How I Leapt into the Garden of Love After My Divorce
After being married for twenty-five years and going through a divorce, I found myself at the entrance of an unkempt garden of my own emotions, truly doubting if I could nurture, grow in love, and perhaps, one day, re-plant in another’s garden.
I was a bit of a hot mess, a garden after a storm—overgrown with the weeds of doubt and wilted by pain. Nevertheless, Jodi, with her nurturing soul, saw past the tangled brambles of my wounded heart. Her words were like rain to parched soil, healing the very core of my being.
Yes, I was the stubborn oak, unwavering and rigid. Always right, selfishly prickly like a thorn bush. I can admit this now, for it’s the truth. She, with a gardener’s patience, pushed past my pain, utilizing her deep knowledge of the human psyche, as if she held a degree in the botany of souls.
She sent me a note; yes, we still give cards to each other. This particular note was like a seed sown with love and pride, referencing the latest bloom in my career, my book. “I am so proud of you, baby. Not because you wrote another book, but because you worked on becoming the leader, man, author, husband, and father that allowed you to cultivate a book like this!”
I was speechless, rooted to the spot. All a man needs to know is that his partner sees the garden within him and respects its potential. Love, after all, is not merely in the saying but in the doing—the sun and rain that foster growth. Indeed, in 1865, poet William Ross Wallace said, “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” but also, the hands that tend the garden shapes its beauty.
Resilience, we’ve learned, comes after the storms—after arguments that felt like hurricanes, after periods of drought where we avoided each other, even under the same roof.
Are you ready to take a leap into love? To open your heart to someone who not only sees the garden within you but cherishes it, weeds and all? My wife, Jodi, is my greatest gardener, and my children have learned to nurture her garden as well.
We are a blended family, a combined ecosystem of varied flora, and it was rocky at the outset. Yet, somehow, everyone decided to show up, to water and to weed, coming from a place of listening, loving, and leaning into understanding. Our collective garden has since flourished, making our time together memorable—a landscape, one for the ages.
Taking the leap to love again has made me the man I am today. Yes, I’m a work in progress, a garden always in need of care. I strive to listen without always trying to prune, to come from a place of emotional honesty. I check in with Jodi, ensuring she knows the state of my soil. I’ve blocked men who I ran with in the past who were married but not marriage minded.
Every day, I choose to tend to this marriage, to love through all seasons, good and bad. For us, it’s the little things that matter: the way I talk to her like a gentle rain, how I listen like the quiet earth, my responses like sunlight to her days, and how I choose to cherish her even in her absence, carrying her in the heart of my garden. I love her more today than when she first discovered me online, a tale of two gardens entwining. In fact, when she first saw me online, she just had to have me. 😂
Today, consider taking your own leap into love:
Hug someone with your words, like a vine offering support to those around it. Your words carry energy, and your love may just be the missing note in someone’s song, the water for a thirsty root.
Help someone who can offer you nothing in return, like the sun that shines on all flowers without discrimination.
Heal others with your presence. Show up, smile, and be the sunshine in their garden.
Take the leap, for on the other side is the garden you’ve been waiting to cultivate.