After my separation I literally fell off the map...for years!

I hardly kept up with any of my old friends, and even when I did, the contact or the communication was very brief and usually inconsistent.  Thinking back on it, I felt a lot of shame and anger and grief about my marriage ending and how my friends would take me and what they would think!  (Honestly: I was also flat out overwhelmed with just basic day to day things like raising kids and working full-time.)

And so, apparently, my way of working through all those feelings (while keeping a job and raising good kids) was to become a bit of a hermit, and re-discover myself in solitude.

As in, what was it like to be me, with as little outside influence as possible.

I had to really get confident and straight about what was working and what needed to be let go of.  I needed to break it all down, way back to the very beginning, and just find myself again.  Or actually, find myself completely for the first time ever.

Up until my s...