Lessons From the End of a Marriage: How I Found Happiness While Surviving Bigamy, Abandonment, and Deceit

The abrupt end of my ten-year marriage came with a surprise text message. "I am sorry to be such a coward leaving you this way but I am leaving you and leaving the state." That message was only the beginning of a strange series of events that took my once-loving husband to jail for felony bigamy and to the distant land of Uganda before we would meet again in court. The tsunami that signaled the end of my marriage left me stranded on an alien shore trying to understand the causes of the destructive wave as I struggled to rebuild. I framed this period of time after my divorce as a series of lessons, tutorials on love and loss, anxiety and fear, and finally balance and happiness. These are lessons that apply to those who have seen the death of their own marriages or relationships, but also to those who want to learn how to avoid their own tsunamis.