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“The worst thing about your life falling apart is that the world takes no notice.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Choosing freedom over toxic familiarity would always be the correct choice.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“An empty room can also be a catalyst for transformation. It was a reminder that I could now begin to shape the space around me exactly as I wanted, literally and metaphorically. By carefully choosing what I wanted to put into the space, by mindfully avoiding easy solutions, I could find myself.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“There was a reason I was here. Not just for a break from my life but for a chance to reexamine it.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I accepted the imperfections and broken parts of myself and in the process learned to accept the beauty in my brokenness.
Those who saw themselves reflected in the scattered pieces of my exposed life felt drawn, in spite of themselves, to play a part in my healing. Every friend I made in those years helped and healed me in myriad ways.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“In the months since leaving my husband’s home, I asked this question of myself almost every day. So many of the labels that I had accepted over the years described relationships: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother. In the in-between phase of separation, was I still a wife? Could I check the box for “married” even though I didn’t (and did not want to) share a house with my estranged spouse? If I stripped off the labels that did not fit, who or what would I be? I was still a daughter, a sister, and a mother. Why then did I feel so bereft?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I had lost the anonymity that came from conformity.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“For all my talk of emancipation, I had fallen into the trap of caring deeply about “what will people say,” having internalized the cultural taboo of divorce.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“A name after all is a label as personal as “sweetheart” that a lover may use or as distant as a “hey you” that a stranger in a crowd may call out. But a name is more than a label. It is an inheritance that is uniquely your own. It is the primary way in which you respond to the world and the lens through which the world sees you. It defines you, shapes you, and grounds you. It is the one right you take for granted from the time you start interacting with society.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“The callousness of life infuriated me. How could the sun rise every day, pretending as if nothing was remiss?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Life is movement. Life is action.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Don’t be afraid to do your part. You will only be proud of the things you do, not the things you were afraid to do because of what someone said.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Fire is an important component of Hindu traditions. From the sacred fire around which you walk during your wedding tot he final lighting of the funeral pyre, it occupies center stage at significant life events.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Everything seemed possible but nothing seemed practical.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Lighting the lamp is an art. A ritual. A discipline. Lighting the lamp became my anchor, and my focus, a deliberate act, and a resolution.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I had lived within the confines of familiar social mores, not overthinking the consequences of my choice of name in a future I could not foresee. I didn’t get to pick any of my names, but I could decide what I, the person who bore the name, did with them.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“With no step-by-step guidance or role models, I had stumbled and fallen and picked myself up. I had survived. I had thrived. All along, I had moved one day at a time, one considered step followed by another, one morning followed by another night. Each day had been an improvement from the day before.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“My writing time had been my personal oasis. A small respite each night, a private space to muse and vent. It was a restorative act, not a performative one.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“In that sliver of space where everything—including past mistakes, future mishaps, and the uncertain present—was suspended, I could catch my breath and ease the pressure on my chest, even if it was only for a few minutes a day.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Basic gardening knowledge tells us that plants located adjacent to each other in the same soil, with similar exposure to sunlight and equal access to water and nourishment may grow at different rates and in different ways. My siblings and I were very different—in personality and temperament, in our views and opinions, and in our dreams and ambitions for the future. How could I be expected to evolve at the same pace and in the same direction as a stranger with whom I had tried (and failed) to build a mutually enabling relationship?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Humans were wired to always seek more, look for the next thing, aspire for the unattainable. I wanted peace. But peace could not be found in any object or accomplishment.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Music connected me with something outside myself, even if only for a moment. For that moment, it held my fears at bay and with each passing day, helped me climb up from the dark pit that had once seemed bottomless.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“The light at the end of this seemingly never-ending dark tunnel that I had entered, was on the other side of understanding. The clarity I was seeking was within my reach.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I could reassemble my life by picking up only those pieces that I wanted. There were no guarantees, but there was peace in knowing that I would be able to face the next detour when it arrived.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Although the days seemed interminable, I became comfortable inhabiting an in-between space that was full of possibilities.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Meditation didn’t work any miracles. Miracles happen in an instant of faith. The skeptic in me demanded proof.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“That first choice to leave an unhappy home had put me on a path strewn with more choices. Such was life. I had to accept it without looking for certainties.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I could live without chemistry but not without kindness.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“An empty room can be an instrument for introspection. It was a reflection of the void created by the decision to distance myself from a relationship that had defined me to others and to myself. If I was not a wife, who was I? I was removing a label that marked my place in a social system, but was I still “me” without that label?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“It wasn’t that difficult to cook. Or to eat well. The key was to do it with love, for myself and for my family.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“The image of woman as mother is universal, not specific to any culture. But in India, that image is elevated to iconic status by a society that puts marriage and motherhood at the core of a woman’s existence.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Who knows what goes on in a marriage? Even my parents, who had a compatible marriage, had their points of contention. They had figured out how to disagree and how to find common ground.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“The thing about marriages, bad ones especially, is the utter disregard with which the couple and those around them treat the cracks when they first emerge. Like tectonic plates that crush and grind against each other under the surface of the earth, the damage does not happen on one sunny morning when the earthquake hits. When a couple splits, it is the result of an inevitable break that has been brewing for years without respite.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“What do you do when you know that staying together is not easy and breaking up is even more difficult?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“It took more than motherhood to move me toward meditation. I first had to lose things—my mother, my marriage, my cynicism. I had to make life-changing decisions. Yet I moved, step by step, into the unknown inner world. Hesitatingly. Skeptically. Slowly.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“We had both accepted the unwritten rule of arranged marriage: love, if it arrived at all, would bloom with time.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Was the purpose of marriage procreation and the objective of a child’s life to hold on to each parent and keep them together through a combination of guilt, love, duty, and fear?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Shouldn’t there be more to a marriage? A clarity of purpose? A unity of vision? Team spirit? Common goals? A mutual love of things and each other?”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Arranged marriages were like this. You move from your father’s home to your husband's house, trusting that the system has your back. Like the net that trapeze artists don’t see but know will catch them if they fall, the tradition and the community that endorses this practice is supposed to be the invisible net that supports every couple embarking on such a marriage purely based on their faith in their family’s good intentions.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I wept for the loss of my innocence, for the erosion of my faith in marriage, for the uncertainty of a future that depended solely on me.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Breaking one bond was not the end; it was the beginning. It wasn’t a thread that had snapped. The entire net of relationships built on the assumption of “ever after” had collapsed. As I kept falling down an abyss, it was not my life that flashed in front of me but an enactment of all my fears.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“I grieved for what was yet to come. But I grieved more for what I had lost: myself. I may not have grown in inches as my grandmother had almost a century ago, but I had certainly allowed marriage to change me in fundamental ways.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Free from the constraints and contortions that married life had demanded of me, I was now uncoiling, shrugging off the restraints forced by society and my own limited beliefs.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Dates marked on a calendar are like babies: innocent and untainted. When we assign significance to one particular date—a wedding day for instance—we expand its notional value, even if it is precious only to us. The value of a day (or a baby) increases in proportion to our attachment to it.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Wedding vows, in any culture or language, speak of being together in sickness and in health. There is an assumption that you will receive love and thrive in the constant presence and support of the person with whom you are joined together in matrimony, no matter the weather or circumstance. By committing to spending your life together, you are promising one thing: to be around.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“The story of my marriage and motherhood is not unusual: a life defined by a name, a name conferred by someone other than me. Most women I knew had taken on their husband’s name either at the time of the wedding or after the birth of their children. A few had retained their maiden name, with a handful agonizing over the decision.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Diamonds are forever, more reliable than husbands.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Changing my narrative from one of complaint and dissatisfaction to a more positive one changed my mood, but it didn’t change all the other negatives that had tipped the balance of our marital life into dysfunction. Memories of good times were a reminder that life cannot be measured in purely black and white terms. The good and bad coexist in a tenuous equilibrium that is always in flux.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery