BoomerGirl Diary

Kansas City, Mo. — The day the appraiser came, Suzy Brown cowered in a closet. She cried whenever she tried to leave. Unable to regain her composure she fell to her knees and held herself as she rocked back and forth on the floor.

Selling her home was hard. Leaving the life she loved was even harder. A midlife divorce in the fall of 2000 left her no choice. She was 53 and alone after her 33-year marriage suddenly fell apart. She wondered if she'd ever find happiness again.

Seven years later, she has. Remarried in 2004 to "a wonderful man," she has dedicated her life to helping women in similar situations do the same. She plans to host a "Midlife Divorce Recovery Boot Camp" in Kansas City, Mo., to help women let go of the pain and find a new direction in their lives.

"I just want them to have one day where they can get some resources, be reassured that they can get through this and know that life has all sorts of wonderful possibilities," she said.

When it comes to the pain of a midlife divorce, Brown, who now lives in Kansas City, Mo., knows how much it hurts.

Her first husband, an otherwise good man who gave her many memories and four children, cheated. Worse, she said, he lied about his sincere vow to end the affair. The love and the trust she had spent a lifetime building were gone. Left in its wake were a collection of challenges women facing midlife divorces know all too well — devastation, menopause, an empty nest and a broken heart.

After her divorce, Brown became a shell of her former self, a dark shadow, a lonely echo. She wasn't sleeping well or eating right. She couldn't stop sobbing. Many days it was all she could do to get out of bed.

Then there were the questions.

How could she support herself? Would the hurt ever go away? Would anyone ever love her again? And who was she, anyway? Surely she wasn't the woman who had thrown things and — in a jealous rage — driven out of her way to holler insults at the other woman? Oh, but she was. And it hurt.

One day she decided she had had enough. She wrote in her planner, "I'm done with all of this ridiculous sobbing!"

It was then she discovered that she was hardly alone. Four women in her neighborhood and several of their friends had gone through similar pain. Maybe, she thought, they could help each other cope. She invited them over, even gave them a workbook with suggestions for taking action. They became known as the R.A.D.I.C.A.L. Women, an acronym for Rising Above Divorce in Confidence and Love. Eventually Brown turned that workbook into an actual book called "Radical Recovery" (Leafwood Publishers). The book will be in stores in May.

There were many keys to Brown's recovery. She asked for help, gave up her sadness and stopped feeling sorry for herself. She took simple steps, such as getting dressed and putting on makeup, that made real changes possible.

She's confident others can do the same.

"I just want to give them hope because hope makes them realize there is life after divorce," she said. "And I want them to understand they have a choice. This situation makes you act crazy and out of character and absolutely despairing for a while. But once you get through the screaming and the sobbing, you can choose to have an absolutely incredibly amazing life."