Myra DuFre': From Cocoon to Emergent Butterfly

Myra DuFre’ walked lazily into the kitchen one early Saturday morning, prepared to make some toast and a welcome steaming cup of coffee. What greeted her instead was a conversation that would change the course of her future. Little did she know, her present life as she knew it was about to come crashing down around her...

As Myra walked into the kitchen, she was greeted by the sight of her husband, Ron, sitting at the table, staring awkwardly out the window with tears streaming down his face. Surprised at this unexpected sight, she hurried across the room and stood next to Ron, fearfully asking: “Honey, what is the matter?!”. Ron simply turned his head and stared deep into the eyes of the woman he had known for fifteen years. The young bride he married thirteen years ago. The now somewhat ragged mother of his two children, both sons, ages two and barely one year. Their life together flashed before his eyes in a collision of memories he tried desperately to push away. His mind was made up. He was not interested in re-thinking the decision he had made over eight months prior to this very moment. He simply had to find the strength deep within to say the words he knew would shatter the heart of the woman standing directly in front of him.

“Myra. I want a divorce.”.

Myra stared blankly at Ron, not fully registering what he had just said. Was this April Fool’s Day? Perhaps a sick and twisted plea for attention since she spent nearly all of her time managing the household and caring for his two young children, which left very little time for this man that promised to love her forever; in sickness and health, richness and poor, better or worse? What the ever loving…WHAT?!

Myra simply sighed. She was obviously still in shock; not fully registering the words that came out of the familiar mouth inches from her own. However, she was also so very tired from being up with the baby since 4:00 a.m. that she simply did not have the strength at this very moment to even respond. She cocked her head to one side, met Ron’s eyes and stared as deep within his soul as she dared: “I can’t do this right now. I just…..can’t.”. With that, she turned, marched out of the kitchen, up the stairs and into the baby’s room she had just left minutes before.

The room swimming around her in a surreal version of the Twilight Zone, Myra looked down at the sleeping baby lying peacefully in his crib. The second of her two children. The rainbow baby that came after the last miscarriage. The second miscarriage she had suffered in her thirty-four years of life. This child was truly a miracle. Had she not miscarried nearly two years prior, she would not have this child lying tranquilly in his crib, softly snoring with his chest rising and falling with every precious breath. Still unable to process the bombshell her husband had just dropped upon her, a single tear slipped slowly down her fresh morning face. All she could think in that moment was….Now What?

The following weeks turned to months and without realizing it, Myra woke up exactly eight months later, after the infamous divorce bombshell was cruelly dropped on her unsuspecting ears. Today was the big day. Moving day. She and Ron had fought for weeks on end, attending counseling, seeking sordid advice from family and friends. She had done everything she could to change his mind. A mind that was made up and incapable of change, as she finally realized and reluctantly accepted. The final straw was when Ron came home, what little was left of his home, late one night in a drunken state and admitted to having an affair with a gal he met at work. How fucking cliché’...

On one hand, it stirred up a whole new ocean’s worth of anger, hurt, frustration and betrayal. On the other hand, this new bombshell was almost a welcome piece of information. She had been asking for months what possessed a man, who seemingly had everything, to blindly chuck it all away without so much as a second thought. Now she knew. She actually knew before she knew. But now she knew…with evidence. Or hearsay, but it was hearsay from Ron himself. The evil bastard.

She no longer had to question what she had done to turn his heart from warm and loving to cold and dead. She no longer felt the stress of trying to fix what was broken, especially since she was the only one that was trying. He had moved on. He had done the unthinkable. He had committed the greatest sin she could imagine in her innocent, small-town, naïvely sheltered mind. He had slept with another woman. In a weird twist of fate, the moment the admission left his lips, she felt free.

After weeks of crying in her closet, praying diligently for a change of heart from the father of her children, talking to her mother for hours on end trying to make sense of this soap-opera-like situation turned dreadful reality show that was too real to believe, she finally felt a small, sweet spirit of release. She was able to let go. Finally, after all this time, she simply let go.

The move was as dismal and depressing as you might expect, especially since it was the day before Christmas. Her new home could have fit into the old home’s living room, or so it seemed. Yet, there was something special about having her own place. As much of her own place as she could muster, considering her parents kindly stepped in to furnish the home loan since she and Ron were in the midst of a legal battle that seemed like it would never end. Yet, she vowed this would not be a sad, horrible, retching chapter of her life. She was still somewhat young and had plenty of time left to turn things around, without the man she thought, less than a year ago was her soul mate. Souls may be eternal, but this match definitely was not.

The next few weeks Myra set about finding a job, putting her two babies in daycare which practically killed what was left of the spirit that wasn’t already dead. Going from a stay-at-home mother to working full-time as a single parent was quite the change for Myra. She never saw herself in this situation. I guess no one ever does….until they become a statistic. The fifty percent lucky half of all married people that experience the joys of divorce.

The years passed. Myra dated. She even found love again. This surprised her more than anything she had been through. She obviously had some major trauma and trust issues to work through, which is still a work in progress. The love she found was heartbreakingly taken away when her lover died unexpectedly one chilly March morning four years later.

How could one person withstand so much heartbreak, pain and destruction in such a small span of time? Myra truly felt she had won some sort of tragedy lottery she did not realize she had registered for. Yet, there was always a spirit of peace within her soul that she could not quite explain.

One day, as Myra was leaving her familiar downtown office to pick up her children from school, she stepped outside into the radiant brilliance and warmth of the sun. It felt as if a beacon shone directly upon her face. She was literally blinded by the light and felt as if someone had wrapped a warm, fuzzy blanket around her bare shoulders. In that moment, something happened to Myra. Some how, some way, all the pain she had been through fell away in waves. She started crying, but they were not sad tears. They were tears of joy, happiness and unexpected excitement toward her very blank canvas of a future. Her future. Myra, at that very moment on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of June, started to feel something strangely akin to….healing.

She had survived for so long pushing the negative feelings down and ignoring them. Not wanting to think about what she had been through, the reminders of each horrific loss she faced. She went to work, she raised her kids, she hit the pillow every night at the same time in an effort to sleep away the pain. She preferred to be numb than to feel the horror of loss she experienced as a young woman in her mid-thirties, her prime of life...or so she thought.

Something shifted in Myra that day. She no longer wanted to survive. She wanted to thrive! She started feeling excited about life again. She made a decision right then and there that she would not pass down a legacy of hurt, pain, anger and denial to her two precious sons. She would forgive and move forward, embracing the peace and freedom that comes with the final stage of grief: acceptance.

Myra started writing fervently, reading furiously, praying endlessly and making new friends. She started engaging on a deeper level with her children, her family and her new (and old friends she had avoided for years). She started dating. Oh dear goodness! (She should have waited on that last part). Still, she was getting on with the business of living. All because something deep inside of her, a spark that was ignited years ago, started burning full-force as evidence she was not meant to merely survive. Her newly found passion clearly communicated she was meant for something more.

Myra had always been a passionate and creative young woman. Yet having gone through the tornadic destruction she faced in her thirties, something snapped within her very soul. A switch was flipped. A light turned on. A fire ignited. A part of her being that lay dormant was magically, beautifully, irrevocably awoken. Like a mother grizzly bear coming out of a long winter's hibernation, Myra woke with a vengeance. A vengeance for life, happiness and even love. This woman spent nearly four decades of her life in a cocoon of safety. She tread gently on the ground in which she walked. She was fearful, nervous, full of apprehension and overwhelming anxiety.

Myra stopped seeing herself as a victim. She heroically owned mistakes she made that contributed to the demise of her marriage. She accepted the death of her lover as a tragic chapter in life that held no answers. Yet she knew she could not continue living in the past where he was alive only in her memory. He wanted her to move on. She needed to move on. And finally, after so much time avoiding reality, she was ready to let go; to drop the weight of pain and allow the dewy fresh wings that only just emerged from the darkness of her cocoon, to finally have the chance to fly.