The Part of Healing That I Avoided After My Divorce

For a long time after my marriage ended, I felt like I was going nowhere.

I was functioning, co-parenting, dating and working. Doing all the things you’re supposed to do. But inside, I felt stuck. The grief didn’t seem to move. The anger and regret kept circling back, even many years later.

At the time, I didn’t realise I was protecting myself.

After a marriage ends, most of us fall more into one of two places. Either we’re painfully aware of everything we did “wrong” and we beat ourselves up endlessly, or we focus mostly on our ex’s shortcomings.

What they did, what they didn’t do, and how responsible they were for things falling apart. I lived mostly in that second place.

I blamed my ex-husband for much of what wasn’t working. I didn’t question him as a father or a provider, but when it came to emotional connection and partnership, I felt alone. I felt like I was the one trying, carrying the emotional load, trying to improve things.

After my divorce, that story made complete sense to me, and it helped me survive.

Blame gave me something solid to stand on when everything else had collapsed.

The end of my marriage was such a shock to my entire system, that I simply wasn’t ready to look any deeper. And I don’t see that now as avoidance. I see it as self-protection. I wasn’t strong enough yet to hold the full truth.

What I didn’t realise back then was that blame was also shielding me from a deeper, more painful layer of grief. Underneath the anger was something much harder to face. The possibility that my own attachment wounds had played a role in the breakdown of the relationship.

When I eventually felt stronger, those truths started to surface.

I remember picking up a book on codependency and feeling my stomach drop as I read it. Not because it described someone awful or malicious, but because it described someone caring, responsible, and deeply focused on someone else. It described me.

What I was bringing into the marriage didn’t look unhealthy on the surface. It looked like caring. But caring that is entirely focused on another person isn’t healthy, and love that’s driven by fear of disconnection comes at a cost.

I started to see some uncomfortable things about myself. I focused too much on what wasn’t working instead of what was. I didn’t have the relational skills, at that stage of my life, to communicate my needs clearly or early enough.

I managed anxiety in my marriage by trying to control outcomes rather than sitting with uncertainty or trusting that my husband would always stick with me, even through the hard times.

Those realisations were incredibly painful. Not just because they were hard to admit, but because of the question that followed. If I had known this sooner… if I had done things differently… could this marriage have worked?

That thought was brutal.

For a while, the grief actually got worse. I wasn’t just grieving the end of the marriage anymore, I was grieving the version of myself who didn’t know better. And there was a strong urge to go back and fix it all, to rewind time and do everything differently with the awareness I had now.

What mattered was that I stayed with those thoughts. I didn’t rush to resolve them or push them away. I didn’t swing back into blaming my ex to escape the discomfort, and I didn’t turn it into self-attack either. I let the truth be painful and complicated.

Yes, my attachment wounds contributed to the breakdown. Yes, there were things I would do differently now. And no, I was not responsible for everything. I was part of the system, not the whole system.

Understanding and accepting that changed everything.

Ownership is not self-blame.

Ownership says, these are the things I did that didn’t work and that I’ll do differently next time. Self-blame says, this was all my fault. Ownership gave me my power back. It allowed me to see myself clearly as well as acknowledging my exes actions.

Once I reached that place, something finally shifted. I stopped clinging to the fantasy that the marriage could have worked if only I had tried harder or been better or known more. I stopped bargaining with the past. The grief didn’t disappear, but it finally moved into acceptance.

Taking ownership didn’t reopen the wound, it closed it. It allowed me to be honest about the marriage as it actually was, rather than the story I kept telling myself about what it might have become.

And I think that’s the part we don’t talk about enough. We can’t fully release grief while some part of us is still negotiating with it, still secretly hoping the ending might change.

What changes is us.

When I look back now, there is a little sadness at times, a smidge of regret for the things I wish I’d done better, and also a lot of tenderness and gratitude.

What isn’t there anymore is the constant pull to fix what I couldn’t go back to. Healing didn’t come from blame. It came from ownership and forgiveness.

It came from being brave enough to say that I made mistakes, but that I was only human. I was wounded, and I doing the best I could with what I knew at the time, and that was more than enough.

Life is too short to live in the past. It’s a choice to face what we have to face in order to grow and let go of the connections that were only meant to be there for a season.

As much as we wanted another end to our story.

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This post was previously published on Carol Madden Coaching.

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