The Secret Sex Life of a Single Mom Read Online Free PDF

come up with. This man, whom I thought was the greatest, wisest, most magnificent man I’d ever met, apparently loved me . . . but had no balls .
    And thus it was that April 2 became my personal D-Day, as yet another man not only chopped up my heart, but tossed me, wrecked, into a singlehood I’d never even considered. I felt dead; thirty-seven and dead, with three young kids, and a divorce underway.
     
    I WENT THROUGH the motions of my day-to-day life. I had to force myself to eat. It hurt to smile. It hurt to get out of bed. It hurt to have no interest in my kids, who had been the center of my heart and existence for so long. Mommy was a shell of a woman. Could they tell?
    I felt guilty for not being able to put them first, before me and my pain, like a good mother should. I felt guilty for not wanting to go into their imaginary worlds to play and for leaving them with my baby sitter more often so I could simply survive another day. But my guilt just blended with my numbness. My mind, body, and soul were empty.
    So I reached for cigarettes to comfort me. Who cares if I’d quit for seven years? I didn’t want to breathe deeply or feel any deeper inside me than I already was.
    I knew that loving someone purely and abundantly was nothing to be ashamed of. But my God, all my “knowing” wasn’t helping me pull myself back together. I felt like fragments of my being were sticking out of me in all the wrong places. I had totally fallen out of alignment, and I didn’t know how to put Delaine back together again. Where was all that higher understanding and faith I had worked so hard to accumulate over my life? Now was the time for me to be drawing it forth and leaning on it. Where’d it go?
    But I didn’t have the energy to quiet my mind and meditate. I didn’t have the focus or interest in reading any self-help books.
I couldn’t look to nature or the radiant faces of my children to stay present in the moment; I couldn’t find peace in a nanosecond. All I could do was pray for guidance, and even that required too much effort.
    I was so shattered that for the first time in my life I placed my faith in time; it seemed the only potential saving grace available. I felt like I’d been thrown into a wilderness, some harsh, tangled forest of immense suffering. “I can’t see the forest through the trees,” I told my girlfriends lifelessly. “I finally know what that expression really means.”
    Strangely enough, some part of me knew that things weren’t going to get any worse. I knew my soul was meant to arrive here and learn. I was not meant to be with Robert. I was not meant to be with Graham. There was another plan for me, one that I didn’t have the will or desire to see right now. But I knew that somewhere up ahead in this dark labyrinthine wilderness, my higher self would find an exit. And she would lead me there.

CHAPTER 3
    ONLINE AND OUT OF LINE
    WEEKS PASSED. SPRING EXPLODED, FULL of insouciance. And with each passing day, my ice-cold shock began to thaw. As summer came into view, the needs of my kids, their cheer and innocence—even the sun’s brilliance against a clean blue sky—made each day progressively bearable. But a part of my chest felt black. Frostbitten. I was maimed yet no one could tell. And the pins and needles of aloneness consumed me. I had no strong arms to hold me. No man to love or make love to me. And no idea of how or if I’d feel passion or bliss ever again. Seriously, what were my options when it came to dating? Go to a bar? Pray that all my married friends would miraculously set me up with a friend? Pfft. Not likely. So I remained in stasis, going through the motions of finalizing my divorce and helping the children transition to shared custody. Which they did well. I envied their resilience.
    Around this time, my hip pain flared up madly, to the point that I’d be wincing if I rolled on it in my sleep. I had to do something about it and pronto. So I started treatment with a new