When You Fall Off Your Bike…Get Back On It and Start Peddling

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Julie Homsy, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

It all started with the ending of my marriage of twelve years. I fell off the bike and made the conscious decision to get right back on it and start peddling. I haven’t stopped peddling and I haven’t looked back once.

People have asked me how I was able to get back on the bike so quickly. My reply has always been and will always be, “I understand what happened, forgave everyone involved and got on with my life.” Sounds easy doesn’t it? I am hear to tell you that it is easy and your journey gets better, but you have to want it and you have to believe that it will happen. You can survive and will come out better than ever.

The first step in getting back on your bike is figuring out what happened. When our marriage is failing we tend to accuse the other person, unless you are like me and didn’t see it coming. Even if you are like me, you can still look back and pinpoint when things started to fail. So let’s look at the blame game. And it is a game because it seems to go back and forth. When trying to figure out what happened, as hard as it can be for you, take a look at what your spouse is accusing you of. An example of this, my second husband would tell me that I snap at him. Who me!?! Yes me. We had a small child who wasn’t sleeping through the night so I was existing on 3 to 4 hours of sleep every day. I was in a mental fog and usually busy with our son, working, cooking, cleaning…and I realized that my husband would just start asking me questions while I was in the middle of doing something. So he caught me off guard and to him, it probably seemed like I was snapping. Well, by the time I realized this it was too late for us, even after explaining it to him.

In looking back at my first marriage, I realized that it wasn’t anything either one of us did. It was our work life. I worked 7:00a till 5:00p and he worked 3:00p till 11:00p. My ex was asleep when I was going to work and not home when I got home from work. When he got home from work, I was asleep. It also didn’t help that he worked six days on, three days and the days rotated. Sometimes we had 3 days off together and other times we had 1 day off together. We also end up wanting different things. I wanted the house and two kids. He wanted to be able to pick up and move if he wanted to. Basically, his wants as a couple changed and he didn’t share it with me. But that’s okay, it happens.

With looking back at our marriage, I was able to see what happened and there were other things that added to breakdown of our marriage, all career related. Once I saw everything for what it was, I was able to forgive…even myself. We just wanted different things, our careers took us on different paths and we just maintained our relationship “as is.” It’s okay. My first marriage taught me about faith, commitment and working together towards a common goal.

Once I was able to understand and forgive I moved on. Slow at first and then fast. Going through a divorce can be easy and painless or it can be hard and exhausting. Lucky for me it was easy and painless. Even though, I took it slow afterwards. I took a lot of time for myself…I started working out, taking walks, listened to music, developed friendships and focused on my career, even traveled for my job. But be for warned, not everything is going to go smoothly after a divorce…it could for some, but for others it may not. During this whole process of moving on, I lost my job four months after my divorce. But that didn’t stop me from peddling on. Nope, if fact, it propelled me into doing something I have always wanted to do, be my own boss, so to speak. It gave me time to start going out and meeting people. About seven months in I started dating and having fun.

When you peddle on, it’s about you. This is the time to look at what you want, what are your goals and desires, and how you are going to get there.

If you fall off your bike, dust yourself off; get right back on and start peddling.