Seeking a Season of Stillness
It was the perfect brisk fall day and I was out for a walk with my mentor. I had recently ended a long relationship and, despite it being the right decision, I was in a lot of pain. Life has a funny way of being full of experiences that make you feel a juxtaposition of emotions, doesn't it? I felt guilty that I was both relieved and deeply heartbroken. It didn't make sense to be this disappointed by a decision that I knew was the right one.
My mentor patiently let me vent about the state of my heart and then gave me the single most transformative insight I have ever heard. He kindly said, “Michaela, until you see you right, you won't choose right. You won't choose the right partner, the right purpose or the right friends. You need a season of stillness to embrace and discover you.”
He could tell that my last few relationship choices had less to do with the other person and more to do about me. How we choose or whom we choose is rooted in how we see ourselves. The core of so many of the decisions that we make in our lives is rooted in our identity—discovering and embracing your identity is the foundation for success in any relationship.
While I knew that my mentor was right, a season of “stillness” gave me the immediate internal fear of falling behind in life. I already felt like I was years behind my friends in the timeline department. I was in my 30s, single (again) and not where I thought I would be in my career. Despite my fears, I knew something needed to change—and I was the thing that needed to change.
Debunking the Romanticized Fairy Tale
Sometimes being single gets a bad rap. I think it's because of our obsession with relationships and marriage. My generation grew up watching Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty and just about every female lead fall in love with her Prince Charming. Have you ever noticed that the story usually ends after the wedding? We rarely get a glimpse into the after of “happily-ever-after.”
We grow up romanticizing falling in love and walking down the aisle but very little time truly understanding what it takes to create a healthy, thriving relationship that withstands the test of time. There isn't a Relationship 101 in high school. There's not a class in college on healthy identity development or Wholeness 101. (Although I'm determined to write a curriculum for one!)
Finding Pure Contentment
Fast forward a couple of years later to what I call my couch and wine moment. It was a typical Friday night after I dropped my daughter off at her dad's for the weekend. I walked into a quiet house, made a steak dinner, poured myself a glass of wine and sat down on the couch to enjoy every bite and every sip. As I sat there, I could feel a different sensation rising in my body and I thought, “What is this that I'm feeling?”
I realized it was peace, it was pure contentment and it was joy. I genuinely loved who I became and was assuredly happy with my life. Now, here's the catch, I still didn't have everything the world tells you that you need to be happy.
I was at the same job and Sahara-Desert single, but your girl was so at peace. How?
Our world tells us that being content isn't a good thing, that we always need to be striving for what's next, but there's a difference between being complacent and being content. The kind of contentment I'm speaking of allows you to fully love the journey by fully loving the here and now. Being discontented is a habit. If you're discontented without it, you'll be discontented with it. That's why learning to embrace and enjoy your singleness is essential to the foundation of a successful relationship.
From that couch and wine moment, a desire set in my heart to teach people how to redefine the season of singleness.
Wholeness 101
Imagine this is a little intro to Wholeness 101 with your professor Michaela Belle. While we don't have an entire semester together, we can start with my top three things every single person should do before they ever walk down the aisle.
1. There is power in a pause.
Whenever you break something in your body, one of the first things the doctor will do is put a cast on it. Why? Because in order to restore the bone, it needs to be still long enough for it to heal.
The biggest mistake I see people make is rushing into a new relationship before they've healed from the last one. We're so afraid to be alone that it's more comfortable to jump into something new and exciting as a way of distracting ourselves from the hurt and pain we really need to address.
It's one of the reasons that second marriages and third marriages have even higher divorce rates than first marriages. We rush. We don't pause to allow for the work to be done to heal the break. We repeat what we don't repair.
2. Address the invisible scripts!
We all have what I like to call invisible scripts that run our lives without us even knowing that they're there. They are often written at a young age or are passed down through generations. An invisible script could sound like: “It's better to be married than it is to be single.” Maybe you're used to hearing things like: “Did you hear so-and-so just got engaged? She's 27 and getting her master's at the same time!”
It's important to call out the scripts that are making you feel less than or somehow behind in life. The fastest way to do this is to pay attention to your thoughts. Put a note in your phone, and when you catch yourself thinking a disempowering thought, write it down. By writing it down or typing it into your phone, you create space between you and that thought, which then allows you to say, “Is this actually true?”
3. Do the Work
Okay, so not the most glamorous bullet, but it's the cold, hard, beautiful truth. When I first started studying divorce (I know it's an odd thing to study), I noticed a large pattern. Divorce is often inevitable when we prioritize finding a spouse before finding ourselves.
We're told through movies, social media and culture that finding your spouse is of utmost importance—but we're not really taught how to make relationships last. We focus more on getting down the aisle than creating a healthy, thriving relationship. So, how do you do that?
First, by doing the work on you. Learn about yourself, invest in therapy, hire the life coach, take the course, try something new, discover you by prioritizing you. A healthy relationship requires two healthy people. And guess what? You can only control your side of the equation.
Every season of life has its ups and downs, but being single doesn't have to suck. It can actually be the best time of your life, where you establish a strong foundation for an epic future. It's time to own your “right now” season of life.
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Published as "Guest Contributor" in the August 2022 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
