Just a little envy...
you can’t help but feel it for Tara. Tara is my childhood friend, who has grown from a vivacious teenager into a graceful woman in the prime of her life. Her social media is overflowing with pictures of a sea-kissed beach house, exciting travels, and beautiful, well-settled children.
And the icing on the cake? A handsome, indulgent husband, who seems to hold his pride in his wife as closely as the omnipresent beard he has always sported. That beard has changed colour from ebony to salt-and-pepper, but it seems just as resolute in character. In times when long, happy, chemistry-laden marriages seem so rare, it is heartwarming to see this couple becoming more connected by their shared goals, year after year.
What could be their secret, people wonder? And that little envy melts into a warm puddle of good wishes, as naturally as they spring from the human heart. A few weeks ago, I received an urgent call from a sobbing Tara. She told me that her life and world had fallen apart.
I immediately asked if there was a medical crisis. “No,” she answered, with anger I had never heard in her voice. Her husband of 30 years, Raj, was having an affair with another woman.
How devastating it must feel to be betrayed like that — how utterly traumatic. I shared in her shock and pain. However, over the next few weeks, I asked her to focus on whether she wished to heal.
After a few days of reflection, she told me that she found she was becoming defined by this tragedy and wanted to feel like herself again. Tara embarked on the courageous path of self-discovery. She used her vast resolve to quiet her emotional past, which clearly shows us that when we depend on external things for validation and a sense of well-being, we will never be as strong as when we learn to draw those gifts from within.
Then we stop being victims and become creatures of love. The way romantic love and marriages are conditioned often separates us from finding our own power, and we stop nourishing that precious sense of self. I watched as Tara emerged from the dark pit of fury, despair, and sadness, replacing them with the light-filled emotions of appreciation and thankfulness.
She tells me now that she wouldn’t trade what happened to her for all the glittering diamonds of Botswana. This dark incident turned out to be the hard diamond that carved out acres of increased, shining consciousness in her and brought out the prismatic clarity she needed to live life — whole..
