legal system.  It is killing her.  That’s bad, but the idea that the legal system ALSO turns its back is unbelievable.  More and more, husbands get away with ruining their wives’ lives, when they could just do the right thing and divorce.   You’d think at their age they’d man up a little bit.

Getting through the heartbreak of being thrown away by your husband late in life is traumatic, and when the issues can’t be resolved in a relatively quick manner, the stress becomes unbearable.  My friend looked like a ghost when I met her at the restaurant, could hardly walk and talk.  I knew it would be a difficult meeting, but my job was to keep her alive.  I thought I was looking at a dead woman.

I had to remind her that her life has value and a purpose, and that no man who would do what he did to her is worth dying for.  I gave her no choice.  Suicide is not an option.  Period.  It was the most important pep talk of my life.  How can you make someone who feels worthless, believe they have worth?

All I could tell her was that I was ahead of her on this journey and I survived…am surviving, I corrected.  It is a process, a long and painful one and there are still days in the “blue tunnel”, I  call it.  But those days are fewer and farther between and I feel stronger every day.  She will too, if she just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

If you have been thrown away, remember this:  Your life has value.  You can make it.