Single-Mooning: Falling back in love with oneself one day at a time

I met my first husband the 2nd week of undergrad, married him 5 months after graduation and because he was all I'd known for 7 years of my life, the thought of moving on without him was such a foreign, inconceivable concept for me that I had no idea how to even BEGIN to progress forward. I'm guilty of being that woman who was so consumed with being a key part of my mate's life that I forgot to have a life of my own. Some call it pitiful; I foolishly called it love. Since he was the only relationship reference point I had and I'd made our lives so intricately intertwined, when he, the comfort zone, was removed from life, I felt like I had hit rock bottom. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? And, though I was nowhere NEAR ready to date yet, the thoughts of 'who is going to want me now' also replayed in my mind. Then one day I looked at my daughter. Though she was so small at the time, I feared that she was watching the way I grieved my marriage. I fea...

We have all been there. At the end of a relationship where you've given your all and are now left with that nagging question in the back of your mind: what do I do now???? Well, after the initial post-coma phase, the part where you realize that everything your friends said about him while y'all were together was actually true, the part where your mother gives you that knowing pat on the back and the "I told you so" look, the part where you can finally see through clear eyes everything you didn't notice while you were so gung-ho in love, comes the single-moon. Awwww, the single-moon, so-titled because this is the part where you get to reintroduce yourself to you. The part where you get to fall back in love with being an "I" instead of a "we." The part where you get to celebrate life and start all over on your own terms. For me, the single-moon became more than just a hobby. After ending yet another marriage (yes folks, plural, as in: more th...