Beginning Experience proves life ‘can be good again’

By Diana Boylston
Contributing writer
Bridal Registry

How can someone who is separated, divorced or widowed benefit from the same, two-night, two-day retreat, when each circumstance is unique to the person who has lost his or her partner?

Beginning Experience of New Orleans believes it is because “extreme loss is loss and painful grief is grief.”

The circumstances around how we each have experienced loss start to matter less than the feelings of abandonment and the shared pain that often result from the experience of being the one “left behind.”

It was this shared connection – and a surrender to the idea that God loved me dearly and was always with me even though I could not feel it – that led me to my Beginning Experience (B.E.) Weekend.

At first, I felt different from many people there. I was angry. I’d been with my husband since the age of 17. We were childless. I had no siblings, and most relatives whom I believed could understand my pain didn’t seem to.

The volunteer peer team members on the weekend, however, listened without the judgment I felt from people I’d known much longer. From the compassionate “listening,” I came to realize it was my own judgment of my healing process that was hurting me as well.

Grief heals at different rates, and I was disappointed in myself that no matter how active I was in a day, I was still so sad.

Sally came to the weekend from a different experience. She had been married for 14 years and had two children. Though her relationship had its ups and downs, never did she think her spouse could divorce her. Couples therapy didn’t seem to help, and infidelity was an issue. Still, she would not leave because she was raised to believe that a marriage was forever – you just had to stay.

She came into her first B.E. weekend crying and hoping the weekend would help her move on with her life. She had tried different strategies in the past, but B.E. helped her to accept not only what had happened to her marriage but also what had happened to her in the marriage and how she had changed. Sally says the healing began that weekend.

Reaching out had never been easy for Kenneth, long before he met his wife. Finding that love and acceptance made him become the partner that he always prayed to God to become. After losing his wife of 44 years, he felt he had lost part of his identity. The B.E. weekend taught him how to find his identity in Christ. In intimate, small-group settings, Kenneth heard strangers tell their own honest stories. That made him begin to care not only about his own healing but also about others’ healing.

He began to realize that even at his lowest point, through the love of Christ, he could help others. In helping others, he was noticing a change in himself. The setting of strangers suddenly became a safe place in which people with different circumstances grew to see how God grants us a calming peace, sometimes, simply by showing up and listening.

When “The End of Life as You Know It” or the worst thing you think could happen actually happens, how do you cope? How do you deal with what you are feeling?

It hurts, but you don’t have to hurt alone.

Today in the U.S., half of all marriages end in divorce, leaving more than 1.1 million children and their parents to deal with the fallout. When you are left to pick up the pieces, one weekend for a new beginning leads us to understand that no one has to suffer alone.

Though life may never be the same, it can be good again.

The next Beginning Experience weekend will be held Friday, April 28, through Sunday,  April 30, at the Cenacle on the Lake, 5500 St. Mary St. Metairie, LA 70006. Call Liz at (504) 858-1813 for more information and to register.