Choosing Love Again - Prologue
First the sun, then the rain.
Darkness fades away. Light begins.
The Next Relationship
“I met her in a supermarket. By the eggs. She was eating corn chips. I caught her eye. She said: “These are the best corn chips. No sense getting a small bag. Have to get a big one.”
I have always liked a woman with an appetite.
Eight months after my separation, my first new romantic relationship began this way. A surprise attack. It happened as I was still trying, and failing, to reconcile with my former partner. I wasn’t prepared.
We stood and talked by the eggs for an hour. 60 minutes. A voice came on the intercom system announcing that the store would be closing. We laughed at the idea that we were closing down a supermarket. “Last call for the special on whole wheat bread!”
We parted with smiles on our faces. I also walked out with a sense of possibility. For the first time in ages, I felt not only attracted to another woman, but attractive myself. I felt we had connected. Somehow she hadn’t noticed the big “reject” sign on my forehead. I felt desirable, appreciated and accepted. It was great.
But it was also confusing . . .”
Note to the Reader
The passage above is a little preview of things to come in this new Substack series.
I write romantic fiction. A is for Amy is my new novella. (Please check it out. It’s a new kind of romance. Funny and deep. A quick read with a big heart.)
But this limited series of posts on Substack isn’t fiction.
This is a true love story. It starts with losing love and follows my path as I grieved and then found love again.
I wrote it because I would have liked to read something like this - honest, experiential and nonjudgmental - when my first marriage nose-dived.
I offer my story as a resource to all people who are disconsolate after a relationship has hit the rocks, to all people who now live apart from former lovers/partners/spouses.
If you are holding suffering, past or present, in your hearts, please also hold the possibility for transformation.
Once we accept our broken hearts, once those hearts mend, we have the capacity to be more compassionate, wiser, and stronger than we were before.
That is my experience.
May it be your experience, too.
More to come! I hope to post weekly. Meantime, go well.
P.S. Sneak peek from next week:
"My journey of romantic renewal led through self-doubt and suffering. I felt diminished. I felt hollowed out by loss. But the process of grieving also created more space within me. Or left me more aware of the space I always had. This was a transformation. The aching hole deep within became, over time, a beautiful emptiness. Like the space inside a guitar. Not mute, just quiet. Waiting in full readiness to be resonant, to make music. This space was not only for lament, but for joy and celebration. For love."
