Getting divorced can take a real toll on your self-esteem. When the person you’ve devoted your entire life to decides they don’t want to be with you anymore it hurts. At times the rejection can be almost unbearable. Low self-esteem haunts most of us from time to time, but it tends to be significantly worse after such a huge life-changing event.
After my divorce I felt like I was a teenager again. I was insecure about every aspect of my entire being. I felt like everyone was judging me for what I was going through, like somehow it was my fault. I felt like I was somehow less of a person because I was divorced. I was doing my best, but it never seemed good enough. Were people really judging me? Probably not, but I was thoroughly convinced that they were and thus my self-esteem was a mess.
That first month was especially difficult. I was stuck and didn’t know where I was going. My identity had to be reshaped as I was no longer someone’s wife. I had to discover me, for who I was on my own. I didn’t know what made me happy anymore. As soon as I figured that out and started doing things that made me feel good it in turn started to help raise my self-esteem. Each morning I had to look myself in the eye and tell myself that I was a good person, that I was beautiful, and that my divorce did not define who I was as a person. It took several months before anything really changed. Life still wasn’t perfect, but I noticed that if I took the time to enforce the positive self-talk each morning, that I was starting to feel better and better. I had to convince myself that I was worth loving. If I didn’t love myself, no one else would ever have the opportunity to love me either. I needed to learn to love myself again. Once that happened I began to carry myself with more confidence and I learned that being divorced didn’t really change who I was. I was still a good person, I was still a good mother, and I was still worth loving.