The Joy That Comes After
What becomes possible when we stop carrying the past forward
#48
What an exciting and glorious last couple of weeks! After so much work establishing myself over the past months, I was met with some incredibly fun and meaningful life moments.
After four months, I was finally on a plane again headed to Washington State to spend time with my son for his college graduation as I mentioned in the last blog. I really do love to travel, and it was such a heart-filling time. Because the hotels and lodging in the area were so overpriced, I opted to sleep on the sofa in his apartment which actually gave me even more time with him and his sweet girlfriend — an unexpected bonus. The requisite Costco run to stock them up was completed, along with helping with a few little projects around the apartment to make life more comfortable.
His dad was also there for the weekend staying in a different location, and even though we hadn’t all been in the same room together for many years, it was surprisingly easy and comfortable. That alone made it such a beautiful experience for everyone involved.
It has taken me many years to arrive at a place of true peace and neutrality around my divorce which is now approaching twelve years ago. No one really knows how deeply a split can affect every layer of life until they’ve lived through it themselves. I certainly didn’t foresee the internal and external minefields I would have to navigate in order to feel fully complete with that chapter.
Of course, it deeply affected my children as well, with my youngest still processing and moving through their feelings with limited contact with me. There have been years of forgiveness work, grief, loneliness, and questioning. Years of trying to understand what happened, who I was becoming, and how to keep my heart open through it all.
And yet, all of that work eventually brought me here — to sitting peacefully in the same room supporting our child, talking and laughing with ease, and even playing poker together like we used to back in the day to celebrate our son’s graduation.
It was a very big milestone that I am deeply grateful I made it to.
There were times it felt impossibly far away. But the willingness to keep healing, to keep looking inward, and to continue moving through the hard emotions instead of around them strengthened something deep within me. A quiet resilience. An inner steadiness that only comes from living through what once felt unbearable and discovering you can still come out softer on the other side.
It also made me appreciate my relationship with Tim even more and what a contrast this partnership feels like. We love to travel and explore together, have great chemistry, he can easily carry the conversation, but more importantly, he has a depth of soul and a willingness to look inward and continue growing as a human being. That quality matters deeply to me now.
At this stage in my life, one of my greatest values is having someone who is willing to evolve emotionally, communicate openly, and continue becoming more conscious. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect — we absolutely have our edges and moments we have to work through — but we continue choosing one another through it all. Consciously.
And maybe that’s part of what healing gives us too. The ability to recognize when something healthier, more aligned, and more fulfilling arrives in our lives — and the capacity to actually receive it.
My ex has also found a partner who feels right for him, and they have moved to New Zealand together. In many ways, everyone has found their own path forward and created lives that fit who they are now. There’s something peaceful about that realization, too.
With my work at the Brave Thinking Institute, we are given daily and weekly teachings to support our own inner growth which I’m also incredibly grateful for. Ironically, this week’s training centered around forgiveness and releasing the lingering emotional residue from past experiences.
One of the exercises was called: “That was then, this is now.”
There is a moment — right after we think a thought — where we can choose which direction our energy will move. We can continue feeding an old story, resentment, or wound and spiral downward emotionally, or we can consciously pause, soften, and choose differently.
It happens in a microsecond.
But the more we practice interrupting those old loops, the easier it becomes to return to peace instead of pain. The freedom that comes from that is hard to fully describe. It creates more space for joy, creativity, lightness, and genuine presence to enter our lives again.
And that’s part of healing too — allowing joy back in.
The day after I arrived home in Dallas, Tim and I went to the design center to pick out all the finishes for my new home, and I was honestly filled with so much excitement and happiness! We spent just under three hours choosing cabinets, flooring, tile, hardware, faucets, paint colors, and lighting, and our design consultant was an absolute gem.
I had done my homework ahead of time, but some things simply needed to be seen and felt in person before I could decide. Once we got there, everything flowed beautifully. Tim’s biggest request was beautiful flooring, and we quickly found an option we both loved. And the times I was considering a couple of choices, he would gently say, “Go with your first instinct and what you would love.”
And he was right every time.
I would have eventually gotten there on my own, but it was so much more fun sharing the process and making decisions together. It felt less like stress and more like creating a life.
Then to cap it all off, that same evening a friend invited us to a Rangers baseball game, making it one of those very full, expansive days where life seems to overflow all at once. By the next evening after work, I took a shower, crawled into bed with a book, and was asleep before 8 pm. 🙂
Families are shifting and changing so quickly in these times. Relationships evolve. Roles change. People come and go. And creating a chosen family — one rooted in honesty, support, laughter, healing, and growth — feels more meaningful to me now than ever before.
Maybe that’s what healing really gives us. Not perfection. Not a life without pain or change, but the ability to keep our hearts open long enough to experience joy again.
To laugh together.
To build something new.
To support one another through changing seasons of life.
To allow Life to surprise us with how much beauty can still unfold after difficult chapters.
That kind of freedom is worth every step it took to get there.
To your highest and best,
Dianna
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